Giant Ant

Giant Ant for the “On Being” Podcast

One of my regular podcast listens is On Being and I have been listening quite a bit more in the last 6 months for a number of reasons I’m not going to go into here. If you have some free time give it a listen, I guarantee it’ll be worth your time.

Recently Giant Ant, one of my favorite motion graphics/video/design firms was given the opportunity to put together a short animated piece for On Being and results are wonderful.

Giant Ant was given a wide open brief to work with so they had plenty of room to explore and take some risks. What they produced is a 44 second animated short that moves from illustrative to abstract and back again balanced against O’Donohue’s narration. It’s really quite lovely and frankly, I’d love to see something like this done for the entire length of the podcast. (I know time and money…)

“What If?”

Here is a fun little animation from Taiji Brand Group and Giant ant for Community Futures. The minute and a half long spot has a really nice look to it, with fluid animation, a great color pallet, nice script and story line, and great visual layouts from scene to scene. After watching it with the sound on, I hit the mute button and watched it again pausing from time to time to really appreciate the way the scenes are framed and blocked in. Really nice work from Giant Ant on this one.

Directed by: Giant Ant
Producer: Cory Philpott
Creative Direction: Jay Grandin
Art Direction: Lucas Brooking
Illustration: Lucas Brooking, Jay Grandin
Character Animation Lead: Henrique Barone
Compositing Lead: Jorge R Canedo
Animation, Compositing & Additional Character Animation: Jorge R Canedo, Nicholas Ferreira, Marisabel Fernandez, Diego MacLean
Music & Sound Design: Ryland Haggis

84000 Words of the Buddha.

As the world moves forward, language changes over time.Some languages are lost forever, or fade into obscurity only to have accurate translations go with them. Such is the case with the original teachings of Buddha which are carved into wooden planks in an original dialect of the Tibetan language. The animation below from Giant Ant is a visual feast promoting the 84,000 project which is tackling the enormous task of translating 95% of Buddhist texts that have never been translated into modern languages. The animation is a flowing visual treat of rich colors and shapes that morph into the symbolizes the teachings of the Buddhist faith. This combined with a soothing narrative by Russell Brand, and a simple call to action make this a winner.