When we were given this brief I wasn’t as worried about completing it as the storyboard because I thought I could have more fun with it instead of it just being something I knew I would find difficult. It gave me more of a chance to learn a bit more about motion graphics which is one of the main reasons I chose this course. I’ve been really interested in learning about it for a while so it was a really good opportunity to attempt the motion graphics side using tutorials online and asking for help from lecturers so that I could get a bit more experience in it. I was slightly nervous at starting because of my lack of experience in After Effects and Illustrator and at some points I would feel a bit demotivated to carry on because I would get stuck on how to carry out an idea I had in my head yet I carried on and I’m really happy with the end result because it looks how I wanted it to and some parts even turned out better than I thought like the end comp with the lightbulb draining out and my initials being revealed so i’m overall happy.
After struggling with ideas for a bit and trying to decide between two I finally decided on the motion graphics idea mainly for the reason I mentioned above but also because I think the style would turn out a lot better. I think my final video does have a nice consistent style which I think would’ve been more difficult with the other idea. I also thought the motion graphics wouldn’t take too long to do so I could try and finish it quickly however this was not the case at all, I had to learn a lot of new things which did take time but I think it definitely paid off in the end because now I’ve learnt that skill and so I’m making some progress in After Effects. Although I’ve also learnt that I still need to practice ball bouncing in After Effects using the velocity tools, I don’t know why I find it so difficult to adjust them but I can never get it perfect.
After looking through my research I discovered the kind of style I liked which was using basic shapes to create expressions and objects in a simple way, cutting everything down to the important elements. For example the object transitions videos were really helpful in showing me that the overall transition works better if the objects were simplified down completely to the absolute essentials for example a phone could just be two rectangles inside each other and this would make the transition a lot easier. I didn’t use a lot of object transitions in my video mainly just the lightbulb comp which I think turned out quite nice but if I had time to improve it then I would’ve eased the velocities a lot more and made the shapes fit together slightly better.
What I found helpful for this project was making the list of all of my interests and doing the little drawings of them because it helped me to visualise the things I like to give me some ideas of how to create the animated persona. Another thing that was useful that I should continue doing for the rest of my future projects is making a storyboard of how I wanted the objects to transition into the next shot. This was useful because I could spend time thinking solely about what I wanted the objects to do. I needed to have this time to just focus on the timeline because then I could just focus on creating it instead of having to do both at the same time trying to plan what I’m doing whilst I’m doing it.
For the video, the list of interests I wanted to include was quite long so I didn’t manage to include everything about my personality that I wanted in the 20 second time frame. I wanted to include more about the creative side of my personality like photography and also the media side like films and TV but I couldn’t think of a smooth transition into the rest of the objects. The interests I ended up using included table tennis because it’s one of my favourite sports and I thought it wasn’t something that everyone else will have in their animated persona, the Staffordshire knot to represent where I came from as Stafford is my home I wanted to show that it’s something I care about, pasta because it’s one of my favourite foods it was either that or pie but pasta is a lot easier to transition and the end which was just a lightbulb draining it’s light out to represent my struggle with generating ideas. I quite like the ending, I included the idea that I got from researching motion graphics videos - adding my signature at the end. I think it was important for this project to include a nice little personal touch that I don’t think a lot of people will use.
I also made a lot of subtle references in the video that only a finite group of people would get because I wanted it to be a bit cryptic. One of the references was the spaghetti, as well as being my favourite food it is a little reference to one of my favourite TV shows, ‘It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia’, the quote ‘What’s your spaghetti policy?’ is sort of an ongoing joke. Another reference is the intro where I cover the 'V’ in 'EVE’ so it looks like EE. One of my favourite bands is called Everything Everything and they use the name EE for short so I like how that turned out. I could've made this more obvious by including music notes on the sides which I'm annoyed I didn't have time to include. This would also show my love for music. Another reference is the font for EVE which I mentioned in my process was to represent my love for film and TV by using the Netflix font because I didn’t couldn’t fit in the pictograms I wanted to for that it kind of made up for it. Also, I kind of wanted my initials at the end to be animated so that the video ended like an old TV screen when you turn it off where it does a little flash in the centre. This didn’t turn out very obvious so it’s only a very slight reference.
What I don’t like about my animated persona is the tempo of the whole thing, it was okay at the start but you can tell towards the end I just gradually start running out of time so the clips keep getting faster and faster which makes it a bit confusing. I also don’t like how abrupt some of the movements are because I didn’t have enough time to adjust them I wanted to hand in a finished product but I don’t think it’s the best I could possibly do I think I could improve it a lot with time. I’m definitely going to try and improve it in my spare time because I want to see if I can make it any better. I also don’t like the table tennis composition because I told myself I’d go back to the ball to fix the velocity so it was smoother but I didn’t have time. Also the bat movement isn’t very good because I wasn’t entirely sure how to use the 3D tool so it looks a bit messy. I’d also improve the zoom into the brain so it maybe has blurred edges when it zooms or use the 3D tool to improve it because it’s a bit too quick and comes out of nowhere. I also don’t like how I had to speed up the end because it all feels a bit rushed. The music isn’t as sound synced as I would like it to be but I could improve this easily I think.
Again for this project I struggled with time management. I really need to start getting on top of things because it’s very stressful having to do all nighters to finish the work. The thing is I think I have too much time and completely underestimate how long it will take to do so I just end up rushing things at the end. This really isn’t the best way to work because it means I can’t produce my best work because I have to hand in a worse version so I need to improve on this. I think it happened because I didn’t make the timetable like I said I would after the storyboard project so I wasn’t as set on doing work at certain times. Another frustrating thing was that I had to go into the uni to complete the work because I have a very bad laptop that doesn’t let me download software (this needs to be sorted) but because it closes at 10 it means I couldn’t stay up late working on the actual sequence which is all I wanted to do to get it done. I’m going to invest in a new laptop soon so that I can stay up late working because I feel a lot more productive at night.
The main thing I’ve taken from this project is actually the skills I’ve picked up from using the different types of software and tools within them. I had never used Illustrator or After Effects in this much depth before. I genuinely think this short project has helped me a lot as I think I’ve picked up a lot of useful tips and tricks and shortcuts that I will need to improve on in the future but I feel a lot better about the software and am more comfortable using it than before when I had no experience. It was also really fun to use and to try and teach myself the basics because I know this is the software we will be using in the future. I really liked how I could show my ideas in the way I wanted to. After watching so many motion graphics videos I thought it would be very complex but although some parts were difficult I still think after watching a professional motion graphics video that I could still have a good go at replicating it because I realised it’s all just manipulating shapes in a creative way really. Overall, I really enjoyed this project because I had fun making it and learning new things and I think the end result turned out a lot better than it could’ve been so I’m happy with the result although I know it could still be improved on a lot more.
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