a brief history of skateboarding from antonio vicentini on Vimeo.
What happens when two ad world dudes decide to skip out on their desk jobs and instead attune their specialized skill sets to something they’re actually passionate about? Two years ago, animator Antonio Vincentini penned a short script that narrated the story of his favorite sport, skateboarding. After nearly losing faith in the project due to a lack of available time and “friends to collaborate with,” however, he was contacted by friend David Galasse, an art director and graphic designer, who had the serendipitous news that “he was not slaving for an ad agency anymore.” Since mid-June of last year, the duo have been hard at work collaborating on what is today going to soak your next five minutes in humor and hellraising motion graphics: a brief history of skateboarding, a short animation dedicated to the story and anything-goes attitude of the extreme sport.
Videos by VICE
“We both knew that the short film would have to be a thing that we never could make if we were working for big stupid companies. That’s what guided us,” Vincentini tells The Creators Project. “We spent six months experimenting, learning and well… having a lot of fun.” The resulting cartoon looks like it—the tale of skateboarding, told from its humble underground beginnings, through its modern adoption into mainstream culture thanks to talents like Tony Hawk and Rodney Mullen. Be forewarned: at times, the film is as colorful as the surfers who spawned the sport, but when it comes to a five minute dose of sketch animation and graphic design, you’ll be hard-pressed to find a better story than a brief history of skateboarding.
Check it out above, and shake up your desktop background with some stills from the film:
