The Revolution Will Be Animated…

Back in May, with the Middle East in revolt after decades of living under oppressive dictatorships, an audience of students gathered at the Royal Society for a debate organised by the International Debate Education Association (IDEA), the Open Society Foundation (OSF), IQ2, the British Council and the International Herald Tribune. The motion: ‘The Jasmine Revolution will wither in North Africa: it won’t meet the expectations of youth’.

That debate forms the basis of the second of our IQ2 Shorts animations, released last week on YouTube by @intelligencesquared. We’ve taken an edit of the full debate, focusing on the dialectic between Egyptian youth activist Nora Ayman and New York Times journalist Roger Cohen. Ayman suggests that the changes the revolutionary youth hope for will struggle to take hold while political, religious and class divides continue to fragment society. Cohen on the other hand, argues that though the road may be problematic, frustrating and bloody, those changes are inevitable in an age of global connectedness. We really enjoyed the challenge of shifting to a new cultural context and maintaining sensitivity to that, while continuing to work in a crisp, economical cartoon style. This one was illustrated by Chris, storyboarded by Chris and Dan, animated by Lionel, with portraits of the protagonists lovingly executed once again by Victor.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 29th, 2011 at 9:50 pm. It is filed under Animation, Chris, Graphic Facilitation, News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.