https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17470210902883263?scroll=top&needAccess=true
https://www.berghahnjournals.com/view/journals/projections/2/1/proj020102.xml
Storytelling
Moving images tell story but also still images can tell story. While moving images are telling story in a long way, still images do this by short-path. Images broaden our imagination, arouse emotions and capture universal cultural truths. We can tell story oral, written,performed and visual.
Narrative art
Narrative art is art that tells a story through imagery. Viewer understands the story by reading the image instead of reading a text word by word. It can be a moment in an ongoing story or a sequence of events. Painters and sculptors main aim was telling the entire story in a single glance. Narrative art is as old as humanity. When we examine art history we see that people told stories of heroes, gods and rulers with pictures. Storytelling has an important part in history of visual art. The concept of history painting contain most narrative scenes in traditional Western art since the Renaissance. Painters generally accented the narrative at their paintings by using some technical tactics as using of light and shadow or choice of a medium. However, the most typical narrative paintings made after the Renaissance. For instance Caravaggio’s paintings contain religious contents.He tells stories from bible as a stage.
Narrative art is not only limited to history paintings. From about the seventeenth century we see genre paintings which also tells story from daily life.
So why do we tell stories? When we look at to the past we find political reasons. They generally told stories in order to maintain the power of the ruling class, to educate the society but also to inform the next generations. In the past, aristocrats prefer employed painters instead of writers to tell their stories for them. One of the reason is that there are too many illiterates in the past. But also power of an image to tell stories can not be ignored. Narrative art conveyed the messages differentiation between right and wrong, showed the ideal type of behaviour and evoking a sense of self- regulation in the viewer.
Next week I will write about photography which also tells us a story with single image.Then I will show how moving images tells us a story and I will compare two ways of visually story telling.
Moving images vs static images
Recently there is a apparent transition from static images to moving images. I gathered informations about moving images in order to make clear the reasons of this transition and to show the power of moving images. I also want to handle this transition in terms of graphic designers. How they affected from this transition?, Have their places in the world of design diminished? Should they keep up with this change?..
Photos and other static formats have had to make room for better performing media such as videos, animated gifs and cinemagraphs. In my opinion this transition was supposed to happen since static images remained incapable in design world. The place and importance of moving images will increase in the design world and in the future graphic designers will need to know motion graphics as well. Now some graphic designers thinks that they don’t need to know motion graphics or anything associate with moving images. I don’t agree with their opinion. Technology is developing and we have to keep up with this development.
Firstly, a traditional graphic designer should understand difference between the two disciplines. They should start to think about pace and timing; should something show for two or three second?, how long should it be?. A regular piece of graphic design doesn’t move or change. Audiences decides how much time should they spent to look at that work. However, motion graphics are all about lengths of time. There is a fact that in print advertising we can make things in very quickly. In motion graphic design it doesn’t work in the same way. You should build up the whole story in order to give a single message. Effective, creative animation does take a serious level of mastering. But a talented graphic designer can add a different visual sensibility to an animation project. Basic design principles can be translated to animation. You can even create your own style as Saul Bass did with his cut-paper animation style in the 1950’s and 1960’s. He is a very good example of a graphic designer who also succeed in animation. He started off making poster design for film adverts, then in the mid-1950s began designing title sequences as well.
Saul Bass apply his graphic design knowledge on his animation projects and he was not only succeed but also influenced the visual style of a whole era. Clearly ,it is possible to do great work by crossing the graphic designer / animator divide. In addition while you’re exploring animation world you could also improve your graphic design skills. It’s helps to broaden your design horizons.
We are obsessed with watching video
According to some researches, nowadays people spent 40 minutes a day for watching videos just on mobile phones. We are obsessed with watching video. But why? In order to answer this question we should deeply examine psychological reasons behind it.
In ancient times we had to hunt for food in order to survive. We are able to see potential food from a long distance thanks to our well designed eyes. However, potential foods such as animals were also aware of the hunters. They were hiding or stood still when they realized hunters. But thanks to our powerful visual system we can easily detect them when they were start to moving. Before we see anything else ,our eyes prone to detect the movement.
Another method of testing how sensitive we are to movement is going a place that you go to regularly. When you look around you’ll notice that there are some objects that you’ve never seen before and you will be surprised to not realised them before. The reason of that is because they have never moved.
We love movement
We love movement, we want to see movement. It address to our instinct to survive. So we shouldn’t be surprised that we like watching videos. That means video is no longer optional for businesses. Videos are not only appeal to people’s desire for movement but also they are more catchy compare to static images. In addition, there are studies that when we watch moving pictures we can understand things more easily. So using video is more sensible if you want people to remember your business or your products. Furthermore, there are some studies that when people watch movies their brains are “in sync”. Their brain activities are almost the same. This shows that people tend to understands same things while watching videos which decreases the potential for misinterpretation that could come from text alone. It is obvious that moving pictures have powerful effects on our brains.
Movies are so good at creating emotion
In order to understand power of moving images I think we can also look the effects of movies on us. A movie can evoke much stronger emotions compare a static image.
In order to understand movies, we should examine how filmmakers guide us through a dramatic plot. In one study, while people watched clips of feature films ,psychologist Tim Smith recorded eye movement behaviour. Interestingly, while they were watching clips they start to look same spots on the screen at the same time. Smith calls this phenomenon attentional synchrony. Indeed, according to Walter Murch, the Academy Award winning film editor and author of In the Blink of an Eye: A Perspective on Film Editing, considering psycologhy of viewer is very important think for good filmmakers. “What is the audience going to be thinking at any particular moment? Where are they going to be looking? What do you want them to think about? And, of course, what do you want them to feel?”
In our generation it is very hard to find someone who does not watch movies or TV dramas. We can spent entire weekend for watching a TV series . We can learn from studying our addiction to movies as they have been formulated specifically to stimulate our brains.
Psychology behind moving images
Over the last few years moving images have become an important part of marketers demands.Photos and other static formats have had to make room for better performing media such as videos, animated gifs and cinemagraphs. Success of these formats drives from Technological advances. But we can also address this success from different perspectives in which our minds perceive static and dynamic images.
There is a complex algorithm that how our eyes move over an image.Those, who are aware of this algorithm and expert about it, such as the great painters, photographers and film directors can manage viewer’s attention and control the direction of eye over an image.Unfortunately, generic stock photos or commercial images generally fail about it. Those images are quickly lose our attention.
On the other hand, moving images have an remarkable element that we called movement. Even the movement is very small, our eye detects the every little motion quickly. This behavior is coming from our ancestors’ need for self-preservation. Our brains are very sensitive of everything happening around us in order to keep us safe. This is called “passive attention,” one of the six human attention modes first classified by the american psychologist William James in 1980. We are detecting the movements around us in order to evaluate whether it poses a threat to us. Our ancestors turned this passive awareness to “active” awareness when hunting for food. At that time sharp senses were very essential for hunter-gatherers.
Nowadays hunger and safety is not an issue, we still have same instinct but now we use them in a different context. In modern-day ‘hunting’ for clicks and ‘likes’, it’s less about our own instincts, and more about exploiting those of our audience. Modern hunters (digital marketers) are venturous in order to get the attention of audiences. They search for hundreds of ways and test so many strategies in order to get user’s interests . The most influential are those, which speak to an audience’s “Id”(The primitive and instinctive component of personality) – Freud’s term for subconsciousness. And that’s where cinemagraphs come in: as images with a motion element, they capture the user’s attention and direct the eye of the user, often resulting in more clicks and longer session times.
All in all, moving images attract more attention because of physiological reasons. In addition to this, there are some researches that moving faces are easier to recognize. Some experiments showed that images of famous faces were better recognised when they were displayed moving, compared with a single static image. One of the reason marketers prefer moving images can be stem from this psycological reason. For instance, watching a Tv commercial can be more catchy than a static poster design for same commercial. This also applies to instagram posts. Animated gif posts are more attractive for audiences compare to static posts. I am going to make deeper research about the psychological reasons behind it in order to make clear the sucess of the moving images.
Moving images vs static images
Over the last few years I’ve noticed that moving images on social media have increased compared to still images. Because of moving images trend , demands of customers changed from still images to moving images. Even for a printed poster design , they also wants moving version of the same poster design. I agree with the transition from static to non-static images. According to static content, dynamic images are more attractive and can convey significantly more information. In addition to this , animation is fun and people like to have fun even if they doing something about their job or get educated. When people wants to learn something new they generally prefer watching something instead of reading long articles. At least when I am searching something on the internet, my priority is Ted-ed videos. If I can’t find what I want from Ted-ed videos then I do my searches on different channels.
As a result of some searches about this topic I found some information that I have never thought before.Animation is less known as a marketing tool, because of this reason users are more likely to pay attention to animated videos than traditional ads. Even on google login page, at least I am more likely to click on animated giffs compared to static illustrations. While I was searching about this topic on the internet I found an A/B test about Facebook Ads to find out what works best: ads with still or animated images?. The result of experiment showed that still images worked better than animated images. Before I read this article, my thought was animated videos always more attractive than still images , but after I read it I start to think that maybe sometimes still images can work better than animated videos.
Transition of static designs into non-static designs on the 21st century.
I worked at an animation studio for 1,5 years as a Graphic and Motion Designer. I took part both in the animation and art part of the projects.
Working in the animation studio allowed me to enter the animation world and I noticed that nowadays clients are asked for motion and non-static solutions for their projects. I want to search for the reasons behind the transition of static designs into non-static designs on the 21st century.
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