SASHA'S YSDN 4002 PROCESS SITE

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Project 3: Process

Brief: The challenge in this project is to find ways to convey tone, purpose, and meaning restricting yourself to the primary use of a selected text, it’s meaning relative to the film, typographic elements, spatial and temporal composition with the help of music & sound.

Workflow Sheet

Movie Questions/Information

Quote Ideas:

I decided to go with the last quote by Jeanette Basile Laloche. I chose this quote because I find it to be very beautifully worded, while the actually message behind it is severe and intense. I think this connects well to the film because while it is light hearted to look at and hear children's stories, the actually circumstances themselves never leave the back of your mind while your watching it.

Movie Screenshots + Inspiration Moodboard

My final piece reflects the visual tone of the film itself as I used hand drawn letters and images. As an opening title sequence, I feel as though it should transition well to the actual content of the film. Through visual exploration, I determined that I wanted to have some sort of visual element to also be present to accompany the type, again to match the tone and content of the film.

Storyboards:

poHere, you can see how the moodboards and film inspired my direction. I chose to use both Cree and English, and originally had the idea to erase the Cree and write the words again in English to represent the erasure of their culture in Residential Schools.

FINAL VIMEO LINK: https://vimeo.com/697370070

*VIDEO MAY BE PRIVATE UNTIL APR 15 DUE TO VIMEO STORAGE RESTRICTION, WILL BE POSTED ON TEAMS AS WELL!

FINAL THOUGHTS:

In my final video, I chose to use duct tape to cover the Cree words instead of erasing them. I did this to represent the act of silencing and covering up the stories of these children we see today in the media. The imagery I decided on was a flower. I used to flower to represent a child being taken away from his own, and when it turned red, it represented the loss of identity as well as violence that was endured in Residential schools. At the end, there is a bed of flowers to represent the large number of survivors of residential schools.

I enjoyed working on the sound design as well. I used a Cree lullaby for the background music as well as sound effects for the duct tape and writing noises.

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Project 2: Progress

Brief: Create a 30 to 60-second animation of an existing text using time-based typography. Your source could be an excerpt from a piece of fiction, a lecture or TED talk, a speech or monologue, an interview, a read letter or some other text-based artifact. As always, type, lettering, motion & time should be your primary design tools. Express the meaning derived from the content to best serve the concept and drive your narrative.

Workflow Sheet

Audio Selection

When I first went over the project brief, I first turned to TED talks for inspiration. I primarily viewed TED talks that highlighted issues I related to directly or were culturally significant to me. I couldn't find myself resonating well with any of the final options I had narrowed it down to, so I turned back to the brief and saw that we could use a monologue from a piece of fiction. I immediately thought of one of my favourite shows 'EUPHORIA' that airs on HBO. The show touches on deep topics and certain characters are known for their way of speaking. The final audio I chose was from a special episode of the show titled 'Trouble Don't Last Always'. In this monologue, the speaker Ali, is talking to Rue, a teen who he meets in rehab and sponsors. I find this talk moving and inspirational as it does highlight the necessity of finding purpose in life when you can no longer depend on yourself, which often occurs with addiction.

Full Monologue: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=skQMztq7oRI

Analyzing The Words

Here, I printed out the monologue and highlighted words I thought needed emphasis. I also thought out what transitions could be used. I decided on my final concept of combining rough, textured type with clean and direct type to convey the tone of the dialogue.

Typographic Exploration

Knowing that I wanted to use more than one typeface, I began visualizing how different typefaces fit together using an excerpt from the audio. I started combining rough, hand drawn typefaces with very simple and serious ones.

Final Typography Guide

I decided on these typefaces to be used in the motion sequence. I believe that Bebas Neue carries a serious and direct tone that mimics the speakers vocal tone, while Bolder reflects the actual meaning and intent behind some of his words. Aurora Script is used to only highlight a few words that deserve their own spotlight, while Basking is also used for one word only.

After Effects Tutorials

As I do not have much experience in this program, I relied on YouTube tutorials to help with some of the motion sequences I wanted to use in the final video. Looking and referring back to these while working helped boost my confidence in the program while also making me more familiar with the interface.

Storyboards

Here, I planned out how all the moving text would flow through frames. I enjoyed visualizing the tonal shift using the white and black backgrounds to represent when the speaker became more personal with the listener.

Final Video Link: https://vimeo.com/689564718

Final Statement

While the dialogue itself is quite serious, the speaker is coming to the listener from a place of love and concern. I did not want to appear too 'preach-y' with the way I stylized my type throughout the video. The text is often simple and easy to digest, it is not talking down to the viewer or trying to appear above them, it is in their own line of sight. The concept of spirituality and belief are heavy topics that often do not resonate with everyone, so my video aims to be inspirational to even those who may not agree with the words on paper by themselves. My direction highlights specific words that the viewer can interpret their own meaning for, to be able to take away a more individual message from an otherwise character-specific monologue.

The final typographic and colour choices I made also help carry the tone well throughout the video. I primarily used red as an accent colour as it makes certain words appear louder and brings the viewers attention directly where it should be. Red is also often seen in real-life revolutions through graffiti works.

Overall, my final project delivers a strong, yet personal message to the viewer. The motion choices help the viewer flow through the monologue and continue to pay attention, ensuring they do not miss the key meaning behind the words.

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Project 1B Progress

Project completed with Margaret Bi

Brief: This portion of the project is designed to introduce you to the conceptual, technical & practical workflow elements you will use to refine Part A. Using your stop-motion animation or After Effects approach as a starting point, now focus on refining the narrative, version it as a looping animated GIF, package & present it in a professional manner, refine how effectively it communicates, and further illuminate its intended meaning.

Week 3 / 4

While submitting Project 1A, we were given good feedback regarding the return transition we would have to consider in this part of the project. It was important for us to revisit the 'contained' animation and see how we could change it to still fit our narrative, but also add an interesting animation to our project. We came up with the idea to have the word contained appear as though it was attempting to break out of its own confinement, but was unable to, and instead became overshadowed by the 'spread' of information around it, eventually looping back into a cycle of information overload.

After storyboarding, we separated the work the same way as before, and I took to animating the word 'contained' attempting to break out of the opening of 'p'. We then combined our work again in after affects for critiqued presentations.

Critiques: Scale down the P so that it is not cropped of the screen, work on looping to make sure the gif is seamless.

Week 4 / 5

After receiving the critiques, Margaret and I went to work to make the final changes to our project. We encountered some errors when we realized that cropping the video into a square would cut off our text, and as we tried to scale it down in Photoshop, our 'spread' animation would no longer take up the entire screen. We worked to fix the scaling and cropping issues in After Effects and then successfully exported the final video and gif.

Final Vimeo Link: https://vimeo.com/676058521

Final Instagram Link: https://www.instagram.com/tv/CZz-zrMA0E7/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

Our project effectively demonstrates the ways in which news and media have taken over our lives during the pandemic. Often any true concise and trustworthy piece of information can still easily be overshadowed by media from other outlets. It appears as though we're in an endless cycle of information overload.

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Project 1A Progress

Project completed with Margaret Bi

Brief: You are to animate a sequence of words in a way that captures, communicates, illuminates or contributes to a deeper level of meaning, and their relationship to one another relative to the topic. Emphasis should be on experimentation and expression, but both executions must be considered as part of your process work.

WEEK 1 / 2:

Margaret and I chose the topic of the COVID-19 Pandemic, and got to work brainstorming pairs of words that could match the topic well while also be expressive. We narrowed down our list to two final options, order vs. chaos and spread vs. contained. We both looked up different definitions and meanings for each words and chose to explore both options to see their potential through.

We then each chose one word pair and took to ideate further with them. I chose spread vs. contained, and began with sketching storyboards for 3 different approaches, two using only After Effects, and one using stop motion.

I then moved forward to creating moodboards that better portray the style of type and movement I was aiming to achieve for each approach I had previously sketched out.

I then began creating rough test image sequences using Illustrator and Photoshop to create rough gifs that show the way I wanted the type to move (extremely rough).

Through this week's in-class critiques, we concluded that our concept for each pair of words was solid, but we were left with the decision of which one to follow through with, and how we would have the worlds transition seamlessly. It was also noted that both of our concepts (see Margaret's site for the other concepts progress) could be connected to each other as we followed similar narritives. We decided to move forth with the 'spread vs. contained' word pair and began storyboarding for our After Effects work.

WEEK 2 / 3

Margaret and I hopped on a call to discuss how the results of out individual explorations could be combined to make a good narrative. We settled on the idea of information overload/fake news that is present during the pandemic. We then moved to figma to create a rough storyboard of how we would animate our text. We also discussed the typefaces we would use, and settled on an array of contrasting typefaces for our opening animation to convey our message effectively. We separated the work by word, through which I took on the task of animating 'contained'. I drew the letters myself to make the meaning of the word conveyed through the letters themselves as well as the animation.

After animating our words individually, we combined them in one After Effects file and exported them for submission. We showed two versions for critique and using the feedback, we decided to submit one version as our final.

Test Version 1: https://vimeo.com/671152652

Test Version 2: https://vimeo.com/671153026

Final Submission: https://vimeo.com/671221330