Valentine’s Day Google Doodle - Importance of Story in Animation

“A memory from your lonesome past keeps us so apart, why can’t I free your doubtful mind and melt your cold cold heart.” The lines have great contextual meaning - highlighting not only the sadness behind the failures after repeated attempts of winning a heart but also an understanding for the inability of the loved one to believe again.

I just saw the Valentine’s Day Google Doodle - regarded as “one of the the most ambitious doodle yet” by Anthony Ha in an interesting article http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/13/how-google-created-its-epic-ish-valentines-day-doodle/

It actually made me smile - and it wasn’t because it was jazzy with some great effects. The simple-sweet story and the most apt background score and lyrics made it really effective.

The lyrics end with a sad note, but the animation or the story doesn’t. Even after giving up on google guidance about the valentine’s day gifts, the cute little guy decides to stay with the girl, giving up but still not giving up. And it works - where nothing else does, the feeling of being together works.

This effective and thus successful animation highlights the importance of story in animation once again. Not that the storytelling or presentation should be ignored or given less importance in comparison, but foundation is extremely important. And this applies to all forms of audio visual expressions - be it animations or films or anything else.

Many times, the story has so many loopholes, that even the most efficient presentation can’t compensate for it. It doesn’t matter how many absolutely awesome situations you introduce your characters to, the loopholes sit in the viewer’s mind nagging from start to end.

This particular animation took about three weeks, according to the writer of the article shared above. Although, the story was already there in place. Definitely the quality of animation deserves it’s own share of praise too, after all why would Google approach Michael Lipman for less than fantastic quality work.

So, like the Google’s Doodle let the quality thrive in your Valentine’s Day celebration today. Hope you like the ambitious doodle as much as I did, and enjoyed your read.