Scholar, the American studio located in Los Angeles and New York, surprises us once again with one of its most notable projects of the last year.
This project was made for Apple Music Japan, obviously focused on the Japanese market. For this, the Scholar studio deployed its entire team to make two pieces with a large number of quality details.
Scholar is specialized in the creative production of high-level video animation projects. It is a company driven by curiosity and the desire to engage viewers on an emotional level. By combining art with emerging techniques, we forge braver and smarter content.
let’s talk about the project
By partnering with Apple Music Japan, they set out to tell two very different but equally magical stories.
The first is Summer. This piece showcases the bright days and vibrant nights of the summer festival season in Japan. The main character is followed as he slides, dives and the crowd navigates through the festival scene, punctuated with authentic details taken from the sites, snacks and trappings of the season.
Apple Music Japan – ‘Summer’ from Scholar on Vimeo.
The second, New Life, centers around the protagonist and her metamorphosis from a student to a young adult as a professional. Influenced by her soundtrack, our hero and her world are brought to life with vivid colors and smooth animation, thus paving the way for a new stage of life and style.
Both pieces serve as dynamic journeys through life, supported by music and sounds that turn everyday things into fun and energizing things.
Apple Music Japan ‘New Life’ from Scholar on Vimeo.
According to the Scholar studio: “We took these fun ideas to very abstract places as we moved from scene to scene with hand-drawn animation and dynamic camera movements. Drawing inspiration from the joy music brings to every moment, we warm our hearts, playing on equal parts personality and sensory overload.”
It is not surprising that the Scholar studio has decided to use a language closely related to the world of manga. If we look closely, most of his shots refer to this visual universe of Japanese aesthetics.
At the end of the day, we are talking about the fact that they had to address an audience that is very accustomed to consuming animation, specifically that which has to do with the world of anime.
This is why the projects Summer y New life they are a display of media as visual narrative. Most of his shots have a composition of elements in the background that suddenly approach the camera. They play with the change of pace. These types of resources are widely used in the world of anime. In this sense, the Japanese public has more internalized the typology and for the animation studio it is easier to deploy a whole series of animation techniques. We would say that it does not leave out any of them.
In this project Scholar has used traditional animation or CEL, 3D animation, and 2D animation
In this project Scholar has used all existing animation techniques, highlighting among them: traditional animation or CEL, 3D animation, and 2D animation in very specific cases to polish secondary animation elements.
plane rhythm
If we look at the different shots, we can see how there are elements in the foreground, as is the case in the image that follows, that of the boy who advances with his legs towards the camera. In this image we see how to achieve a very exaggerated perspective, they add background elements on a very small scale. In this way a super contrasted rhythm of perspective is achieved.
characters
We must highlight the work done in the study of characters. We clearly see that they not only analyze the shape of the face or the body, highlighting the Asian features, but at the same time, they have given importance to the style of the clothes that each of them wears, differentiating the season of the year and of course, the age.
smears
It should be noted that one of the resources used in this type of animation is the smear or form stretching. This resource denotes the high quality of a studio when dealing with an animation project. With it, a very interesting effect is achieved to provide dynamism to the animated work.
We see in some of these shots how the masses of color, together with the contour lines, are stretched to achieve a sensation of speed, both in the movement of the camera and in the rotation of the elements that pass in front of it.
And finally, highlight the amount of team that has worked on these two projects. Despite being two short pieces, to carry out this type of project a large number of professionals are required, each one specialized in their own animation technique.
- Design & Animation: Scholar
- Creative Director: Will Johnson
- Managing Director / EP: Jo Arghiris
- Executive Producer: Kirsten Noll
- Head of Production: Tyler Locke CG Supervisor: Tim Hayward
- SUMMER TEAM
- Art Director: Macauley Johnson
- Producer: Nicole Smarsh
- Design Lead: Hana Yean
- Designers: Ana Chang, Gretel Cummings, Cam Floyd, Kenny Kerut, Jina Kwon, Amy Wallace 2D Animators: Danni Fisher-Shin, Jeffery JIP Jeong, Henry Pak, Lauren Tom,
- Cel Animators: Lyuben Dimitrov, Matt Everton, Kaylee Lee, Ana Perez Lopez, Jahmad Rollins, Nicole Stafford, Laura Yilmaz
- 3D Generalist/Compositor: Cameron Scott
- NEW LIFE TEAM
- Art Directors: Macauley Johnson, Hana Yean
- Sr Producer: Bridgette Spalding
- Designers: Danni Fisher-Shin, Jina Kwon
- 2D Animators: Danni Fisher-Shin, Henry Pak, Erich Reimers
- Cel Animators: Sam Button, Danny Fisher-Shin, Lyuben Dimitrov, Scott Johnson, Henry Pak, Erich Reimers, Aly Tain, Lauren Tom
- 3D Generalists: Cameron Scott Storyboards: Macauley Johnson
