Run Forever – Universal Everything

If you think this blog post looks familiar, you would be right. Back in November I did a post on Transfiguration, also by Universal Everything, that also focused on the continuous motion of a figure, transforming seamlessly from one substance to another. Created for Hyundai to promote their hydrogen fuel technology, the figure iterates through the water cycle to present a series of familiar aesthetics and effects.

Starting with a crystalline structure, the figure drifts in from the left before starting it’s running motion. Refracting the light, the prisms cast rainbows as the character moves it’s limbs. Offering some fantastic reflective properties, as with Transfiguration, audio plays a large role here with glinting sound effects defining the material, and a soothing backing harmony.

Flowing into water, the figure becomes loose and fluid in form. Bringing some variety to the environment, large bubbles float past, occassionally colliding with the character to cause a wave of liquid behind.

Condensation is a form of moisture often overlooked. Represented initially through a series of copper pipes, the figure gathers droplets that gradually expand to consume the entire being. In contrast to Transfiguration, that had a uniform running cycle for the entire sequence, Run Forever offers some variation. Here the character leaps into the air, the bubbles torn away to reveal a new form beneath.

My interpreation of this form, is that wind is sweeping around the figure, displaying it’s shape in negative space. The wispy tendrils catch on the character like ribbons and ripple as they trail behind – I love their translucent properties.

Offering the greatest variety, especially in colour with a fairly muted palette of blues thus far, the figure becomes enveloped in foliage. Predominantly green, larger leaves pulse red, providing a fantastic burst of colour that helps the character retain it’s visibility as it enters a forest. To coincide with this, a gentle rustling is heard as the leaves brush against eachother.

As mentioned above, the motion varies a little more in this animation. Now formed of some kind of plush fabric, the figure takes advantage of this, bounding off the similarly textured flooring to perform an acrobatic flip.

Tieing up the sequence, the figure becomes crystalline once again, leaping up to glide off the right side of the screen and repeat the loop. With such glorious sound and visuals, this is the kind of animation you can view again and again, and always detect something new. Which material is your favourite?