534 Artists Come Together in a Global Run Cycle Collaboration - Run, Boy, Run!

Looking back at the title, I could have worded it a little better as it could so easily be misconstrued. However, one look at the ecstatic comments under this video on YouTube and, well, maybe it’s not so inaccurate after all.  Sometimes, projects can just gain legs.  As this project works on the idea of hundreds of character run cycles, then that’s literally metaphorical and metaphorically literal (I think).

The project creator, Julie Roulet (also known as 3verange) announced this collab on Instagram and TikTok back in July, asking artists to contribute an animation of a character running.  Amazingly, the response was huge with 534 hearing the call and contributing a dazzling array of characters to the project.  The result is something quite magical.  Fine, there is no story (except the one you can make up in your imagination) but that was never the point.  This project (or silly idea as 3verange puts it!) brought so many people together – all ages, a host of different nationalities, levels of animation expertise – that’s where the beauty of this lies.  Plus there is a huge amount of artistic styles on display - and they all fit together perfectly.  Yes, it may be silly (I would call it daft, rather than silly) but then what’s the point of life if we can’t be daft/silly at least some of the time?

One commenter puts it rather well: "This is so beautiful. The variety of animation styles and qualities, the range of characters from humanoids to non-humanoids to both to horses is amazing. I may not have been a part of this project, but I think it’s a wonderful display of how people can come together even for something “small” like this".

Even taking the time spent by individual animators out of the equation, the amount of hours 3verange must have spent bringing it altogether makes my head spin a little. So, a big thank you to 3verange for bringing this remarkable collaboration to life and to The 534 as well, of course!