Beautiful illustrations come to life in the animated images of multi-talented Portuguese designer Ana Rita Ramos. Originally trained as an interior designer, Ana Rita completed some very attractive projects in design and illustration over the years, and has even taught interior-design classes at the ESAD College of Art and Design in her hometown of Porto. But as any artistic multi-tasker can attest, it’s hard to stick to one discipline when your head is buzzing with ideas: “I studied interior design”, Ana Rita explains, “but along the way I found myself surrounded by other interests, such as fashion, photography and art direction. Working in these areas helped me understand that, even though I studied design, that doesn’t need to define my professional path”. And with that, this is how Ara Rita began exploring the potential of digital illustration as an expressive medium, a process that led to her Black Edition series of animated illustrations.
Describing them as “motion collages”, Ana Rita draws these monochrome compositions by assembling found images and drawn elements, all created as short GIF animations that bring dreamy scenes into life. A female figure is the protagonist in all of her illustrations, surrounded by textures and moving images depicting natural elements such as crushing waves on a beach or a late-summer field of grain. Ana Rita began working on collages as an exercise, but she didn’t want them to be static; that’s how she came up with the idea of adding animation to her collages, always inspired by nature and how it makes us feel. The collection of collages from the Black Edition is an ongoing project, with the intention to make more works for the series and even plans for a longer animation or video in the same vein in the future. We’ll definitely be keeping an eye on this inspired young creative, and looking forward to the next step in her new visual experiment.
