Who is the practitioner (what is their name?) and when were they practicing?
Rachel Ryle (rachelryle on Instagram) is an illustrator, animator, and storyteller. Her blog states that she is a self taught artist. Her first video post on Instagram was on the . In an interview with Shawn Forno for Idea Rocket Animation (2014), Ryle credits her success to Instagram featuring her illustrated stop-animations on their blog.
In Lydia Belanger’s interview with Ryle for Entrepreneur (2017), Ryle said that she used to be a ‘marketing director for a toy company’ and had to ‘appl[y] all of those skills to [her]self as the product’ (Belanger 2017, question 1 para. 3).
What is the title of the photo or video you have chosen to analyse (can you provide a link?)
The video is called Happy Reading. It is a stop-animated visual poem that celebrates literary works and underscores the joy of reading printed books.
With the photo or video you are examining when was it produced (date)?
This video was published on the 9th of August, 2018.
How was the photo or video authored?
Ryle uses an iPhone to capture each drawn frame, that is edited into the video format. In an interview with Lizzie Marton for Mamamia (2016), Ryle states that she had no ‘formal education in illustration or animation, [so she] decided to take an artistic approach at utilising Instagram’s video feature when they launched in 2013’ (Marton 2016, para. 6). While each video is short–most of which are anywhere between 15 to 30 seconds–Ryle says that ‘each single animation takes her a total of 15 to 20 hours to create (from the concept to the final editing stage.)’ (Marton 2016, para. 8).
As Ryle doesn’t have an formal education in her art, it’s interesting to note that Berry (2018, p. 12) says that ‘an amateur includes being someone who pursues a passion for personal, rather than professional, pleasure; someone who lacks either the knowledge or means to produce professional–quality work; or someone who labours without expecting to be paid’. Ryle sits on the line of what’s considered amateur and professional. She didn’t learn how to become an animator. In fact, in her interview with Belanger, Ryle says she ‘quit [her] day job, call[ed her]self an animator’ (Belanger 2017, question 1 para. 2). However, Ryle also does paid work if the opportunity presents itself; while her animations are mostly her passion projects, she also has been paid to make animations for movie trailers (Belanger 2017).
How was the photo or video published?
The video was published online onto Instagram. This allows for Ryle to expand and engage with her audience–in the caption of the post, she thanks ‘everyone [that] voted for this animation to be made in [her] Story’. This shows that Ryle is utilising the tools that Instagram provides (in this case, the voting feature on Instagram Stories) to create content that her followers want to see. Using the #HarryPotter tag in the caption allows her to gain more attention and extra views from fans of the franchise and that could be discovering her for the first time.
How was the photo or video distributed?
This video is distributed through Instagram. As mentioned above, she also uses hashtags which also allows her to expand her audience and get more views.
Moving away from the practice analysis, in Belanger’s interview, Ryle says that
‘One of Instagram’s latest features of being able to like comments — give people a heart back and let them know that I read their comment — has been really helpful. It’s just another way of me saying “thank you” for their time that they’ve taken to comment about my pieces. And outside of my work, I definitely scroll through the people I follow and even people I don’t follow and like their stuff and comment, just because it’s the affirmation that we all need to inspire us to keep creating.’ (Belanger 2017, question 6 para. 2)
I found this particularly interesting because Ryle is talking about one of the affordances of Instagram, which allows her to connect with and appreciate her fans. Throughout the interview, Ryle also mentions being involved with the community of artists on Instagram.
Henry Jenkins, as cited in Berry (2018, p. 17), says ‘a participatory culture is one which not only lowers the barriers to participation but also creates strong social incentives to produce and share when one produces with others’. However, Berry (2018, p. 17) says that ‘in some ways, today we are less likely to reproduce these overly optimistic observations, in a time when the reality of participation looks a lot more like surveillance than freedom.’ Written in 2018, Berry takes a more pessimistic stance on online communities and claims that this pessimism a prevalent attitude nowadays, and yet, Belanger’s interview with Ryle took place in 2017.
References
Belanger, L 2017, ‘This Former Marketing Director Quit Her Job After 7 Weeks of Posting Amazing Animations on Instagram’, Entrepreneur – Start, run and grow your business, 30 August, viewed 13 September 2018, <https://www.entrepreneur.com/slideshow/299374>
Berry, TB 2018, ‘Situating Videoblogging’, Videoblogging Before YouTube, no. 27, Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam, pp. 9-22.
Forno, S 2014, ‘Interview with Instagram Stop-Motion Superstar Rachel Ryle’, Animation Services: Corporate Animation, Animation Video Production, blog post, 3 February, viewed 13 September 2018, <https://idearocketanimation.com/11787-instagram-stop-motion-dont-stop-motion-rachel-ryle/>
Marton, L 2016, ‘We’re in love with Rachel Ryle’s quirky Instagram videos.’, Mamamia – What women are talking about, 31 January, viewed 13 September 2018, <https://www.mamamia.com.au/rachel-ryle-interview/>
Ryle, R n.d., ‘Meet the Artist’, rachelryle.com, blog page, viewed 13 September 2018, <http://www.rachelryle.com/artist/>