Why Should I Listen to Trees?

I have recently discovered drama podcasts, or what the Germans call a "Hörspiel" 🎧 I was never a huge audio book listener, because I often drift off when the narrator is reading the book. There is something about drama podcasts, that keeps me engaged and this one is on a whole new level.

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Forest 404

Drama podcasts are different to your usual talk or interview style podcasts. They are storydriven, like audio books, but with voice acting and sound design. I’ve come across a podcast by BBC Radio 4, called Forest 404. It mixes storytelling with soundscapes and talks.

_{Firest 404 by BBC Radio 4}

Mental Health benefits from nature

The story of the episode portion of the podcast is about a future, where technology is everything and nature doesn’t exist anymore but there are remnants of nature in the form of recordings. These recordings are the soundscape portions of the podcasts, which are delivered as separate episodes you can listen to.

The whole series is based on a nature sound study, which is introduced through talk episodes. The study is based on previous research, where researchers tried to find out if being around nature improves physical and mental health (they discovered it does!). Based off of that, they wanted to find out if listening to nature sounds would have a similar effect, or if you have to be physically present. I love neuroscience and learning about mental health 😍

Vector Illustration of tree, half nature half circuit board, pastel green, coral and vanilla colours, coloured outlines, dotted peach background — _{Illustrated by Sonja Geracsek}

Part Tree Part Technology

I found this concept so captivating that it inspired an illustration I created in Episode 10 of the Shut Up & Draw live stream series. You can watch me create the illustration live on my YouTube Channel, by following this link.

My tree illustration is half nature and half circuit board. Kind of like what my mind feels like sometimes being surrounded by technology.

We spend so much of our time with devices that we are split down the middle, part organic, part technology. As the nature study has shown, it is good for us to reconnect with nature. I definitely feel the recharging effects, whenever I take a walk in the park. This in turn inspires me to be more creative.

How do you feel about the effects of nature on your creativity? Do you like to spend time outside? Let me know in the comments!

– Sonja

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Great explained tips that every motion designer should know. Thank you :)

Great teaching style; very clear and thorough. Some very high level best practice advice in here too. Looking forward to the other two lessons in this series and the other classes by Sonja.

Great tips which can shorten the path for beginners to become faster animators.

Learned loads of helpful tips and tricks to make my workflow much more efficient - thank you!

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Great contents and value in your channel ! ;) I have to recover the old streams on the motion side !

Love your stuff! I would love to see some short-form video content from you in the vein of tutorials or showcasing your workflow.

I love what you do.

Really enjoying these live streams!

Really cool to be learning new things watching you Sonja. Keep it up!

Thanks for sharing! It's so great to see other people's workflows, and that tip about the multiple passes to get the hand-drawn effect is really helpful!

Thanks for the Stream. Good work, as always. It is a lot of work just for the setup of the animation.

That was a nice process to watch! Thanks for sharing.

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