Pocoyo!

I've been quite heavily inspired by the children's animation Pocoyo for this animation project, so thought it was about time I blog about it.
Pocoyo is aimed at children but is enjoyed by all ages because of it's good quality. It's design (a white background and simple shapes and colours) is appealing to the eye, and allows the narrative to flow through the animation.

A quote - taken from the 'Re-Imagining Animation - The Challenge Face Of The Moving Image - Paul Wells and Johnny Hardstaff' - summarises this sentiment:

'The simple, clean design also enables the animation to embrace a range of engaging choreographic motion and events.' 


The colourful, plasticine textures and slight cartoonish design allows Pocoyo to be animated in a slightly cartoony way (instead of constant 'realism'). The animation is playful, allowing jumps between motion that seem more expressive than jerky and exaggerations that add to the energy of the characters. (For example I love that Pocoyo goes flying at 5:24 in the below video)


By having such expressive characters (with individual character-specific movements) Pocoyo is able to transcend language barriers (as it is originally a Spanish creation) by not being reliant on speech from the characters to drive the narrative. Timing too is used to enhance the expressions of the characters, and overall has great comedic value. Pocoyo is funny in a way that will appeal to adults (there is subtlety and detail in the animation - such as Pocoyo changing gear in the above video -) as well as children and is overall a lovely bit of animation.

I want to emulate the simple yet expressive design and animation of the characters in my own animation. The slightly plasticity effect is quite similar to the texture of my original toy and seems quite playful yet aesthetically pleasing in a white environment. However more importantly, I want my animation to be expressive enough to convey a narrative without a narrator and good enough to justify being in a white space.

This article on Pocoyo seems to sum up the advantages of pocoyo's simple design and finely tuned animation brilliantly : http://mayersononanimation.blogspot.com/2011/11/genius-that-was-pocoyo.html