Animation

I have a very special relationship with animation, which started at an early stage of my professional experience. I was lucky to have my first full-fledged internship with ETC. It is a French company focused on augmented reality technology and they are specializing in really big events, akin to the Olympic opening ceremony. I joined their Russian Office as a member of the team conducting 3D Projection mapping* on buildings during events. It was a huge leap from my student life to real-life - HUGE - projects...

At the end of the first two months of my internship, I created a 30 second animation for a music festival, which annually takes place in early September in Moscow. It was 3D projection mapping on the central cathedral of the Red Square as a background for the show. When I came on the Red Square stage for rehearsal and saw my work on a screen of such a scale, it literally took my breath away…. oooohhh wow …. and that was a moment that I will remember all my life.

Other events followed shortly, coming hand in hand with loads of fun and immensely difficult work. I worked all NIGHTS long to arrive at just a handful of minutes of a desired video, and it was amazing experience. When you work with thousands of layers of effects, when you create a content which is estimated in terabytes…. oh wow …  Ever since then, any workload whatsoever would pale by comparison.

Afterwards, I completed my second education in motion design and a bunch of projects in film editing and animation. But whatever, I love motion graphics and have a good understanding of the physics and the emotional aspect of moving images. 

I eventually incorporated the broad experience of the past few years in the, so to say, micro domain. I am currently working with micro animation and I this is where my striving for perfection is now fully reflected.

One of the nice examples for me  is animation for a voice assistant. It involves so much design in motion so as to enable some geometric shapes to “listen” to users’ inquiries. It is art for me. I just like to solve such kinds of tasks. I can spend days working on one single interactive button to make it just perfect and fully meet my goals.

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*Projection mapping, similar to video mapping and spatial augmented reality, is a projection technique[1][2] used to turn objects, often irregularly shaped, into a display surface for video projection. These objects may be complex industrial landscapes, such as buildings, small indoor objects or theatrical stages. By using specialized software, a two- or three-dimensional object is spatially mapped on the virtual program which mimics the real environment it is to be projected on. The software can interact with a projector to fit any desired image onto the surface of that object.[3] This technique is used by artists and advertisers alike who can add extra dimensions, optical illusions, and notions of movement onto previously static objects. The video is commonly combined with, or triggered by, audio to create an audio-visual narrative. In recent years this technique has also been widely used in the context of cultural heritage as it has proved to be an excellent edutainment[4] tool thanks to the combined use of a digital dramaturgy.

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