Animation Ch 10: MTV Days and Midnight Creations

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Where corporate rejections fuel personal projects and bathroom plants suffer for art's sake

The "Too Simple" Bug

My MTV baptism came with a classic lesson in corporate creative work: what you think is elegant, others might find lacking. Fresh off helping my college friend Arushi rescue a freelancer's disaster on the "Just Arrived" segment banner (a freelancer whose name shall remain anonymous, though it rhymes with "pulp" and belongs to a certain NID graduate), we were tasked with creating a BUG animation—that little graphic that appears at the bottom of the screen during shows.

The purple shape with yellow accents in Image 1 was my solution. Clean, minimal, with just enough movement to catch the eye without distraction. The client verdict? "TOO SIMPLE." No MTV-ness.

Arushi ended up creating something with more "MTVness" that actually made it to air. My first corporate rejection taught me something valuable: In commercial animation, "simple" is often code for "not enough stuff happening." A lesson that would repeat throughout my career.

3D Experiments and Late-Night Identities

The red and mint-green 3D image shows another corporate journey. Hunny gave us the opportunity to experiment with 3D animation techniques for the 9XM ident. After extensive research and experimentation, we ended up with this rather straightforward collection of instruments and speakers against a vibrant red backdrop—a classic case of the creative process being more complex than the final product.

This project taught me that sometimes the journey through 3D experimentation leads to surprisingly simple destinations. The hours spent learning techniques that didn't make the final cut weren't wasted—they became part of my growing animation toolkit.

Smoke Weed For A Greater Deed

Late nights often birth the strangest personal projects. The text animations blurring between "Smoke Weed" and "For a Greater Deed" emerged during one such sleepless session. What started as playing with visual transitions between contrasting messages evolved into concepts for an entire series.

These personal projects that grow from random late-night experiments often have more creative energy than assignments with strict briefs. The freedom to follow bizarre tangents without client feedback lets ideas evolve organically—sometimes into entire project concepts that sit waiting for "someday."

The Suffering Bathroom Plant

Perhaps the most honestly autobiographical animation in this collection tells the tragic tale of my bathroom plant. The simple loop showing a pink flower wilting before perking back up captures the daily trauma experienced by my well-intentioned bathroom greenery.

This mini-narrative about bathroom functions and innocent botanical bystanders began as a quick sketch that made me laugh, then became something worth finishing. It perfectly demonstrates how animation allows us to transform mundane observations into visual jokes that would be impossible to tell in any other medium.

Insomnia and Observation

The common thread connecting these disparate projects wasn't conceptual but circumstantial—they all emerged during sleepless nights when the only option was to channel restlessness into creation. Whether it was an elephant jumping or cats nestled between anatomical features, these animations were direct products of an overactive mind refusing to shut down.

What began as a frustrating inability to sleep transformed into a productive nighttime ritual. These small projects—too personal or absurd for client work—became the perfect outlet for observations that might otherwise go unexpressed. From corporate animation rejected for simplicity to bathroom plants suffering for artistic expression, these pieces document not just creative development but a specific period of life where insomnia and animation became inseparable companions.

The most significant realization from this period was that animation isn't just a professional skill but a way of processing life—transforming everything from corporate frustrations to bathroom humor into moving images that capture not just motion, but moments.

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