Brain Power

Motion Design

Professor of neuroscience and psychology at NYU Dr. Wendy Suzuki explains a 1960s research study on the ability of the brain to change over time. The story was brought to life through minimally designed rats who find themselves suddenly placed in a playground of sorts and experience a change of mood and mind. The simple visuals and detailed animations provide a fun and engaging way to understand the important findings of this study. This short animation is one of several in an online course about brain health.

Client Life Reimagined (AARP)

Agency The Big Know

Creative Direction Joseph Kuefler

Writing Tom Godfrey

Design, Illustration AJ Weydt

Motion Design Paul Conigliaro

Production Rikshaw Films

Year 2016

The rat illustrations designed by AJ were a lot of fun to play with. The constraints of the geometric design provided focus on a few key areas of figure to express emotion.

It’s no secret I’m a nerd…

I knew we had a lot of rats to animate, and I wanted a simple system that reflected the geometric nature of the designs. The tails of the running rats used my own Wavy Line preset from the Conigs Mixtape bundle and needed to mirror that movement in the body. Turns out if you line up a bunch of circles of diminshing size and animate them with sine and cosine waves, it gets pretty darn close!