Tate Modern
Expressionists
Sentio Space was commissioned by the Tate to create an animated trailer for its blockbuster 2024 exhibition on the Expressionists. Our aim was to capture the energy and ingenuity of this pioneering group.
We wanted the trailer to build excitement for this significant cultural moment – the first time that this group of artists has been shown together in London since the 1960s – so we animated moments from some of the key paintings on display, bringing to life these classic works for a contemporary audience.
A key focus of the exhibition is on the Blue Rider group (an informal group of artists who came together in Munich in 1911) and the importance of creative connection and collaboration in the development of the Expressionist movement. So we thought it only right that we brought together three different animators to work on this piece, each bringing their own sense of style, yet also working harmoniously together.
Our animators focused on 5 paintings by 5 different artists, using their creative freedom to imagine moments of movement within these masterpieces of still paint.
Michelle Brand opens the piece with an animation of the iconic Tiger by Franz Marc (1912). A sea of abstract shapes is transformed into the figurative as the tiger unfurls its head. Next we see Kandinsky’s Murnau with Church I (1910), subtly animated again by Michelle, who shifts the colours of the painting as though light moves across them. The lush outdoor setting of Auguste Macke’s Promenade (1913) is brought to life through Angelica Lena’s elegant interpretation, whilst Holly Warburton’s take on The Dancer (1909) by Marianne Werefkin adds to the sultry atmosphere of the original, creating a moment of suspense before the dancer turns her head. Finally the cheerful colours and soft brushwork in Girl with Toddler (1913) by Maria Franck-Marc are accentuated by Angelica Lena’s delicate animation in which we see the mother bend forward and kiss her child’s head.
Colour was hugely important to the Expressionists; use of bold and at times unnatural colours allowed them to emphasise their emotional interior worlds, rather than depicting the exterior world in a realistic manner. We wanted to maintain this in the trailer, using bold and vibrant colour to conjure up atmosphere.
The Expressionist artists were also inspired by other creative mediums beyond painting, including live performance and sound. We realised sound also had an important part to play in our work, choosing Claire de Lune by Debussy as the main piece of music to accompany the visuals – a piece that allows the mind to wander into the different worlds of the animation. This is accompanied by sound effects that help to intensify a sense of atmosphere: the rustle of leaves, bird song, and the gurgle of a baby.
The invitation to work with the Tate for this 5* exhibition felt like a natural continuation; just as the Expressionists were inspired by the Impressionists before them, we previously created animations for Tate Britain’s French Impressionists in London, in 2018, including work by Angelica Lena who has returned to work on this project, and a series of hugely successful animated loops for Tate Modern’s 2019 EY Exhibition on Pierre Bonnard, collaborating with Holly Warburton who has also returned to work on this film.
We hope our animations bring a new dimension to these classic works that members of the Blue Rider group would have been fascinated to see. As a collection of bold, risk-taking artists, we think they would have delighted in the idea that artists today can use digital technology to bring movement to their paintings. What an amazing demonstration of creative collaboration spanning over 100 years.
“We were only a group of friends who shared a common passion for painting as a form of self-expression. Each of us was interested in the work of the other … in the health and happiness of the others.”
Gabriele Münter, 1958
Client: Tate Modern
Audiovisuals: Sentio Space
Produced by Shareen Alder
Directed by Oliver Trace
Animator Michelle Brand
Animator Holly Warburton
Animator Angelica Lena
Sound Design by Benjy Barkes
The Royal Academy
Brasil! Brasil! is an exhibition that brings together 130 works created by 10 artists living and working in Brazil, from around 1910 to the late 1970s. Sentio Space developed a multi image animated campaign, designed to build momentum across multiple touch points.
Tata Communications
Formula 1, Golf, Aeronautics. What do these have in common? They all rely a technological communications network to run and develop. Be it the pit speaking with the driver in F1. The golf being aired on the television. Or planes navigating the airways. In each situation these industries are relying on Tata Communications, who own more than 70% of the world's internet cables.
The Grocers' Company
An animation to sum up The Grocers' Company 800 year history. This film is the first time that one of the great 12 livery companies has used animation to engage its audience. The style we created involved blending photography with washes and block illustration, so that we could go back to a time when no photographs were taken, while also showing clear examples of the characters involved with the company today.
Tate Modern
An animated trailer for the Tate's blockbuster 2024 exhibition on the Expressionists, which featured the work of Franz Marc and Kandinsky, close collaborators working with part of a group known as The Blue Rider. We created an animated trailer for the show, built around five key paintings from the show, which we animated, giving them a new life that resonates with audiences online, where moving image helps to create a more engaging experience.
Schroders
One of the most important themes today is fairness, with all organisations now expected to take an active approach to educating their employees. We created a short animation that helps to explain uncertainty bias. We created animated characters in outline that contrasted against live action footage. The two mediums work together, one helping to sit the film in a relevant context, as the scenes are from inside Schroders, the other to set the tone.
The National Gallery
The National Gallery wanted to draw upon its historical place in art history whilst also looking to the future, with a series of animations that put the gallery’s historic art collection in a contemporary context, in a style inspired by Picasso's sketches. Accessibility was critical here - we were tasked with creating a film that reached out wide and far, inviting the viewer to imagine how they too might participate in the National Gallery’s Bicentenary celebrations.
Audemus Spirits
Audemus Spirits is an award winning distillery located in Cognac, France. We were asked to create a film for the brand that would express the sophistication, depth of flavour, and playfulness, that is contained in every drop of its Pink Pepper Gin. We created a one minute film that blended three different techniques, stop motion, live action, and 2D frame by frame animation, inspired by the cross sections sets emblematic of Wes Anderson's films.
Hult Business School
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Future NHS
In 2023 an NHS midwife set up the Foetal
Monitoring Leads Network as a way for
midwives to share ideas and learnings and
to provide support to one another in a
country-wide network, with the aim of
creating safer outcomes for mothers and
babies. We were asked to create an
animation that would explain the potential
of the network, creating a piece that dealt
with difficult subject matter in a thoughtful
and sensitive way.
Cambridge Judge Business School
The Cambridge Judge Business School at the University of Cambridge commissioned Sentio Space to convey the philosophy behind its one year MBA. The challenge was to create an illustrative world that speaks to an international audience. We decided to base the film on interviews held with students on the course as well as the course professor, allowing us to communicate the direct personal experiences of students on the course.
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Working in partnership with BBCStoryWorks, a commercial arm of the BBC, and Viatris, a global pharmaceutical company, we created a 90 second animation that helps explains the complex processes that combine to, ultimately, get medicine into our hands. We were provided with a fantastic colour palette as a starting point for the style, which we set with angular, clean lines and shapes, as well as more handcrafted, flowing forms.
Tate Modern
When Tate Modern hosted its Pierre Bonnard exhibition in 2019, Sentio Space was asked to create a series of animated posts inspired by Bonnard's paintings. We created three short clips, one of which broke the Tate's record on Instagram for likes and engagement. The campaign was evidence that animation in particular and moving image in general can be highly effective at engaging audience's online.
Imperial College London
We created an explainer video for Plexus - an app that helps alumni from Imperial College London stay ahead of trends in Science and Technology. We used cutting edge animation techniques, blending a 3D path with 2D characters, to create a dynamic visual experience that addresses technical and mechanical subject matter in a modern manner, whilst maintaining a human quality.