design journal

Charlotte's design journal for Time Based Communications 2, Winter 2017.

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Project 02 — Final — FOOD FIGHT

For Project 02, we decided to tackle the concepts of “grids and time” through a video game-inspired stop motion animation. We found that emulating a video game was a perfect way to express what was being asked in the brief.

My group and I decided to go with a stop motion animation for its “pixelated” look and motion, and it fit the retro video game style well. We also wanted the piece to look visually eye-catching – so we used three vivid backgrounds, used candy and snacks as our main food subject, and painted Kristen’s hands pink and purple to match the overall colour scheme. The game UI also matches this scheme. We think that the piece is overall successful in looking visually cohesive.

We were stuck with how to incorporate “grids and time” into the visuals – so we instead used them as story devices. By Round 3, the game intensifies and the two players start to manipulate the game’s time and environment limitations.

While it was uncertain if we are able to hear our video’s sound on the TV screen, we still paid particular attention to the music/sound aspect of the video, as we felt that it would tie the whole piece together. The game starts relatively calm at first but intensifies as the rounds go on, which is also expressed in the music chosen. The sound effects also bring the whole concept to life.

For a project that was only ideated within a week, I believe that this was pretty well-executed. It was an excruciating yet rewarding process.

Group Pat Descartin – sound mixing, editing, photography Charlotte Lucas – creative direction, video editing, animation Kristen Yeung – sound editing, animation, design, hand model

Credits Sound effects – FreeSound.org Music – Eric Skiff, “A Night Of Dizzy Spells” and Visager, “Battle!” Fonts – Arcade and Invasion2000

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Kristen did a couple iterations of the game UI before we finally decided to go with the final. Colours-wise, we wanted to match our subject matter by implementing a candy-like colour scheme.

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We mainly took inspiration from retro video games (mainly Street Fighter) for the entire set-up and game UI of the piece.

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Spent 10 hours shooting and making a mess in the studio.

Kudos to Kristen for letting her hand be painted for the entirety of that time. 👏

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Project 02 – Moodboard

Two of the main problems in our first idea was that it was conceptually predictable and visually incoherent.

Keeping with the idea of food, we decided to look at the works of Vanessa Mckeown and Jessica Walsh for inspiration. The word ‘food surrealism’ came to mind during our discussion.

I showed this video for inspiration and it churned a couple of ideas:

The unpredictability of this video kept it engaging and amusing to watch. For some reason, the words “food fight” came into mind and the idea just organically evolved into a video game concept.

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A Setback / A New Idea

We tried executing our idea but during the week we were filming, we were unfortunately uncoordinated as a group and ended up poorly executing our initial idea. Shots were poorly lit, shot on different cameras, and visually looked very different.

It was at this point we realized that we hit a brick wall. It was near the final week of school but as a group we felt that we needed to turn the project around to be able to have a decent output.

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Project 2 – Inspiration

As part of our brainstorming session, we looked at a bunch of creative pieces relating to grids and time (+ videos that looked interesting technically and conceptually). These were the videos that stood out to us, as we thought they could potentially influence our final piece.

I’ve Run Out Of Ideas by Connor Franta

24 Hours in Tokyo by JacksGap

Time by PowerUp Timelapse

Un Petit Tour Dans Paris by Maxim Baudin

CHEAT SHEET: Soft & Hard Lighting by The Creator Class

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Project 2 – Ideation

Project 2 was admittedly one of the more challenging projects I’ve tackled as the brief was so broad and vague.

For our first brainstorming session, we were very inspired by The Mercadentes’ simple short pieces in class, so my group (Kristen, Pat) and I wanted to do something in a cinematic style.

Admittedly, we were rather initially lost and stuck during the brainstorming/ideation process. We were perhaps overthinking the project a little too much—as we spent long hours talking about ideas—with no solid concept.

We eventually went with the idea of showing food eaten throughout different times of the day, and it is presented through the use of the 3x3 grid to make the sequencing more dynamic.

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Project 01 — Book Trailer — Final

For Project 1, I chose to create a book trailer for Carl Sagan’s Cosmos (1980). In his book, Carl Sagan describes many complicated topics in astronomy, simplifying the concepts so it can be more easily understood. Through the success of this book and its accompanying documentary series, Sagan brings science into the mainstream. 

Design Statement

For my book trailer, I aimed to capture and highlight the sense of wonder and fascination, and also the philosophical ideas that Sagan expressed in his book. To achieve this, I wanted the visuals to be unconventional and unique, and this was done through a “motion collage” approach. Furthermore, the slow animations made the piece feel surreal and dream-like — combined with the calming audio and Sagan’s unique way of narrating, the overall piece becomes moody and atmospheric.

I divided the piece into sections, each a different “collage in motion.” Each collage was composed based on the narration and music. Animations are slow to emulate the feel of “floating in space.”

Colour-wise, I am aware that this is an unconventional scheme for a space-themed animation. I was, however, inspired to base the colour scheme on The Average Colour of the Universe, Cosmic Latte. Combined with my collage approach and the light-hearted mood of the video, I believe the colour palette is effective.

I also paid particular attention to the audio. The audio drives the overall trailer and was just as important in delivering the intended mood. The use of a calm piano piece with Sagan’s philosophical and colourful narration further enhanced the fascinating nature of Sagan’s main idea. While the voice over was taken from an already-old recording of the show, I added reverb to his voice to emphasize the far-awayness of Sagan’s voice — the fact that he is speaking from the past into the future.

Overall, these visual and auditory considerations were successful in expressing my intended message, and would surely entice the audience enough to read Carl Sagan’s amazing book.

Audio Credits

Narration / voice over are excerpts from Episode 1 of Carl Sagan's "Cosmos: A Personal Voyage" (1980)

Background music: Ballade No. 3 in A-Flat Major, Op. 47 (Frédéric Chopin), performed by Alfred Cortot (1933)

Visual Credits

NASA on The Commons

Yeseva One Typeface

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Project 01: Rough Cut

This was the rough cut I showed in class.

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Styleframes / Storyboard

A big part of my process is to first map out my sequencing of events by creating a storyboard. Due to the collage-y nature of this project, and to save time, I’ve decided to combine my styleframes and storyboards. Styleframing (aka creating high fidelity boards) helped me visualize the final look of the overall piece, and made the animation process smoother.

(Storyboards were first drawn out on Illustrator.)

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Motion Test #: Field of Stars

Played around with the “CC Ball Action” effect in After Effects

By default, “CC Ball Action” comes out like this:

The challenge for this motion test was figuring out how to manipulate the balls in order to make them look like the cartoonized “star field” I was hoping to achieve.

I eventually figured it out by overlaying it with a Fill + changing the ball size + using a Camera layer to zoom out of it. I added a “Turbulent Displace” effect (the jittery look), to further match the style of my piece.

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Motion Test #1: Masking in After Effects

Based on my moodboard, I tried to create a very rough style frame of the “look” I’m going for 

More importantly—experimented with masking techniques (how to achieve the cut-out animation I was trying to go for) and different colour-correcting techniques in After Effects

Also played around with different frame rates (ultimately achieving the dreamy / slow-mo effect of the character’s blinking)

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Cosmos Book Trailer — Animatic

This is still fairly rough and I’m still figuring out the visuals, but this animatic really forced me to consider my audio. I think my audio is the backbone of this piece, and it sets the overall mood and tone I’m trying to give.

I focused more on the audio for this week and tried to finalize it before I jumped in the visuals. 

The passage I used was an excerpt from Carl Sagan’s documentary series Cosmos: A Personal Voyage. 

Audio Notes / Considerations

Voice over/narration were excerpts taken from the book’s accompanying documentary, Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, narrated by Carl Sagan (the author) himself.

Adobe Audition was used to minimize background noise as much as possible (in the episode, Sagan was narrating from a loud, windy cliff and beach area)

I added a reverb/echo to Sagan’s narration, to further enforce the dream-like mood the piece aims to express

Frédéric Chopin’s Ballade No. 3 in A-Flat Major, Op. 47 (performed by Alfred Cortot in 1933) was used as background music

The narration and background music purposefully coincided to heighten a specific sequence’s mood (the audio is calm in the beginning and climaxes near the end)

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Carl Sagan Quotes

Potential quotes to be used as voice over / type for Project 01. I don’t intend to use whole sections—rather, take bits and pieces of these passages to form a concise trailer.

1) 

The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff.

2)

We are a way for the cosmos to know itself.

3) Cosmos, Chapter 11 – Refers to books

What an astonishing thing a book is. It's a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you're inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic.

4) Quote from Episode 1 of Cosmos (not from the book)

We wish to pursue the truth no matter where it leads — but to find the truth, we need imagination and skepticism both. We will not be afraid to speculate, but we will be careful to distinguish speculation from fact. The cosmos is full beyond measure of elegant truths; of exquisite interrelationships; of the awesome machinery of nature. The surface of the Earth is the shore of the cosmic ocean. On this shore we've learned most of what we know. Recently we've waded a little way out, maybe ankle deep, and the water seems inviting. Some part of our being knows this is where we came from. We long to return. And we can. Because the cosmos is also within us. We're made of star-stuff. We are a way for the cosmos to know itself.

5) Cosmos Episode 1 – Intro

The Cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be. Our feeblest contemplations of the Cosmos stir us — there is a tingling in the spine, a catch in the voice, a faint sensation as if a distant memory, of falling from a height. We know we are approaching the greatest of mysteries.

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Project 01: Visual sources / inspiration

While brainstorming ideas for this project, I had just finished binge-watching Kurzgesagt’s videos on YouTube. The channel focused on animated videos explaining and simplifying different scientific concepts — so the idea of doing something astronomy-related stuck to me.

Two of the screenshots above are from one of my favourite digitally-composited videos, Imagine:

I like the dream-like effect given by this video, which was achieved by the surrealism of the visuals, the slow motion, and the music.

As for the other screenshots - I like the colour palette used in Kurzgesagt’s animations (photos 4-8), and the use of abstract shapes + thin strokes in photos 2-3. 

Ultimately, in my book trailer for Cosmos, I want to give the same sense of wonder and fascination given by Kurzgesagt, and the surreal, dream-like feeling expressed in Imagine.

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Project 01: Creative Brief

1. Title – possible name, working title

“We are Made of Starstuff” – Cosmos Book Trailer

2. Overview – description of concept • The book Cosmos is a popular science non-fiction book by Carl Sagan, and it was written alongside his TV documentary Cosmos: A Personal Voyage • The trailer will focus on Sagan’s “We are made of starstuff” monologue in his documentary • The video will illustrate this quote by showing a “reverse Big Bang” sequence – it will start with a human seemingly “disintegrating” and condensing into a single point (in slow motion) • Sagan’s monologue will be voicing over the visuals • Type/text will appear on key points of the quote • The video will end with “We are a way for the cosmos to know itself,” as the particles condense to a single dot on screen – then, the title of the book will appear

3. Audience – who is the intended audience and how this will be considered in project? • The intended audience will be for anyone interested in getting started with learning astronomy and science. The book is written in a conversational tone so it is easy to read. It would be aimed to viewers aged 16 and above. • The trailer will aim to be as intriguing and fascinating as the book through the visuals

4. Key Message – what specifically do you want your audience to learn from your work? • The trailer aims to evoke a sense of wonder and curiosity through the chosen quote and visuals, which would then pull the audience to read the book itself. • Through the trailer, the audience will learn of the intriguing and fascinating nature of the book

5. Content Planning – what content will you include and how will it will be structured • A mix of animated and found content • Vectors • Drawings (rotoscoping) • Photography • Materials will be combined to make a mixed-media animation

6. Bibliography – relevant sources used in word

Cosmos by Carl Sagan (1980)

LiveScience – Are We Really All Made of Stars?

7. Visual/Conceptual References – images and ideas that inspire your concept (see next post)

8. Technologies/tools –  technologies/tools used for any level of production. Strategy to learn/research new technologies/tools. • Software - After Effects and Premiere (video), Audition (audio) • Camera • Collage

9. Schedule – see below

Week 1 - Pre-production Week 2 - Production / Animatic + styleframes + audio Week 3 (reading week) - Post-production Week 4 - Submission