Environmental Animation Studio

Spring 2023 Environmental Animation Course

Professors: Joshua Mosley and Simon Richter

Course Description

Animation can be disarming and effective when used for climate communication. The animation toolkit includes the implementation of metaphor within stories, alluring hand-drawn visualizations, illustrative views, dynamic transformations of visual forms, and cinematic sequences that reveal the cause and effect of human action. As the instructors of this studio have discovered in their own work, it is crucial that animators collaborate with climate scientists and that research be a component throughout the whole process, from script-writing and storyboarding to the animatic and the final product. This collaboration guarantees accuracy, relevance, and effective audience-targeting. What scientists value is the ability of animation to convey complex information in engaging and comprehensible ways. In this course, we will form small production teams that will partner with climate researchers at Penn and other centers and institutions to produce animated videos that meet their communication needs. Students in the course will use hand-drawn and collage animation to produce persuasive videos that communicate emerging risks and obstacles to climate action as well as solutions and new perspectives.