Johnny Kelly goes cross-platform for ELISAVA "I Am Not An Artist" campaign
Johnny Kelly - director at London-based production company Nexus - has produced a series of entertaining and clever animations for renowned Barcelona design school, ELISAVA.
Commissioned by Spanish agency, Soon in Tokyo, Johnny collaborated with his friend and fellow director, Matthew Cooper, to co-direct and create a total of 56 animated GIFs, for ELISAVA's annual campaign "I Am Not An Artist". The campaign has been devised to highlight the harder side of creativity - that successful designers are just as familiar with perspiration as they are with inspiration!
Using a combination of live action and animation, Johnny and Matthew have brilliantly illustrated the hard work involved in design, communicating the determination and tenacity that is needed alongside artistry with customary wit and style.
Soon In Tokyo, who have successfully coordinated INAA from the start, have used the GIFs as the basis for an evolving interactive website, a print advertising campaign and a series of posters and flipbooks. The print campaign is running in the international design press including Creative Review, Eye Magazine and Print Magazine, among many others.
Starting with Johnny and Matthew's animations, the website invites creatives and designers all over the world to create their own GIFs to be added to the ever-expanding collection. This can be done by uploading a file or using the GIF generator on the website with your webcam.
The website has already had over 30,000 hits in one day alone.
Johnny said, "Having difficulties coming up with an idea can be likened to banging your head against the wall, or smashing your computer screen with a stapler, or trying to dial a phone with a sharpened pointy stick. It was an enjoyable process for both Matt and myself and a good opportunity to think about animation in one of its most simplistic formats. With animated gif files you can only use a small number of frames, otherwise the file will be too large to load in web browsers - so it was a great challenge to pare things back to just ten, five or even three frames of animation for each sequence."
You can check out Johnny & Matthew's GIFs. Posters are available to buy here.
