2/24 Breaking the Brand

Dancing Lights on Monstera Leaves

“This weird thing happens when people get familiar with your work. For better or worse, people start seeing you as a kind of brand”

This line from David B. Levy’s Your Career in Animation really resonated with me. How people begin to recognize you for your work is something that surprises me even today. Hearing “Oh yeah I could tell that was yours, it’s so your style” is “For better or worse”. Like there is this sense of flattery that comes from it that you can lean into and prosper with, but also there is this lurking fear of “Am I becoming predictable/stale/boring?”

I tend to stick with trying new things, although I have undoubtedly created a style for myself that I am, at this time, quite proud of. I think the refining of it keeps it from reaching a perceived expiration date. Although with that I find it incredibly fun to break that mold and experiment, like with the animations I did for this blog today. Although incredibly simple, the challenge came in the medium I presented my work on which is my precious Monstera. For one night only they stood in the spotlight as I figured out how to angle my camera just right, to get the most mysterious angles and movements. This only hints at what the animation is being presented on.

I think that trying new things builds on what you know, it helps make the net you are casting wider because you are branching out with what you know, into what you don’t know. It isn’t abandonment, but an addition to your tool belt. An addition that didn’t complicate your life but enriched it with new processes and viewpoints which I find a lot of fun to get into.

The first test I did was just a straight line traveling down space you can see how it highlights, only briefly the sensual curves and delicacy of the plant itself

This test involved putting sound to visual through simple visualization lines. I used a catchy pop song from the Video Game Sayona Wild hearts. The leaves give different screens and fractured pieces to look at that I find so very visually interesting.

This is by far my favorite rendition with a simple burst field traveling along the leaves, it really gives this mysterious nature to the leaves, breaking them out of the norm by giving both light and shadow dancing across it.