Short animations drawn on a tablet are a fast, efficient and powerful tool to convey a message, a complex technical detail or diagram in visual and spatial two- or three-dimensional manner. Through the animation of coloured lines one can highlight how a system works. For example, the rainwater flowing movement and drainage behavior of water through an assembly of different living roof layers and down a drainpipe into a bio-retention area could be shown. The speed of the animation should allow for reading the annotations and the number of scenes should be minimal to keep the content focused. The videos should be short, about a minute long as the focus is on a concise design, message or technical function. Use darker colours as light ones will not read well if the animation is uploaded on a public video platform as they automatically reduce the file size such as YouTube. See INSTAGRAM: danielroehrdrawings for examples.
Daniel Roehr
