What's the Buzz: Pollination
I wouldn't call myself an avid gardener by any stretch of the imagination, but my husband and I have a very nice vegetable garden. Between watching our tomatoes self-hybridize and learning about hive-collapse syndrome, I've become passionate about protecting pollinators. When The New Mexico Museum of Natural History & Science asked me to create an animation explaining how pollination works for an exhibit on pollinators, I was delighted!
As per my usual workflow, I opted to create a programmatic animation rather than a regular cartoon created with After Effects or some other animation/video platform. This one used Electron for the packaging and PixiJS for the sprite manipulation. I wanted the transition from the attract screen to the animation to be always seamless, so a looping video wouldn't work - at least, not with my comfort level in traditional animation. My inspiration was side-scrolling video games like Super Mario so that as the bee left her hive (ie- the attract screen) she would visit her flowers and then go back to the hive without any glitches in position.
This also allowed me to make some really simple and yet really cool effects with the grass and the sky. Check it out below:
The narration was done by my friend and colleague Randall Gann of Gann PR, and the art assets are from VectorStock.