Arina Shabanova

Arina Shabanova is an illustrator and animator

from Moscow. Her clients include Google,
MTV, WeTransfer, Bloomberg Businessweek,

Esquire Russia, Paramount Comedy, and Yandex.

arinashabanova.com

I completed my bachelor’s degree in illustration at the British Higher School of Art and Design in Moscow in 2015. My studies included several workshops touching on the basic principles of animation, which served as the jumping-off place for my entry into this totally new world. From there I continued studying on my own.

My graduation project was a cartoon, Gde-to (Somewhere), which won in the category of the Year’s Most Personal Project, as it was based on my life. I had moved from the southern city of Gelendzhik to Moscow, and my father and I would drive back to Gelendzhik to visit every year. The move to Moscow changed my way of thinking about home. Shifting between two cities, I tried to figure out where I fit in. I attempted to convey these feelings in the cartoon. A year later I sent Somewhere to a number of festivals and, unexpectedly, people were interested, both here and abroad.

As a student I’d begun doing illustrations for L’Officiel Russia but after graduation an online Russian magazine about entrepreneurs, Hopes And Fears, approached me. I was very lucky: despite the fact that I was just starting out, I was allowed to experiment.

I didn’t try to create a style of my own; I simply made lot of work and, very gradually, my characters began to show shared features. I love geometry, balance, structure, and logic in illustration. As a rule my characters stand firmly on their feet and fit comfortably in the frame. Viktor Melamed, who supervised my work at the Brit, once told me “Arina, you draw like a peasant!” I think he meant my illustrations are very dashing and confident—I took it as a compliment.

Our attention these days is scattered and chaotic because of the overload of information we receive from the internet. The competition for readers’ and users’ attention continues to increase, making our choice of design instruments and devices that focus attention even more important.

First among these, we have animation. People look at what moves—this is one of the central principles of human psychology. It’s why explanatory videos, moving buttons on apps, gif illustrations, and animated headlines are so popular on the web. Because I’d picked up animation as a student I quickly caught the wave and began getting interesting assignments. Second, we have simplicity. My commissions these days tend to be for increasingly minimalist illustrations. These allow me to create visual effects that are clear and uncluttered. The eye wearies of excess but returns with pleasure to accessible, legible content. Third, there is the tactic of inducing surprise through a visual image. This is a very tricky and difficult business. For me in this regard my eyes were opened by a video called The Junction, which American animator Kyle Mowat, created for Red Bull Music Academy. Every second of it surprises the viewer.

There are many talented artists making their

own auteur animations but I’m most inspired

by the old school. The work of Sally Cruikshank

has special meaning for me. She makes both her own personal films and sequences for Sesame Street. Everything she does is spontaneous, unpredictable, dynamic!

I often recall something she said in an interview: “Animation is sort of this open door to fantasy-land. You’re only limited by what you can draw.”

This cheers me up and helps me look at what I’m doing with fresh eyes.

I’m not that great as animator per se, 

but I do think I have a sense of motion that makes 

for an offbeat view of the world.

Sally Cruikshank

Sally Cruikshank

Face Like a Frog, 1987

Sally Cruikshank

From Your Head 

(Sesame Street) 1996

Because I’m primarily an illustrator my main tool is Photoshop. It’s where my process begins, drawing scenes frame by frame. Such painstaking business makes me feel I’m still working in the older tradition of creating animation with celluloid.

Many artist-animators now use Photoshop. In fact Australian animator and director Alex Grigg has made an excellent tutorial on the subject: Photoshop Animation Techniques. I’m also looking forward to studying TvPaint and Mocha, professional software for animators that supplements what Photoshop lacks and accelerates the animation process.

I feel absolutely no sense of being tied to a place or a context. I think all such concepts are being diluted to the point of disappearing. We no longer stew in our own juice. Everything is moving in the direction of globalization. I find inspiration in the most varied sources, so I think the idea of local identity is on its way out and that what’s left is just my personal outlook.

When I was three or four years old I watched Disney’s Snow White over and over for days. As a schoolgirl it was Nickelodeon at lunchtime. Obviously it all influenced me, and many

of my images come, if unconsciously, from impressions experienced in childhood.

Animation offers a medium of storytelling
and visual entertainment which can bring pleasure and information to people of all ages everywhere
in the world. Walt Disney

Walt Disney

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, 1937

Walt Disney

On the making of Snow White

CBC Archives, 1963

Curiously, Soviet animation left no traces in my memory. It’s possible that Western films won with me because of their wilder stories and bolder color combinations, their dynamism. Only now am I beginning to be more interested and appreciate the great Soviet creators. I recently had the good fortune to meet Mikhail Aldashin, a top producer at Soyuzmultfilm (a legendary Soviet animation film studio); I accidentally sat in his seat at the closing ceremonies for the Grand Festival of Cartoons. So I’m now part of the world of Russian and Soviet animators.

There are many talented artists making their own auteur animations but I’m most inspired by the old school. The work of Sally Cruikshank has special meaning for me. She makes both her own personal films and sequences for Sesame Street. Everything she does is spontaneous, unpredictable, dynamic! I often recall something she said in an interview: “Animation is sort of this open door to fantasy-land. You’re only limited by what you can draw.” This cheers me up and helps me look at what I’m doing with fresh eyes.

Animating with Readymag

What I like about this project is that animation is used very selectively. The eye doesn’t become fatigued by excessive movement. The animation doesn’t distract from the essence of the thing, but delicately works as accompaniment and emphasis.

Among my contemporaries I especially like the group of young indie-animators that call themselves Late Night Work Club. These people work days on jobs that bring in money and create their personal films at night. Their first production, Ghost Stories, came out when I was just getting interested in animation and was a serious prompt to begin doing something of my own.

I very much like the work of Nikolas Menard. His visual devices, done with the most minimal of means, are always surprising. This is a reflection of his past as a graphic designer. A quite different approach is taken by Manabu Himeda, who finds beauty in the irrational and absurd. His characters and backgrounds are stretched and contorted, always in the process of becoming something else. This is breathtaking. Then there is the wonderful Moth studio, which specializes in commercial animations. But their work is so clever that it has been used for many auteur films. For example, The Last Job on Earth, made for The Guardian. This is a video that’s truly tactile and accessible and created with loving attention to detail.

I recently worked on a short video with the creative agency Doubleday & Cartwright for the WeTransfer service, which allows students to exchange large files for free. Our main idea was that, while there are various ways to exchange files, they are all outdated by comparison to WeTransfer. My comparison was with fax. It was crucial to tell the story with humor and to lay it out in 10 seconds.

The principal difference between commercial animation and auteur work lies in the concrete tasks and specific creative guidelines for commercial work. But client briefs are increasingly open-ended, and the differences are becoming blurred. It was my good luck to work under one of these arrangements on projects for Paramount Comedy and MTV International. The most important and the only requirement was that the logo appear at the end. For me it’s very important to feel free to express myself. It frees me to experiment and results in the most interesting work.

Nicolas Menard

Wednesday with Goddard, 2016

Manabu Himeda

Haircut day, 2014

Late Night Work Club

Strangers, 2017

As I become acquainted with all the many facets of the animation profession I’ve come to realize that its visual element is not the central aspect. What we remember are things that touch us deeply and that stimulate new feelings and thoughts. For the time being I look at my own work as “movement for the sake of movement.” I’m interested in what makes characters come to life. Soon, I hope, I’ll mature enough to pursue something even bigger.