Learn about the latest animation trends and how to connect with your audience through creative and powerful animations.

1. Video
Animation
Trends

2. If you’ve noticed more and more
animated content over the last few
years - especially online- you’re
not alone. Rapid advancements in
technology are allowing artists to
create amazing and wholly original
animated content with nothing more
than a laptop. Of course, some movie
studios (i.e., Disney) are paving the way
with proprietary software, but amateur
creatives are also latching on to trends
to share their stories with the world.
This eBook takes a look at recent trends
in video animation, why they’ve become
so popular, and even offers some ideas
on how a budding animator can put
them to good use.
2 | Video Animation Trends
Video Animation Trends

3. The 80s are back in a major way. The
synthesizers, big hair, and bright colors that
defined that decade can be found on just about
every fashion runway or music video today. Of
course, the nostalgia for this decade has crept
into animation in the form of 8-bit-style videos.
8-bit videos take their inspiration from classic
video games like Donkey Kong and Pac-Man
to create an aesthetic that is both playful and
accessible. For instance, the YouTube channel
for movie fans CineFix has created 8-bit
versions of cinematic classics like Pulp Fiction,
Forrest Gump, and The Avengers. Best of all,
you don’t need to be a video game programmer
from the 80s to create these videos; you can
use programs like After Effects to do so.
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8-Bit Videos

4. Disney’s Big Hero 6 was one of the biggest movies of
2014, and it even managed to score the Academy Award
for Best Animated Feature. What you may not know about
the blockbuster film is that it utilized a totally new type of
animation to make the world of that movie vivid.
The Los Angeles Times recently wrote about Hyperion,
a proprietary Disney software that “simulates the physics
of light” and “can make animated films more lifelike or give
them an otherworldly look.” The creators of the film used the
software to capture the particular West Coast light of the film’s
fictionalized version of San Francisco (cleverly renamed San
Fransokyo) and to capture the brilliance of the neon signs that
decorate its streets at night.
While you may have a hard time getting your hands on Hyperion
in the near future (if ever), it’s a sign that animators are trying to
make their imaginary worlds look as realistic as possible.
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Disney’s Hyperion

5. This Asian comic book-style art form has been
popular overseas for decades, but in the last
several years, Americans - especially adolescents
- have fallen in love with the vibrancy of the
form. In fact, anima cartoons are more popular
than ever. Anime style content can be found in
mainstream places like the Cartoon Network,
San Diego Comic Con, and even on the shelves of
your local bookstore. Anime plots almost always
deal with dreamy romance or high-stakes action,
making it one of the rare styles of animation that
is closely tied to certain narrative themes.
Anime is primarily defined as a drawing style, so
if you can master its idiosyncrasies - big eyes,
bright colors, glamorous hair - you’re on your
way to creating something that is faithful to the
original art form.
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Amine

6. The magic of animation lies in its ability
to somehow make a drawing seem
incredibly real, while still somehow
looking like a drawing. This fine line of the
real and the fantastic is what makes the
art so thrilling.
Non-photo realistic rendering (or NPR,
as it is often called) takes animation
and somehow makes it feel even more
animated. If it sounds complicated,
Creative Bloq has an example of
a piece done for sharing economy
pioneers Airbnb that shows it off nicely.
It essentially a step backwards, for
nostalgia’s sake, of animated films that
clearly looked animated, hence the name
“non-photo realistic rendering.”
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Non-Photo Realistic Rendering

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Non-Photo Realistic Rendering
The world of animation has benefitted
greatly from the technological
advances of the last twenty years.
There have been plenty of milestones
because of this, such as Pixar’s Toy
Story being the first feature-length
computer-animated film. But with
these advancements, the industry
has seen a move away from style of
animation that feel like they were
created by a human hand. While which
you prefer is a matter of taste and
context, the rise of NPR suggests
animators and audiences alike are
looking for alternatives to the crisp,
clean, almost video game-like worlds
of computer animated films.

8. The site Creative Bloq calls this out as
another recent trend that, while similar to
NPR, is an even more clear salute to old-
school forms of drawing and creation like
watercolor painting, puppetry and even
graffiti.
By utilizing state of the art animation
software, animators are able to digitally
create videos in which the characters look
like puppets, or the scenes dissolve into one
another in a swirl of watercolors.
Like NPR, these organic-minded videos
suggest that animators are embracing the
craft’s artificial tenets over the hyperrealistic
and fluid animation you’d see in many popular
computer animated videos to day.
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Organic Influences

9. If you’re looking to create a video for personal
use or for your brand, any one of the trends we
mentioned above might be right for you. As
with anime, what you end up settling on may
ultimately decide on your message or goal.
If you’re looking for inspiration, you may want
to look at animated videos made by notably
brands in the past. Chipotle’s “Back to the
Start” is a beautiful example of using organic
influences and stop motion-style animation to
create a video that is compelling, beautiful, and
ties in to the overall message of the video. This
commercial for Canadian wireless company
Saskel uses Pixar-style computer animation
to create wonderful short film that offers up a
gorgeous and realistic take on winter.
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Which One is Right For You?
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