I will never forget the moment my grandparents turned on their first color TV. They were awestruck by the magic in the box. Born before radio, telephone and passenger airplanes, in the early 1960s my family chipped in to buy them an expensive new color TV console, which filled their small living room. (My parents would not get a color set themselves for another five years.) I loved watching cartoons on this phenomenal appliance, as animated drawings came to life in living color.
The art and craft of animation has precipitously evolved in so many high-tech ways since then—from Disney and Looney Tunes to Pixar, from hand-drawn art to computer renderings, from movies to JigSpace for Apple Vision Pro—however, I am still in awe of screen-based “motion.” And like many of you who have Steampunk or nostalgia leanings for the past, I’ve become less interested in complex computer-generated gyrations and prefer simple and limited motion, like the kind that Klaas Verplancke and Arevik d’Or have collaborated on producing.
The March 25 cover of The New Yorker makes the point: The animated version below expends minimal effort to introduce a playful dimension (notice the windows). Verplancke’s surrealistic jottings are funny even without added movement, but this approach nonetheless enhances the overall illustration.
For nearly a decade, Verplancke and d’Or have collaborated on assignments for The New Yorker, The New York Times, MOMA New York, Poster House, Centre Pompidou Paris, Marc O’Polo, and others. And now, they have formally teamed up as partners in creating Studio Pomid’Or, an “organic graphic animation studio” that expands a long-standing creative relationship between the two artists. Together they “create a rich vision for the development of artistic visual products with particular attention to every detail,” says Verplancke.
He continues: “We keep moving on in our … search for inventive visual solutions through our fascination for character design, illustration, movement, sound, textures and bold thinking,” accomplished through collaborations with experienced animators, musicians and sound designers around the globe. The new studio will also be working with neophyte talents. “By engaging them we give ground to young professionals to evolve in a context where they can sharpen their artistic skills and work ethic.” And if that’s not an obvious invitation to join the party, I don’t know what is.