Ruth Handler Case Study

This was my animation for the Inventors in Motion project. The goal of this project was to develop an interesting, animated illustration to serve as a portrait of an inventor. I was tasked with coming up with the concept, however, I needed to establish a likeness of the inventor’s persona and/or creative presence in the GIF illustration. I researched the aesthetic of the chosen person’s world. This type of illustration has a double-pronged approach to storytelling; 1, to catch the reader's eye through traditional composition and 2, through animation. This was issued to convey a correlating mood to match their presence. The visual needs to be very well designed to support motion animation. This animation can range from subtle to immersive.

The inventor I decided to use was Ruth Handler, the inventor of Barbie. I wanted to convey the process of creating the iconic doll, so the illustration depicts my take on Ruth at her work table with her inspiration surrounding her. Through research, I learned a lot about the history of the Barbie doll, so I included as many easter eggs and references in the illustration. Because of the time period in which Barbie was invented, I felt that the vintage cartoon style was well-suited for this illustration.