Sketchbook: Loupe / Pluto TV Holiday Lights Channel Project

August 29, 2021

I’m grateful for the opportunity to explore approaches to creating a 60-minute animated loop for the 2021 Pluto TV Holiday Lights channel. This sketchbook details my explorations and approach to creating an engaging experience for Pluto TV viewers in partnership with Loupe. I’ve also included my recommendations at the end.

Channel description

“Get into the spirit of the season by filling your screen with the very best displays of Christmas lights and decorations accompanied by delightful holiday music, presented 24 hours a day.”

Requirements

  • 60 minutes in length

  • Incorporate holiday lights (light displays)

  • Agnostic of specific holiday traditions and celebrations (focus on winter versus Christmas)

  • Make the piece something people can watch throughout the entire holiday season

  • Deliver final assets by mid-September

Considerations

  • Sourcing copyright-free material that meets the criteria

  • Creating 20, three-minute animated loops in two to three weeks

  • Meeting the creative guidelines of the channel by focusing on “holiday lights”

  • Remaining faithful to my artistic style

Thoughts

As a surreal portrait artist, I gravitate to distorted and abstracted human figures as a central reference point in my work. While I do create compositions that don’t incorporate the human form, I am best and most fluid when I embrace and integrate people into my work.

This project diverges from my typical approach in that it explicitly focuses on environments and holiday scenes versus people. In fact, I see the addition of people into the animations as an inhibitor to mass audience appeal and engagement. Gender, race, and environment factor into what viewers are drawn to, or repelled by. For example, an image of a man walking on a snowy trail could be very appealing to one set of viewers while being a turnoff to others. For this reason, I focused my creative direction on creating holiday/winter scenes that are specific to the season but don’t incorporate people.

Another factor I considered is the artistic style I brought to the project. As I stated above, I work best when I am distorting and abstracting human figures or elements, and creating the unexpected. Depicting bucolic scenes as they are perceived in real life by the human eye isn’t where I excel, or what I’m drawn to. Arguably, there is likely an audience for distorted and abstracted holiday scenes that are a unique take on the traditional visuals we normally see during the holidays. It could be refreshing and intriguing. Would this approach appeal to a mass audience of millions? I’m not so sure.

Approach

After experimenting with various images of people in holiday and winter scenes, it became clear to me that even if I were to address the issues I raised above, using people in the animations will be difficult for me on a number of fronts - a key one being that my renderings generally depict people in moody, and thoughtful experiences, not happy, holiday moments of joy. Another factor is the sheer amount of time it will take to create 20 unique compositions that meet the requirements.

During our call on Friday, August 27th, we discussed approaches like creating layered paper effects and/or bringing to life a traditional holiday picture book effect. We also talked about a train theme that riffs on the book The Polar Express. I attempted these too, but quickly realized that sourcing material for this approach would be very difficult given the lack of funds to secure image licensing. I also ran into a creative wall trying to develop compositions that map to these creative approaches while also being warm, holiday-like, and recognizable as holiday scenes. In the end, my gut told me that this project is best suited for a more traditional, or less transformational creative approach.

To that end, I did experiment with animating winter scenes that (mostly) meet the requirements of the project, while adding a sense of motion and life beyond simply viewing a still image in Ken Burns mode with holiday music playing behind the visuals. See examples below:

Recommendation

First, I want to affirm that I’m a committed partner to Loupe, and very much want to collaborate on projects that benefit both Loupe, its partners, and myself as an artist. I appreciate this opportunity to create a 60-minute animated loop for Pluto TV. That said, I don’t believe that I am the right artist for this project. The above examples aren’t really expressions of my creative voice or vision. Rather, they are simply animated filters on royalty-free images that pretty much anyone can make using off-the-shelf software.

Please consider me for future projects as they come on your radar.

Thank you!

Chris