This time I will not keep the word about the approaches in the work, but the art director of Trailer Studio. But, in the beginning, according to tradition, our video:
Today I’ll tell you how I found an answer to the question that had long tormented me about the banality of the image and about what the illustrator working with video designers needs to know. ')
On the essence of the problem: as an illustrator who dealt with static single pictures most of the time, it was difficult for me — when I started working with graphics for motion and animation — it was not easy to switch to a mode in which some of the pictures themselves do not mean anything or simply repeat text. In a static single illustration, this is completely unacceptable (well, there are a number of reservations, but they are not critical in this conversation), and it causes me so much rejection right now because I used to draw just such pictures (how lucky it was) . The idea that an illustration is always a kind of “narration,” something meaningfully self-contained, did not allow me to calmly draw “just a globe and little men”, “just a handshake”, “just a typewriter”, etc.
In this sense, the situation with edits in the yuterader was rather indicative.
There was a text: “Binary options - an effective and profitable tool of the American stock exchanges - are now available to any investor”.
As an illustrator, my approach was this: for a cool illustration, we need a cool metaphor. We will depict such an illustration, and then simply add movement to it.
The result was such a story: horsemen on horsebacks, one of which - a cowboy on a horse with a typically hot rod pattern on its side - a burning flame, gallop along the racetracks. The cowboy is ahead of everyone, leaving the rest behind the scenes, but then they catch up with him and we see that the other riders also had an upgrade: the horses of all are now also tuned, the riders are dressed in racing suits.
That is, we have a sequence of three pictures:
Everything would be great, but the client says, "with your explanation, everything is cool, but no one understood anything without it." Of course, it was a pity to refuse such a shot, but in fact it turned out that in terms of the time required for the perception of the picture, it is more like a magazine illustration (only in motion). The complexity of perception increases, because the viewer cannot freely switch attention between the text and the image, as is the case with the magazine (none of the real users of the service would reconsider the video due to the fact that some picture was incomprehensible). In the case of a magazine, there is a separate time to read the text, and a separate time to read the picture. Those. the illustration can be an independent text (and, in a good way, should be in the journal), in the case of a video clip - if the text and the picture are equally weighty, they begin to argue for the viewer's attention, and as a result, he doesn’t understand either the text or the text Pictures. Then I had a question: so what, it turns out, in a video of such a plan can a picture only repeat the text? This is a terrible despondency, this is the dominance of the clip art, how can this be, and in general I do not play like that.
And here I was just reading Scott McCloud’s comic book that was mentioned many times. And it was at this very moment of the search for meaning that there was one very important moment for us - how the text and the image work together (see p. 153-160).
Unfortunately, there is no translation of this chapter into Russian, therefore it’s concise about the essence:
In spite of the fact that there can be a lot of options for the joint work of text and a picture, there are seven main types of them in the book:
1. The main thing is the words (the pictures explain, “depict”, but not really add something new): “Judy gave the keys and smiled” - a smiling Judy is drawn.
2. The main thing is the picture (the words play the role of a “soundtrack”, everything is clear from the picture and without them)
3. Repetition (the picture repeats the text and vice versa): “With a frown, George lifted his lollipop” - a gloomy George is drawn with a lollipop in his raised hand.
4. Strengthening, adding (words strengthen or develop a picture, or a picture - words): “Is this the Jupiter of my youth?” - just a planet and just a ship are drawn; “My head will burst like a pumpkin!” - a man was drawn, who took hold of his head.
5. Parallel combinations (text and image do not intersect): “Milk. Butter. Bulbs ”- a man is kneeling on the lawn.
6. Installation (text - part of the picture)
7. Interdependence is the most common and interesting type of interaction, in which the text and the picture convey the necessary meaning only together: “That's all I need to stop it!” - a superhero is drawn, looking at his huge hand.
Interdependent combinations do not always represent an equivalent union: sometimes the text is meaningfully more loaded than the picture, or vice versa. Moreover, the more specific words are, the more freely a picture can vary, and vice versa. There should not be a situation where both are trying to lead - and this is exactly what happened in the case of the yutrader.