Kreatives unites 11 illustrators to animate the Paralympic Games 2024

On Wednesday 28 August, 2024, the Paralympic Games begin in Paris, and, for the first time, competition in every single sport will be broadcast in over 160 countries, reaching the entire world, including the 1.2 billion people who live with disabilities. To introduce the 22 disciplines to audiences, the International Paralympic Committee sponsors Allianz and Paris 2024 asked multidisciplinary studio Kreatives to produce engaging, educational animations demonstrating how each sport works.

Eleven illustrators from various countries were hired to work simultaneously, each bringing a unique visual approach to the project. "We quickly realised we couldn't just hire illustrators and make them conform to a single style. In a project with diversity and inclusion at its core, we knew we had to elevate unique styles while balancing a comprehensive, harmonious overall look of the series. It was an intuitive step to select artists from all over the globe with diverse cultural backgrounds and artistic expression," says Kreatives design director Tainá Ceccato.

In alphabetical order, the artists include Alva Skog, Anna Mößnang, Boomranng Studio, Brolga, Carolina Martínez (Chabaski), Fabien Gilbert, Janis Andzans, Jiaqi Wang, Josh Patterson, Lauren Hall and Manu Correa Soto. Each team member needed to be highly adaptable, working within the Paris 2024 guidelines and skilled in anatomy. The artists were asked to illustrate sports that would showcase their strengths as artists, and each began creating key frames from a rough script and storyboard.

"The character style of Mumbai-based design studio Boomranng is very anatomically correct, and they are very dynamic in their compositions. For that reason, we paired them up with explosive and fast-paced sports, like goalball and wheelchair basketball," explains Tainá. "Chabaski, based in Mexico City, prepares her files to perfection, as she herself has already worked on the animation side. Her characters are very well puppeted, so we paired her up with sports that required a lot of rigging, like para-cycling. Swedish illustrator Alva Skog is known for their inflated perspectives; that's why we paired them up with sports where hands and feet play a particularly important role or where we can play with perspectives to highlight the sport's equipment, like para-athletics and shooting para-sport."

As any art director will tell you, working with 11 creatives can be like herding cats, but Kreatives kept the project on track and made the most of some of the happy accidents that cropped up. During research, an illustration referencing a famous painting was discovered, sparking the idea of portraying Paralympic sports as French masterpieces. This led to the interesting thumbnail graphics that are used for each explainer video – perfect for the Paris 2024 brand, which references French history and the Art Deco movement.

In Jiaqi Wang's illustrations for the Blind Football animation, the artist blended the unique aspects of the sport with an icon of sporting fandom: the big foam finger. The audience must remain silent at matches because the athletes rely on hearing to play the sport. So, the foam finger is used to say 'shhh' – a humorous and on-point way of explaining the sport.

Throughout the project, the animations were fact-checked by Paralympic experts for accuracy, and one of the challenges was balancing detail with abstraction – to educate the viewer with clear information but also to inspire them through the heroism and dedication of the athletes.

"This project beautifully merges art and sports, celebrating diversity and creativity in a unique way," says Kreatives co-founder Fralnzi Sessler. "Paris, with its deep-rooted passion for culture and art, provided the perfect backdrop for this fusion. The explainers not only do their primary job of explaining the sport but also highlight the universal language of creativity and resilience.

"They focus on the shared values of determination and excellence, bridging the gap between sports and the arts and enriching the viewer's experience with a touch of Parisian cultural elegance," says Franzi Sessler, co-founder of Kreatives.