Helping the world find focus

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Polyester has released its second series of breathing animations. The first set completed in 2020 was a response to the world going through covid lockdowns. The second set finished with the animation industry facing an uphill battle with industry strikes, project delays, and the emergence of AI. In these times of stress and uncertainty, animators often feel a lack of control that causes us to be unaware that we are breathing more rapidly and further elevating our cortisol levels.

Our latest set focuses on four-square breathing or box breathing. The viewer inhales for four seconds, holds for four seconds, exhales for four seconds, and holds for four seconds before inhaling again. Modern research has shown that even slight adjustments to how we inhale and exhale can greatly benefit our physical and mental health.

The project initially started as a studio exploration for the team of artists at Polyester to see the limits and capabilities of AI in animation. It soon became evident that the current limits of AI are too restrictive, and being able to create work that doesn’t look AI-generated is not yet possible. The lack of control and finesse with AI resulted in the final set of animations being human-made.

The animations were created primarily for social media viewing for animators with a square format as the primary viewing layout and added side panels for 16x9 versioning. Jeff Moberg did custom music and sound design for the full set.

Credits:

Studio: Polyester Studio
Design / Concept art: Pablo Lozano, SJ Lee, Lily Chiao, Jinke Wang
Cel Artists: SJ Lee, Lily Chiao, Michael Rillo, Ruth Wang, Inés Fragueiro, Ridaa Khan

3D Artists: Jakub Szczesniak, Oliver Dead
Compositors: Jakub Szczesniak, Oliver Dead, Jacqueline Lai
Typography / Lettering: Sam Dubeau
Music and Sound Design: Jeff Moberg