The National Film Board of Canada (NFB) is an organization that’s been holding up the vanguard of animation for the past 70 years. Their animation studio has been a cauldron of experimentation and innovation, which has led them to become a forerunner in the emerging field of interactive animation. Hugues Sweeney, executive-producer at the NFB and head of their interactive productions says, “The animation studio has always been an incubator of new ways of storytelling—and we started doing web productions about 3 years ago. Now 20% of what we do are interactive pieces, so it became an important body of work for us. I try to find content people, visual artists, and web designers who can push the frontiers of storytelling.”Their latest interactive animation, BLA BLA by Vincent Morisset (who was responsible for Arcade Fire’s first interactive videoclip and their documentary Miroir Noir) aims to establish an emotional connection with the user while also making the experience more intuitive.It’s all about the relationship between form and content, explains Sweeney. Vincent shows the way because you're not just pushing buttons, you're playing. Because of the browser-led nature of watching interactive animations, the medium is one where web design, visual art, and animation all have to play nicely together. With BLA BLA there were four different people working on the project: Vincent Morisset was directing, Caroline Robert did the visuals, Philippe Lambert the sound, and Édouard Lanctôt-Benoit the programming. And it’s all about drawing the different strengths from these disciplines and balancing them correctly.
While the interaction and animation in BLA BLA are, at their core, very simple, the short film/game hybrid explores the challenges of telling a story where the spectator is a participant. The story takes place over six chapters, all exploring different principles of human communication using various lo-tech and hi-tech techniques that mix xerography, drawing on paper, ActionScript-generated animations, and puppet stop-motion combined with real-time 3D mapping. The universal appeal of these visuals are reflected in the sounds, where the music and characters' speech is fragmented into tiny clips and then scored through programming, a progressive soundscape that uses "controlled randomness." The end result is one that, rather than confusing the viewer with too many visuals or a barrage of clickable parts, produces the feeling of casual engagement, making it indeed a “playful” experience. And the large-headed child-like characters that give the project a hand-made look are striking, sure to garner attention from design and animation enthusiasts.Interestingly, the animation is now being made into an installation. Sweeney says, “When creating the web piece they were beta-testing, and you had a 5-year-old try it and a 35-year-old, a 50-year-old, and people reacted in all different ways.” It’s these reactions that inspired the idea behind the installation. The animation will be projected onto a huge wall with an immersive sound system set up. Just above the viewer will be a variety of different light devices that will shine on the person—placing the person experiencing the animation in the spotlight. Sweeney continued, “These things have to live outside of the web browser, so it's also made to be in a public space, and also to show that the person watching it can be as funny as the piece itself. We’re turning the experience of web browsing into a social event and taking it on tour.”Until the installation comes to a town near you, check out the animation here.
Advertisement
