60 SECOND DOCUMENTARY

After effects was a new software to my practice and therefore leaning it was the focus of the research for this project. 

Research involved watching tutorials on how to animate illustrations and create moving image using sound and text. 

A range of tutorials were watched, and information was taken from different parts of all of these to build up all my transitions. The tutorials watched were : 

How to Get Started with Adobe After Effects CC

After Effects CC tutorial: Creating your first project

The beginner’s guide to After Effects

Get to know After Effects

Learn the basics of After Effects in just 18 minutes

Create animated backgrounds

Render your work

Understand animation

It was also helpful asking technician to help build an understanding of this software. Through on going conversations with the technician quicker ways to achieve transitions and effects were established. An example of this, is at the start of the video when the bowl spins. As informed by the technician, by typing in : 

wiggle (wiggles per second, intensity)

Story boards were created to visualise the video. Initially there was the idea of introducing a hungry panda character that struggled to make rice and the video then developing with the panda learning how to make rice. The idea of including a character was based on the audience engaging with the video more , however when transferring this digitally, it was more difficult to animate. Therefore the video became more simplified and got ride of the panda character. 

After drawing up the stages of the video, the storyboard then developed into how the parts within the video would move specifically. Lastly the text was then added to storyboard to ensure each stage was understood clearly by its audience.   

The style of the  video intended to have a Japanese- like cartoon aesthetic. Bold blocked colours were used to achieve this, along with a chunky condensed sans-serif typeface called ‘Yumi’. 

Typography

Yumi was chosen as the font to use in the video as it felt apart of the design. The heavy weight matches the block colour illustrations, particularly the black bowl and pan, which is in every composition of the video. The font has a playful and warm personality and looked best in all caps with a tight leading.

Sketches from the storyboard were then drawn up as vectors in illustrator. The vector drawings were kept fairly simple. In development of the digital illustrations experimented with manipulating shapes to achieve a subtle 3D aesthetic. 

Once all parts to the illustrations were built on illustrator they were transferred to after effects to animate. By adding transitions and adjusting opacities, parts of the illustrations were able to appear and disappear. 

The transitions from each step of the video were all done by sliding the illustration on screen, pausing then sliding off screen. This effect created a conveyer belt like illusion. 

Within the production, sounds were added to the video the bring it to life. A song with lots of movement and changes was chosen to be the main body of sound. Visuals in the video were edited to move in time to the music. Other sound effects were included to bring the animation to life such as : 

 a tap turning on 

a tap running water

bubbles popping from the boiling water

gas turning on 

a bowl spinning on the table

The simple style makes it easy to quickly get information from and it being an animation makes it more engaging its audience. Timing it against sound effects brings it to life and turns something dull into something fun. 

The final outcome of this project demonstrates how basic information can be communicated in a playful engaging way. It takes into account how every day we are being told information, therefore in order to get it noticed and heard, sometimes you have to say differently. Animating the everyday makes it become something else and therefore has more potential to get our attention.