Animation Process

Starting this part of the project was a little bit daunting. We each took 7 frames from our final storyboard, which equated to about 15 seconds each. I took the first 7. I was a complete novice with After Effects, however I overcame my nervousness and started. At first glance it felt completely alien, however I soon got into the swing of things,  youtube videos really helped, as well as our lecturers. Even though it is a slow process, its is really satisfying to see our vision in the storyboard come to life.

For the voiceover We decided that the voice of a child would help bring empathy to the animation, it leaves an impression for myself when listening to a child use adult language. It also brings a bit of humour to the end of the animation when the voiceover shouts “Whats your Legacy?” Makes myself smile and think about what is it that I want to leave behind for future generations. However the recording of it wasn’t as simple as I thought,  took more takes than I would have liked, but was an enjoyable experience overall.  I don’t think that it is perfect still, but it gets the message that was wanted by the group across. It was rather difficult to place the voiceover with the animation, I had to stretch some of the animation to fit with everything that we wanted to say. Which probably left room for more animation within. When making an another animation I think that recording the voiceover before the production would be more productive.

Working as a group came with a few hiccups as placing all our individual animations in together, as we worked on separate parts it was hard to have consistency throughout, I think that this shows in the final outcome. But all worked hard to get it done and I really like our animation, it has an appealability to it, even though it has a somewhat amateur feel it to, its not going to win any animation prizes. I suppose its like learning to draw, my skills can only get better with time.

I could have worked on this a lot further than our given submission date and if I had to tweak it I would have liked to get a more poignant message across, I feel that the narrative isn’t as strong as I originally envisioned. As we decided to aim this at graphic designers I think that it could have been more polished, the animation of the text needed to have more of a dominance in the animation, with more of a visual design. However the whole process of producing this animation has given me an insight into what needs to be thought about and how time consuming the actual animating part is. Research and planning is key and to have a really well thought out storyboard makes the process less difficult to tackle. However I enjoyed working as a group, it was good to bounce ideas off other people and get the support and feed back needed.

After working with After Effects I have noticed more and more programmes on the television that probably use After Effects or something similar to create parts of their production. Its something that I have never thought about before, and it has opened my eyes to the possibilities of what can be created with After Effects. Im looking forward to learning more and improving my skills with this programme, it could be a really useful tool for future projects.

This is our final animation

 

I animated the opening credits – On reflection it could have been a lot better. It was the first thing that I animated and by the end of the process I could have done a lot more with it, made it clearer and more visually pleasing, also the possibility of playing with different sound effects such as the sound of trees being cut down.

Overall I really enjoyed this project, it was a challenge to learn something from scratch. The six weeks that we had flew by, was a really enjoyable experience. Especially enjoyed working with Joe and Maris, think that we worked well as a team.

Deforestation Ephemera

After almost finishing our animation, we were able to concentrate on the ephemera to go along side it. As we had all the images that we wanted to use it was a case of how and what we wanted to use to market the animation, and bring awareness to our deforestation campaign. We decided upon a gif, leaflet and poster.

If this was a real life project, I’d be thinking about the printing process and materials that we would use to produce all of these pieces of ephemera. It would be a bit hypercritical if we didn’t use recycled and environmental friendly products.

Booklet / Leaflet

We wanted to come up with something different when it came to the leaflet design. Our initial thoughts were to have a pull tab leaflet which had the planet on and when the tab is pulled turns into a dried up planet. With our tag line “Whats your legacy” on there. From doing some research into making the pull tab, I came across some other designs that could be used as well, and may even be more interactive for the viewer to experience. This is the youtube video that I took my inspiration from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u73qAckkyOQ . I downloaded the template and started to recreate the waterfall card design. I came out really well, simple but think that it will be really effective.

For the design on the pages of the booklet I used the animation illustrations and picked out some of the parts of the voiceover to turn into text. The use of black card instead of the green gives the leaflet a great finish.

Gif design

Our colleague within our group designed the gif to go along side the animation for the digital ephemera.  It has turned out as the initial leaflet design was going to be, changing from the planet earth to a dried one.

This what the Gif would look like in context on Facebook.

Poster

BlipPAR

I received this leaflet in the post from Green Peace – the campaign has plenty of info regarding plastics in our oceans. The thing that I found interesting was  BlipPAR a visual discovery app which brings the physical world to life through smartphones, something that I thought we could use for our own campaign ephemera.

I set up an account and linked the images used in our poster and booklet to show the gif, animation and a link to the WWF webpage. Im quite impressed with how simple it was to set up, use and how visually pleasing it is to see something pop up and come alive on the screen.

The above are screen shots of what happens when you scan the leaflet with the Blippar app.

I enjoyed making the ephemera, especially the waterfall design leaflet. Im looking forward to displaying all in our exhibition, and getting viewers reactions and input on our animation.

Getting ready for animation

Before we started animating, we had to create and decided on what particular elements that needed to be illustrated, and produced in order to have everything ready to animate.

Text – Objectiv – Dalton Maag

We decided to use this font because of its clean and modern feel to it.

Tagline Logo – Whats your legacy

Maris in our group designed this Logo to go at the end of our animation, as a final thought to make you think about what kind of designer you want to be.

We did all the prep of the illustrations before we began to animate. It was a learning curve, as I had not done any drawing with illustrator before. The images below are the animations that I created on illustrator

Created in Photoshop

These are the initial images that we created

However they did have the right visual style and we liked Joes characters so decided to keep to a simple geometrical style. From this the animation flowed much more fluidly and worked better on the whole.

These were our final images for the animation.

It was came together, and was time to bring our storyboard to life.

Inconvenient Truth – Al Gore

 

As part of our research for our design as activism project we watched Al Gores Inconvenient truth. Even though it was was boardcast in 2006 it still has a some very valid concerns about environmental issues today. The film documents Al Gores aim to alerting to the public to the ‘planetary emergency’ due to Global warming, of which deforestation is one of the contributing factors to this issue. Throughout the documentary Al Gore reiterates how wonderful and amazing our planet is, yet we are slowly destroying its delicate eco system, he backs this up by showing scientific results and predictions, shown on graphs and very well made slide show. He makes arguments against all the scepticism surrounding global warming, making it very difficult to disbelieve the predictions in the documentary. A very powerful case is put across that something can and should be done to protect our planet, and its worth hearing!

“Future generations may well have occasion to ask themselves, what were our parents thinking? Why didn’t they wake up when they had the chance?” – Al Gore 

Since its release it has sparked a global interest in everyone taking responsibly for their actions in the world, there are tips that he provides on how we can make a difference to the future of our planet and points you to take a look at www.climatecrisis.net.

Overall a really insightful documentary. Has made things all the more realistic for myself, encouraging to know that there are some many people that have an ambition to make a change in the status quo of our human existence, and to stop exploiting our natural resourced for money and greed. Im looking forward to producing my own piece of work that conveys a similar message to stop and think.

Deforestation – Visualising our ideas

Looking at other animations was a way of helping us to come up with some ideas on pace and movement within our own animation. As well as admiring some really skilled animators out there.

This animation below, is a mixture of cute and horrifying, which is a Australian public service campaign by Metro trains in Melbourne to promote rail safety. The animation itself is quite simplistic. But just shows you that simple things can really have a impact. There is a case study that states that there is a correlation between an improvement in accident figures and the campaign. Making this animation highly effective to the viewer.

As well as the video distribution the campaign appeared on local radio, newspapers, and outdoor advertising, it also has an gaming app released a year later, it invites the players to avoid dangerous activities. The creators figured out the right way to reach a younger audience. The thing that I learnt from reading about this campaign is that the distribution is equally important as the creative side. The marketing team chose their distribution really well. The results speak for themselves with millions of views world wide.

This animation I really like, there is a likability to the character, which make me as a viewer feel something = gives a human element to it. This in marketing terms gives the animation power, because if a viewer can relate it creates emotions, these emotions have the power to make a difference.

Because of our limited knowledge of Aftereffects going down the simplistic route was a good option for us, plus we would be able to get our points across in a clear and precise way. We decided that by having the planet earth as the central focus it would be an effective way visualising the message we had to convey.

These are the initial sketches that I did before coming up with our narrative story.

I also made a planet earth in Illustrator as a starting point to work from. It took me a bit of time as I had not made a 3d object before in illustrator. But a few youtube tutorials later I cracked it.

First attempt

Final Image

However having done this, once I placed the 3d image into Aftereffects it was flattened to a 2d image again and I was unable to make it spin. Some more youtube videos later along with the help from one of my tutors Matt, we discovered that I was able to make a 3d global actually in Aftereffects. It was very satisfying to see my global spinning.

However before we came to the animation we needed to come up with our storyboard, to help us visualise our narrative. The target audience that we decided to aim towards was graphic designers, as they stand between a business and an audience, they have the power to shift the status quo towards more sustainable solutions within design. Design is about effecting a change, by aiding the development of green markets.

These are the sketches produced from brainstorming as a group. 

This slideshow below, shows the storyboard that I developed after our brainstorming session.

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However, as a group we came up with a slightly different narrative, we are going to develop this one further ready for the animation process. 

Now to get started!!!

Advertising strategies for Animation

 

For us to get a out final message in our animation effectively, we looked at advertising strategies to help with conveying this. From research on the internet and books, one of the main ways that came out was to an effective advertisement is having one that evokes emotion. Utilising emotion, advertising is often persuasive. Dr. Robert Cialdini describes six universal principles of persuasion that have been scientifically proven to persuade the advertising audience – reciprocity, scarcity, authority, consistency, liking and consensus. To make the viewer feel something, which in turn gives them the ability to relate. This is something that was important for our animation – to have a powerful message.

Key things that came out during my research which we need to question when coming up with our animation strategy:

1. What is the goal of the project – final message – what do we want the viewer to do?
2. Have data based facts – Gives a higher impact / more effective
3. Human element – the viewer is able to make a correlation from our story to real life
4. The visuals must have a reason for being there
5. Questions to the view rather than statements have a higher impact.

I found this research really helpful, it has enabled us to have a clearer starting point. What is it that we want people to do at the end of our story. For myself I would like the audience to go away and think about their own input into the worlds environment, and work in harmony with it.

Story Boarding Workshop

Over the coming weeks we will be producing a short animation. To help us with the process of coming up with concept and shot ideas I took part in a Storyboarding workshop. This was to give us a better understanding of the construction of video shorts to inform our own work better

In groups we were given the advert below to deconstruct.

From watching this we started off by sketch out each different shot change, considering movement, pace, contents, focus and perspective, aswell as looking at the camera angles.

Above is the storyboard that we sketched up from watching the Playstation advert. Each slide includes a brief description of what is happening, the shots that were used (in orange) and the music / voice over (in green).

By deconstructing the advert in this way we were able get a better insight into how we need to go about producing our own short animation, and storyboarding is an integral part of the process for visualising our ideas. Its much like a comic book, so that readers get a sense of what is happening making it logical and coherent.

From here we will need to look at relevant details to proceed, such as;

• Thinking about background
• If there is going to be a character or main visual
• Does text appear on the screen
• How the visuals react to the voice over or music
• Overall message that we want to get across
• camera angles and movement

These points will enable us to execute our own vision for our Environmental animation.

Afterlife – India Clausen

This weeks afterlife was a former student of our lecturer from Bournemouth University. India having only graduated a couple of years ago, gave us a lovely insight to her studio life at Uni and then her first job.

When talking about her life at university she compared the studio to the working in the industry, and how we are gaining great experience ready for the creative world. From working in the studio we are working on;

• Our team building skills, being able to bounce ideas off our peers
• Getting used to taking other peoples opinions whether they be positive and negative. Don’t take them personally.
• getting work done within a noisy environment.

“Industry is highly competitive, use the studio, support each other.” “To make the most of our lecturers and take advantage of the resources available to us.” One of the main points that she made was to learn off each other, along with having a competitive mindset, to aspire to do the best we can.

India went on to talk about her first job interview, for which she got at Weclick Media. She gave us points to prepare for before an interview;

• Research the company
• Customise your portfolio to suit the company
• Sell yourself.

Once you get your foot in the door, India went on to say that its ok to not know everything, we are all still learning and are not expected to know it all. She told us to have confidence in our own ability, it enables us to produce work that we feel happy with. Its also ok to make mistakes, as its all part of the learning process. Make sure that you laugh about.

One point stood out to myself was to be able to justify our own work, not to have something there just because it looks nice, but to actually have reasoning behind our own process.

Joanna Quinn

As part of our field project we attended a talk by Joanna Quinn. She is a an animator, illustrator and director, currently running her own animation studio Beryl Productions. Joanna is a highly acclaimed figure in the world of animations, winning many awards and received Oscar nominations for her films.

Starting out in graphics, but soon changed to study Illustration, after having an animation project on her graphics course. Her first film made in 1986, won 3 prizes at the Annecy Animation Festival in 1987 which trust her in the international animation scene. From this she went on to make many films such as, Famous Fred, Canterbury Tales, also producing adverts for Whiskers and Charmin Toilet Paper.

One for the short films that she showed us Britannia (her first commissioned piece of work), which is a brilliant biting view of British Imperialism. It is an adaption of a book written by an American woman’ observation on the UK. It won her the Leonardo Da Vinc award in 1996, which was ironically presented by Prince Philip. Joanna talked about the process of coming up with the narrative of the film, from wanting to get all the political points across but in the end with the a few strong key drawings to progress with. The overall film shows Joanna ability to produce a beautifully  fluid and dynamic animation.

The process that Joanna uses consisted for 12 drawings per second. Having strong key drawings at the start and finish of each shot, with only showing impressions for the movement rather than a solid change of form. This gives her a unique outcome, she uses the same process throughout her short films.

Films like Britannia were made pre digital era, which made the process laborious, taking years to complete. Having said this Joanna is more than happy with continuing to use traditional materials, as she still prefers to draw on to paper, then scanning her sketches into programmes such as After Effects. The sketches that she produces are very organic, she captures movement beautifully.

The film Dreams and Desires with Beryl as the main characters, (which Joanna claimed to be her alter-ego) is a charming and humorous animation, I just love the dogs role in this. From talking about Beryl Joanna spoke about using real life to observation to influence her animations. Being based on reality she said they you can captivate the audience, as “everyone loves animation, you can expect anything can happen.” By putting real life situations in, you can write in a shock value or add more humour.

Overall Joanna gave a great talk about her career. She was quite an animated person herself, and could see the sense of joy that she gained from being an animator. Was a lovely insight to the animation world with some helpful tips. Im looking forward to producing my own piece of animation in the coming weeks.

 

4 Designers conference London

4 Designers was a fantastic full day event held in London on the 20th February 2017. It was split into four sessions which was chaired by Patrick Baglee. The speakers who were each experts in their field  and gave accounts of their influence and experience within the design industry. It was great exposure to the work and process of some of the leading designers in the country.

Matthew Shannon 

Currently working for Brash Brands as a Group Executive, Creative director and Group content director, perviously working for some of the highly respectable design studios within the UK, such as Metadesign and SAS first. His talk was very informative and he gave some sound advise. One of which was the process triangle (which I sketched out). To start at the bottom of the triangle when receiving a brief, to think = research, research is the key to ignite the brief. Rethink = interrogate your research, finally Do = design. By working this way he states that you make the creative process a whole lot easier. Giving substance to your final designs. He proceed to talk about 6 ways that he believes is an effective process to being a graphic communicator.

Approach To take a different view point from your brief, not thinking about your own personal preferences. To always be Agile, as you never know what is going to happen next, especially when it comes to technology, making sure that you are aware of trends to better your own work. Being able to Adapt, constantly learning to enable communication, work in different ways. Affects, to make a difference. To create content in a different way, to Alternate your delivery. Working Altogether to have the ambition to effect change.

His overall talk was quite inspiring, to effect change to be the change. Creativity is endless and we are the future. 

Joanne Davies

Founder of ZAK and is an audience focused design agency creating big brand ideas for under 30’s. Their claim is to be “Makers, Creators, and Innovators.” Jo not coming from a creative background when she initially set up ZAK but previously worked in Marketing and as a PA, so she had a lot of experience working with people, which gave her a good insight in to the type of people she wanted to build her agency up with. Her advice was more focused on us as a person and what we can do to stand out from the crowd. “Find your personal brand,” what make us different. Be Creative – get into cultural things, have a passion and interest for innovation. Be Smart – Make things happen, communicate your  work effectively. Have Agility – be flexible and adaptable. Be Brave – Speak up, challenge status quo, think laterally. Be Ambitious – Have a drive for competitiveness to produce your best work. Be hungry for more. Be Grounded – Be down to earth, no divas or dramas.

When going for interview she gave three pieces of guidance;

1. Make a strong first impression
2. Live the company values – research the company beforehand
3. Deliver excellence

If we considered going freelance or setting up your own agency, she advised not to head straight into it after university, advising that its worth gaining experience working in a studio environment, to work with real clients and briefs. Make connections and contacts.

 

Matthew Baxter 

Currently working as creative director at Baxter and Bailey in Brighton. Having worked for many UK and international agencies prior, of which included 3Deep, 300million, Tricket & Webb. Baxter and Bailey work for many non-profit charities, and promote arts and culture. One which I found most interesting was that he writes and produces a comic, aswell running comic workshops for children.

Matts talks was probably my favourite talk out of the four,  as I related to his ethics and practices. He started off with giving us his stone cold pieces of advice, which he later went on to contradict.

1. Know where your going  don’t know where your going, keeps you aware of what is going on around you
2. Say yes to everything  Don’t say yes to everything, be selective, live buy your principles that guide the studio, design for good, make it count.
3. Fake it till you make it Keep faking it, helps to you learn new skills
4. Go places Stay local
5. Dont do free work Sometime do free work, you never know where it could lead.

His advice initially was related to when you just starting out in the creative industry. The contradiction was therefore when you become more established in your practices. However he recommended that we should try and live by the following;

• Always read the words – within the brief
• Spell check
• Spell check again
• Be nice
• Keep in touch

He had then put together a short video from designers that he had perviously worked with and what advice that they had that we might find useful. In summary;

• Never talk yourself down
• Over deliver, do something unexpected.
• Do hard work and have a good attitude
• Focus on what you want
• Know it, research it, live it
• Ask questions – even if they sound silly to yourself
• Take advice – you can choose the advice that works best for you
• Nurture your curiosity

 

Brian and James Webb

Our final speakers where a father and son duo, they were probably the most entertaining to observe, the banter between was comical at times. Unfortunately, my camera had run out of battery at this point, so was unable to capture the moment. They founded Webb & Webb together in 2003 and have many projects for the Royal Mail aswell as some really impressive book designs for the Harry Potter series. Most of their talk consisted of past work that produced, however the inspiration that I took from them was;

• Adapting to change, be up with technology as it is developing so quickly
• Enter every competition going – might take you somewhere unexpected
• Avoid the obvious, do different from others in the market
• Live the brief, know more then the client, become that expert

What I found interesting that even with all the technology around for design these days, that they were still using letter press in some of their book designs. Such a nice thing to see, giving the books an individual look which makes them more unique. Giving an insight to the importance of traditional practices.

 

The conference and the talkers were able to give us great exposure to the creative work and processes of the leading designers around at the moment. I have gained a wealth of knowledge and an insight into first hand experience into breaking the creative world. The advice given is something that I will be taking forward with my own pursuit to becoming an established Graphic Communicator.

This was above the stage that I thought was quite apt for the talks that we had just observed.