Preludes 混合媒介动画 by Matthew Rankin is a highly esteemed winner of the very prestigious 2020 A' Design Award 铁奖 in 电影、视频与动画设计 Competition Category.

铁电影· 2020

Preludes 混合媒介动画

by Matthew Rankin

Client: Matthew Rankin

A' Design Award 铁奖 Winner in 电影 Category

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Verified Award Winner

Verify Award Status for #103476

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The Design

About Preludes 混合媒介动画

《序曲》是一部以 T.S. 艾略特同名诗作为蓝本创作的混合媒介动画短片。影片时长一分零八秒,将艾略特的意象与原创音乐作品相结合。各场景之间并非依靠单一的视觉风格,而是通过主题与声音相互串联。作品融合了2D与3D动画,在 Cinema 4D 中建模,使用 Redshift 渲染,并在 After Effects 中完成合成。镜头从空中俯瞰转向街道视角,人物在屏幕之后彼此擦肩而过。这部动画借由一部旧日文本,映照出现代生活的图景。

The Recognition

About the A' Design Award 铁奖

Preludes 混合媒介动画是 A' Design Award 铁奖得主，这是授予满足人们对设计精良的创作所期待的专业与工业要求的优良设计的声望认可。铁奖得主展现出其创作者的高超技艺、高度专业化、专家级的理解力和创造能力。预计Preludes 混合媒介动画将成为一件备受推崇、令人钦佩且被珍爱的创作，既实用又创新。这件赢得 A' Design Award 铁奖的设计整合了行业最佳实践，并拥有与专业知识和才华相结合的称职技术特性。Preludes 混合媒介动画因其严谨而受到尊重，旨在提供有助于让世界变得更美好的生活品质改善。

Behind the Design

Press Kit

Credits, team members and technical details provided by the designer.

Unique Properties: Preludes is a mixed media collaborative animation based on a poem by T.S. Eliot. The process involved the poem being chosen by the producer, who then invited a musician to compose a one-minute piece which was handed off to me to provide to create visuals on both the the words of Eliot and the music.
Dimensions & Packaging: Duration: 1-minute, 08-seconds
Tags: poetry, animation, motion graphics, 2D, 3D, after effects
Production Technology: Preludes utilizes both 2D and 3D animation all composited in After Effects. The scenes with 3D were done in Cinema 4D and rendered using Redshift. It also uses several After Effects plugins such as Video Copilot's Sabre, Rowbyte's Plexus, and Red Giant's Particular and Form.
Design Challenge: The challenge became putting the many ways this manifests into only one-minute and matching those visuals to an already created musical composition. And that's how an aerial view helps to alienate us from the tracking signals on the street and we are suddenly shifted to street level view to see faceless people bumping into one another with screens blocking the vision.
Research: For this project the research fairly straightforward. It started with a cursory reading of the poem, Preludes by T.S. Eliot, and listening to the soundtrack created by Angus Macrae. I listened to the audio repeatedly to let it sink into my memory and to help with visualizing general concepts. This was followed by seeking out deeper analysis of the poem so that I better understood the themes, ideas, and symbols. While I could certainly have skipped this step it was profoundly important as I went along and was searching for visual fragments to add to the density of the piece.
Inspiration: Preludes is based on T.S. Eliot's poem of the same name and a one-minute musical soundscape provided to me and composed by Angus Macrae. The whole project was organized by a group called Campfire Poetry that uses poetry as away to promote collaborations between musicians and animators.
Project Duration: The project was started 20 December 2019 in New York City and completed in February 2020.
Operation Flow: I was immediately drawn into Eliot's non-narrative and slightly abstract form, even though he was describing a very defined and concrete world. I took that as an opportunity to create scenes that were thematically, but not necessarily aesthetically, connected. Instead, I chose to let Macra's soundtrack be the connective tissue weaving together Eliot’s view with my own as I explore how our modern world looks and feels in the context of Eliot’s ideas.
Team Members: Director/Animator: Matthew Rankin
Producer: Max Rothman
Music/Sound: Angus Macrae