It’s a little small for my fingers but I managed to get it on my pinky finger, barely. I began making it bounce around, making the obligatory “boing boing boing” noises. It bounced from the coffee table, to the couch, off of his head, and back to the coffee table. I’m sure you can only imagine Solomon immediately took interest in the little kangaroo finger puppet and enjoys whenever we put it on our finger and bring it to life.

So what is it about animating a simple object? Even as children we understand a stationary object immediately becomes interesting with just a little motion. A spoonful of peas and carrots tastes infinitely better from a spoon that has traveled through the air having completed several loops, a simple piece of plastic with wheels can transform into the fastest car on the planet, and ordinary pieces of cloth sown together with some stuffing becomes a child’s best friend by giving it a little personality.

We believe some things don’t change from childhood to adulthood. Our fascination with animation is one of those things. People always love seeing objects come to life, dance around a screen, and entertain us. In fact, Pixar’s Toy Story is evidence you and I still have a love for seeing still and lifeless objects come to life with animation.

Your clients are no different.

Finding the core of an idea and communicating it clearly is the power of a sticky idea.  Simple=Core + Compact.  The animations we created for Pete achieve this by getting at the core of the idea – that the contractor did not face unexpected delays due to a lack of detail in the engineer’s plans – and communicating them compactly.

The second key quality is Unexpectedness.  In Pete’s case, a large part of the delay related to construction of the rear expansion joint.  No one in the mediation room expected to see 3D animation of the rear expansion joint actually being built, step by step to communicate that the contractor grossly underestimated the time necessary to build the joint.  The animation compacted complicated engineering drawings into a simple and unexpected visual, making for a very sticky idea.

Being seen is the default. It’s not flashy or noteworthy. You won’t win a presentation but you won’t come in dead last either. Basically it means you showed up. But being recognized catapults you ahead of those just hoping to be seen and puts you in place to be the front runner.

Are you being seen or recognized? We believe recognition is possible long before you walk into a room with business card in hand. Imagine if your presentations were so revered that the selection committee looked forward to what you were going to do next. The challenge is that being recognized requires consistent intentionality.

Now is the perfect time to outshine your competition. The question is, what are you doing to earn recognition?

“I did not want to ‘improve’ nor ‘replace’ the photos I DID colourize as some of you may think. I just wanted to show you a new perspective of the black & white old world, it used to be in colour, too. I thought famous photos would touch most hearts,” says Dullaway.

Via Visual News

Alright, alright, so maybe this post isn’t about improving your English, but it is about communication. This past Sunday one of the pastors at my church used this video to illustrate the importance of communication. Our words can be extremely powerful and yet they are also so fragile. They possess the power to encourage in one moment but can also also cause an incredible amount of pain in the next. I’m sure each of us can all recall a time when we spoke a word of encouragement that simply made someone’s day. Unfortunately we can also recall instances when we’ve spoken too quickly and wished life had an undo key.

Have you ever noticed that more senses you can involve in communication the less likely your message is will go misunderstood? Imagine if the sinking ship had the capability to video conference with the German Coastguard. The coastguard would have heard the message and, more importantly, seen the circumstances of the people and the ship that elicited their urgent call. Have you ever sent a text message that the recipient misread because they couldn’t hear your tone of voice? Or maybe you’ve sent an email that would have been better received in a face-to-face conversation? In each of these cases we end up spending too much of our time having additional clarification messages followed by a round of apologies. All of this simply goes to show the introduction of visuals to auditory and written communication can greatly improve comprehension and save time while eliminating ways your message can be misinterpreted.