I can across Alexander Perrin’s Short Trip through a retweeted twitter post, aimlessly clicking on links. I certainly wasn’t expecting what i got, which was a beautifully simple and elegant interactive web animation. I was working, eating and browsing twitter at the same time (doing neither of them very well) and heard Perrin’s work first. The audio by Dom Willmott is gentle and calming, it’s what first brought my attention back to the screen.
Illustration Meets Animation
What your presented with at first looks like just a simple idyllic graphite illustration of a few small building nestled into the trees. That illustrative quality is exactly what Perrin is looking to play with. But the presence of the sound gives you the sense that your not just looking at a static image. It takes a few moments before I see our character and start stabbing at keys on the keyboard for a hint of animation. Using the forward and backward keys our character starts to move. What results is a train journey through a fantastical mountain side, stoping along the way to pick up and drop off other passengers. The animation is simple and so is the interaction, but the layered illustrations when paired with the audio is captivating. I kept pushing the character forward wondering where it would end.
It’s a nice example of seemingly small choices and simple interactions that create a really engaging experiences.
Short Trip is the first instalment in a collection of interactive illustrations created for the web. It has been created as a study into capturing the essence of graphite on paper within a digital context, and to learn more about web-based graphics technologies.
– Alexander Perrin