Project Overview

For this project we needed to make a 10-second video, using what we learned in 2D motion graphic rotation to complete this work. We have four soundscapes to choose from, through the music, we need to think of a specific type of emotion as our theme, and create a short story base on that emotion. The emotion I choose is obsession, through this animation I would like to deliver the idea of how technology impacts the world nowadays.

Soundscape and Brainstorm

Before I decided which soundscape I wanted to use for my project, I listened to the soundscapes several times and wrote down possible themes and emotions that I can use for each of them. Originally I really want to do the second option, which was a calm, peaceful ocean sound that gave me a vibe of holiday and a relaxing image. However, I did not have a strong feeling towards it after listened it for several times, I could not think of an emotion that I want to do for that. Therefore at the end I decided to choose the third option as my background music for this project. The reason for this decision was because although the first impression for this music is happiness and joyful, however after a while I started to feel that it gave me a strange and creepy atmosphere. I aware that the emotion of “happiness” I detected through this soundscape seems a bit fake. From this interpretation, I started to think of some theme such as clown or robots that sometimes gave audience a contrast feeling between creepy and joy.

The further developed my idea, I planned out another mind map to organize my thought toward this soundtrack. I was aiming for showing the contrast between the background music and my animation, which emphasises the creepy feeling in the music. Therefore I planned to go for the idea of the impacts of technology and social media. The first emotion that I think of when I planned to do things related to technology is “obsession”, therefore I decided to focus on this idea. The style and colour I would like to do something like Cyberpunk. According to the research, cyberpunk is referring to a story background that usually has the special features of the combination of Low life and High technology. I think this definition did fit my storyline.

Character Design

This was the initial sketch for my animation. Instead of designing a character, I just doodled down whatever I think of and try to further develop the idea. I think this will give a better range of designs. The characters I was planning to use first are a girl, a cat, a mouse, and a cockroach. The reason I choose these animals as my characters was because i think they are common and could be seen in our daily life, although they are not hundred percent pleasant but they are still really close to us. With the background music I chose, I hope the overall feeling to the audience is a bit witty and humorous. But at the same time, I also want to have some weird feelings, so what I drew in this sketch is adding some weird dancing parts in the animation to make this weird feeling more intense.

To further develop my idea, I created these character design sketches for me to understand all the sides of my characters. However at this point, I realized a problem I only have 10 seconds in total, and the story I planned to do was too long for this short amount of time. Therefore I decided to choose a cockroach as my main character. The reason for this decision was because I think the cockroach seems more special and unpredictable out of all the characters I have. The personal connection between me and the cockroach is that when I was in Taiwan and Singapore, both of the places have a lot of huge cockroach, it was a nightmare to a lot of people who afraid of them, but it somehow also became part of my memory towards those two places.

Color

The color I choose for the cockroach did not follow the color scheme of a real cockroach, the reason for this was that the real cockroach is not visually pleasant for a lot of people, therefore I want to make it into a more creative style and also can fit my whole theme batter. Therefore to decide on the colors, I looked through a lot of illustrations, and the following three were the ones that caught my attention. I took them as a reference and utilized similar color schemes that I identify from those three artworks.

For me, those colours gave a psychedelically feeling which could be connected with my idea of “obsession” with technology. Also, the colour I choose has a high contrast with each other, this could make my animation more vivid and could easily catch the audience’s attention.

Story Board

This was my first version storyboard. I was planning to deliver a story that can give a feeling of black comedy or a comical atmosphere. Therefore I conduct the technique of repetition to build up the tension at the beginning and make all of them bump into the wall which can give a climax to the story. However after I started to draw my animation, I realised that I only got 10 seconds and this story is too long. Therefore based on the similar idea, I redrew my storyboard and change the plot a bit to fit it in to the time limitation.

This new story will be focusing on the idea of being obsessed and addicted to devices and social media, in that case, the main character spends almost every second of his life on his phone and ignore everything that happens around him. The meaning of the phone cracked and changing to an evil face are to symbolise the idea that he suddenly realized the harm behind what he was doing after a significant accident (bump on the the wall) and sees the reality.

The idea of creating this story came from our daily lives. I think that technology has brought us a lot of changes nowadays, especially smartphones, which provide a lot of features that make our lives more convenient and make it easier for us to communicate with people and show another side of ourselves. I think it’s an important tool, especially since I’m studying art, and I find that through platforms like social media, I can better promote myself and let more people know about my work. On the other hand, there is a lot of different information on the internet that makes us hard to filter out the wrong information. That information could bring negative feelings and impacts, such as more peer pressure on young people, therefore I’m thinking about the importance of using it in moderation and learning how to think for myself and have my own opinion so I’m not misled by the wrong information.

For this new story, I also designed a new character in it to represent the good side and the bad side of the internet. I designed this cockroach with the elements that people usually think are “attractive” online, and sometimes those are the things that make people ignore the negative side of this technology nowadays. Therefore this character is a representation of things online.

Background

The background was combined with my animation through After Effects. I think it was a valuable experience because after this project I know I can do this for my future animation in which I don’t need to draw the background and the main scene at the same time.

For the background, at first, I did not plan to add any background, but after finishing the drawing, I realized that the scene looks too empty, therefore I decided to add some more elements. The aim of the background is to make my work richer instead of taking away the attention, therefore I didn’t make a lot of animation for the background instead I just make some boiling effect to emphasis its existent. And some of them I used as the foreground instead of background, to make my work more vivid.

Final Outcome

This was my final outcome for this 10 seconds animation. The emotion I choose was “obsession”, the obsession towards electric devices and social media. The idea I would like to convey through this story is although technology today is very convenient, getting addicted to anything is not good, same for getting addicted and always relying online is not a good thing too. By using bright and highly contrasting colors to express the feeling of addiction or dreaming, I hope to express the idea of “Obsession” more thoroughly in this way.

Strengths and Weakness

Strengths: I think what I did well in this project first was I changed the plot immediately after I realised I don’t have enough time to show my original story. And I was quite satisfied with the plot I changed it after. I think it successfully achieve the theme I want to show. Secondly I like the color I used for this animation. The first background color I used was light brown, but at the end I changed it into dark blue with some rough texture. I think this balanced the style of my animation and combined all the part smoothly. The third point is that I think my character movements and background music combine together smoothly, and they show the absurdity and weirdness that I want.

Weakness: I think there are still many parts of my work that need improvement, and I would like to make some changes to it if I have more time.
First I think there are many places where I can add more frames to make the animation smoother. The second point is that I am not yet proficient enough in using some animation techniques. For example, I put too many frames on the broken phone scene, which made the falling part look unnatural, therefore I should consider these parts more when I draw the animation in the future to make the picture look smoother. The last point is that I think my story is not very clear. Although I like the story I changed later, however, I think the final result is difficult for first-time viewers to understand what I am trying to convey. This was also one of the feedback my teacher and classmates gave me in class.

Moreover, the software I used for this project was Procreate. The reason why I choose to use this is that I am familiar with this application, and it will save the time of exploring the application. However, I still wanted to learn other software, like Photoshop, which is a software that is professional. I did tried at the beginning, however I found out that there were still a lot of function I don’t know therefore I decided to not to use this time, but if I have time in the future, I will still try and use it.

Overall Conclusion

Overall I really enjoyed this project, I think we had a lot of room to play with and create what we want to create. But at the same time, there was a theme and music that kept the whole thing from being too broad. For my work, I think there is still a lot of room for improvement, but I am satisfied with the final product. I think if I had more time, I would want to add more characters to make the whole thing richer. But with only 10 seconds I think one main character is enough, otherwise it would overwhelm the main character. I also enjoyed our sharing session on Friday, I had the opportunity to see the work of other students in the class, I think they are all very talented and creative, which gives me more motivation to continue creating more work.

This was the exercise that we’ve done in our 2D motion graphic rotation class, it was for us to learn the concept and how to animate the secondary action which is overlapping. For this jumping figure, I decided to add hair to create this secondary action, because I think it is a common element that will be used in any type of animation that I might do in the future.

Strengths: I think what I did well in this exercise is understanding the concept of how this type of action work and trying my best to draw the actions that are happening on the hair while a person jumps.

Weakness: I think the weakness part of this exercise is I think it does not look as smooth as it should be, which I think is because part of the action in this animation may be wrong. In my opinion, I might create a wrong squish and squash technique while I drew the hair. Because I didn’t refer back to every onion skin before I drew the next frame, therefore through some of the frame I can see that the hair length and mass is not consistant, which gave a effect that make the animation looked rough. In the future, I think I need to practice more basic skills of animation to improve my skill.

This was the fifth exercise that we did in class, I need to create a pathway for this ball to show an animation of a light ball’s movement. This task was also challenging. Same as for the heavy ball exercise, I had difficulty making the movement correct and smooth. It was harder than I expected, therefore I think I need more practice to dedicate to my animation skills.

Strengths: I think what I did well in this exercise was that at the end I did create a certain level of movement that can show how a light ball bounce, and through changing and adjusting, the result did achieve what I want, although I still think there can be a lot more improvement that can be make on this animation I made.

Weakness: There are a lot of things that I need to improve, but I the part where the ball landed on the ground, I changed several times but it still did not look natural and realistic. Moreover, I think the way how the ball bounce can be changed too, to make the ball bounce like the movement in real life.

This was the fourth exercise that I did for the After Effect. This exercise was challenging for me because I need to use the arc and curve function in the AE to create the track for the ball. I think it will be easier if I can use the hand-drawn animation, because I will have more control on how the ball might go, but overall this was still a valuable and important experience.

Strengths: I think what I did well was at the end of this exercise I was finally able to get some feeling of a heavy ball, and I am able to use the function in After Effect to create this effect.

Weakness: I think the weakness of this exercise is that I didn’t do a good job with the motion of the ball, I think it looked a little unnatural, probably because I wasn’t familiar with AE, which made it a little difficult for me to operate, and that’s one of the reasons why I couldn’t adjust it successfully.

This was the third exercise that we did in class with After Effect. I think this one is quite challenging. The reason was when the squish and squash are happening the mass of the object need to stay the same the whole time. I think it is relatively easier on this ball shape, but when I tried on a different object such as hair it seems much harder.

Strengths: I think what I did well on this task was I understood the process behind it and I knew how to control the shape of the ball when it was squishing and squashing.

Weakness: I think although I knew how the ball’s shape might change when it is squishing and squashing, I think it does not look natural and smooth enough at the end, I think it is because there must be some parts that I didn’t put it into the right shape and I might change the original mass of this ball.

This was the second exercise that I did use After Effect. This was a relatively simple one to do, but I think it is also important to understand. Because the technique of arcs can be seen in any type of animation, therefore I think it will be a piece of useful knowledge for me in the future.

Strengths: I think what I did well is knowing how to create a curve and create this arc through After Effect.

Weakness: I think the weakness part for this exercise is I spend less time on it and I think I may not have enough practice.

This was the exercise that we did to practice our basic After Effect and animation skills. As a part of the animation principle, ease in and out is really important to make the movement and motion in my animation look realistic.

Strengths: I think I did well in this exercise by understanding the task and making it out using the After Effect. I think After Effect was challenging, but I completed this task using it.

Weakness: The weakness of this task I think is making a bigger difference on each of the blocks, maybe I can do that when I learn more and get more familiar with After Effect.