VRT Creative Class 2020

OpenVRT is a creative-community- and digital-innovation- focused branch of Belgium’s public broadcast channel VRT. Their activities are mainly based online allowing for fast interaction with a colorful and rapidly evolving youth-culture –a counterweight to VRT’s core-industry, traditional television. With the Creative Class initiative OpenVRT invites newly graduated artists to apply for a paid summer job at VRT, during which they’ll get the chance to launch a digital project of choice. It’s a win-win situation really: the beginning artist gets to spice up their portfolio with a real job for a fairly big industry player. VRT on their end enjoy a fresh wind running through their HQ.

Our animation is one of several wildly diverse campaign images to accompany VRT’s call for entries. As its starting point it takes the well-known contradiction of the job-applicant who can’t get hired unless they have years of professional experience. The video’s central character, a cute blue crocodile, quickly overcomes this harsh reality check by diving into a candy-colored world of childlike carefree creativity.

The paper textures and quirky modernist character design received a clean digital finish for the final animation. Our central motivation in the (fairly rapid) creation process was a sense of joy and spontaneity. A reaction against a world of content-creation that’s often restricted by impersonal corporate interests and metrics. The Creative Class environment is situated in that rare zone where homebrew projects (whether too wild or, in the case of our little animated narrative here, too naive for the regular market) are warmly welcomed. This is, of course, the very zone from which true innovation usually emerges.

The OpenVRT community can be found and joined on https://www.openvrt.be/

All about the Creative Class: http://www.vrtcreativeclass.be/