Why Animation & Motion Design Will Boom in 2016

2015 was the year that design styles and animation techniques were mixed and complemented with realistic 3D-Renderings. Some examples of this union include Disney’s blend of Anime/western comic styles in Big Hero Six; the hand-crafted look of Airbnb's Wall'n'Chain from Psyop (below); and Sehsucht director Patrick Clair’s titles for US hit TV show True Detective.

Behind the scenes, this year also saw a wave of new and affordable technical innovations finally becoming commonplace in studios, following many years of rumours about this introduction.

Some of this equipment includes:

• VR systems (Oculus, Samsung Gear (pictured below, right) and GoPro Odessey)

• Stable hardware and software for GPU Rendering and Realtime Engines (there are countless good packages from various companies, plus Unreal Engine 4 became free to use this year)

• Smart drone systems (pictured below, left)

• And motion capture solutions.

Most of these products have now quit beta-status and become affordable, making it easier to use full versions that can be integrated into our daily work.

These advancements have already had, and will continue to have, a huge impact not only on how we produce motion design and animation content, but also with how our audiences can connect and engage with it.

The technical progress allows smaller studios and collectives to create amazing work – which was previously limited to the bigger VFX companies only. And films, like Sundays (below) from independent production studio PostPanic, are beginning to challenge work created by Hollywood studios by benefiting from these new opportunities without having an army of artists on the payroll.

Meanwhile thanks to faster turnarounds and greater possibilities, the animation and motion design sector has also expanded into online and entertainment, producing slick trailers for games ReCore (below) and Destiny: The Taken King or super-reduced mobile games, like Lucas Zanotto’s Loopimal. All of this has only further defined animation and motion design as an integral part of the industry and not just characterised as an optional feature.

It’s a particularly exciting time for animation - there are new possibilities for experimentation and pioneering, despite the size of the facility. However, blurring artistic and technical disciplines brings its own set of problems. Greater pressure will be placed on artists to have a deeper understanding of different crafts and designs as well as keeping up with the demands of these new technologies.

2015 - perhaps more so than in previous years - highlighted that a studio’s success (and also that of the individual artist) will largely depend on their understanding and creative manipulation of technology’s progress.