animating science

I think it's safe to say that I've had some major dips in productivity over the last few months. All things considered, I think this is probably fairly normal. One thing that I've found helpful is focusing some of my efforts into creative outlets. Arts and crafts have been relaxing in an otherwise quite stressful time.

To feel like I was being vaguely productive, I decided to give myself a work-related art project; some of my pandemic enforced spare time would be used to learn about animation for science communication. This happened to coincide with a brilliant series of YouTube videos for aniMAYtion - a month long challenge run by PhD student Elizabeth Mills (check out her YouTube here). Elizabeth creates brilliant videos about weird and wonderful marine life, often focusing on cool critters found in rockpools. I was excited to stumble across her work whilst on Twitter, as I'd just given stop motion a go for Hedgehog Awareness Week.

The term animation sounds quite grand and fancy, but the aniMAYtion challenge took things back to basics. Animation in its most simple form is a series of images that are stitched together to show movement. When you think about it, a flip book is an animation, and this was the first challenge of the month. You might have made one as a child (I know I did), but it wasn't until this challenge commenced that I realised how, well, challenging it was. It was difficult to convey a valid message in such a short time, and it was labour intensive; each image had to be traced, shifted slightly and drawn again, being careful not to accidentally morph the image with lazy tracing! I used a light pad to help keep the tracing accurate, but you could probably use a window or tablet to give the same effect. I got a little distracted drawing UFOs when creating my animation (I was trying to introduce non-native alien species!) but I think I got some sort of scientific message across in the end. You can see my final flipbook below. Check out AndyMation on Youtube for awesome flipbook inspiration + these topical ones by Howard Lee.

Next up was digital animation. I thought I would enjoy this one more than I did but the screen time it required made it more intense than anticipated. I hand drew my images, imported them into Inkscape and then traced and coloured them on the laptop. I'm very envious of anyone that has a drawing tablet or iPad, as Procreate looks like a very cool programme for this kind of application. I downloaded Synfig for my laptop, but I found it quite hard to use and I've yet to finish this animation! Here's a progress shot of what will be a swimming Suriname toad...

Last up was stop-motion, my favourite! This is such a simple and fun form of animation and you can use all sorts of media/objects to create your film. I decided to mix paint with needle felting to introduce my study species, the alpine newt Ichthyosaura alpestris. I used an app called Stop Motion Studio Pro that automatically stitches together images and enables you to add text, music, sound effects and line drawings straight onto the screen. It's very easy to use and I'd definitely recommend it.

I found some awesome examples of stop-motion to communicate ecology/conservation science during this process, and they might provide some inspiration if you're interested in giving this a go yourself -

1) Nutrient pollution can result in algal blooms that impact sea grass, fish & cause oxygen depleted dead zones. This great animation (by Abby Lunstrum) highlights research investigating the use of oyster farms in reducing nitrogen & improving water quality:

2) A tale of two urchins, each with very different ecological traits. This lovely stop motion (from the Witman Lab) highlights the role of urchins in the environment and how change may have wider impacts:

3) A painted stop-motion (by Claudia Gray) highlights the impact of oil palm plantations and the importance of riparian reserves for conserving biodiversity (& buying sustainable palm oil):

4) And possibly my favourite - the amazing life cycle of the European Eel (by

ZSL):

Happy animating - I'd love to see your creations if you decide to give it a go! :)