12.01.23 - 05.03.23 (Week 1 - Week 8)
Janaan Ahmed / 0353333
Information Design/ Bachelor of Design (Hons) in Creative Media
Final Project: Animated Infographic
Instructions
Week 1
Recommend 3 professional motion graphics with rationals and
inspirations.
1) Psych2Go
Rationale: Psych2Go does a good job of delivering and informing
audiences of heavy topics like mental health in a light and approachable
manner. Their art style has a home-made, personal feel to it which I
believe facilitates the manner in which the audience relates to the video.
They feature muted, light colours that are easy and calming on the eyes,
and minimal compositions that effectively convey their message. I also
like the slight narrative aspect to their videos.
2) Duality
Rationale:
The concept of duality is conveyed by juxtaposing technology with nature.
From the colours to the pacing and transitions, everything in this video
is very dynamic, rhythmic and vibrant. The animations are incredibly
smooth and transitions are seamless which make this video very satisfying
to watch. Solid 10/10.
3) ONO
Rationale: The intro instantly pulls you in and hooks you into the
video. The frames are well composed and the seamless fluidity of the
transitions give a beautiful sense of continuity. This video is top-notch
and is my favourite amongst the 3.
Personal Burnout Experience
I'll be honest, I've been burnt out ever since the previous semester. The
workload exceeded my ability to complete them on time, and so a lot piled
up on me. I struggled to manage my daily chores, skipped meals and skimped
on sleep to try to catch up. Though I was already struggling with my
mental and emotional wellbeing, I was somehow able to get by... until the
physical exhaustion eventually caught up and exacerbated my road to
burnout.
I lost passion for some of the things I used to love, and felt like a
shell of my former self. This was not how I wanted to visualise my life
throughout university. Clearly I was taking on more than I could handle,
and so after much reflection I made the decision to prioritise my health
above all else. I decided to drop 1 module and change my entire study
plan so that I don't exceed 3 modules per semester. Will I be graduating a
year later than my peers? Well yes, and let me tell you reader, that this
fact was most difficult to digest. I felt utterly ashamed of myself,
already being much older than my peers. I experienced the immense weight
of feeling behind in life (by typical societal standards), watching my
friends from high school graduate and enter jobs, and now watch those
younger than me move ahead too. I was utterly overcome by the feeling of
incompetence and failure. These were the intrusive thoughts and
insecurities that used to plague me, the beliefs that were somehow
ingrained in me.
It doesn't make sense for there to be a universally set timeline for how
and when a person should do things, since each individual's circumstances
differ. I believe we each move according to a pace unique to our
individual timelines. Being ambitious and hardworking are admirable
qualities, however I believe it is equally important to recognise
when you need rest. And so after many considerations I've come to
accept that this decision is what is most sustainable to my wellbeing. It
was a necessary, yet difficult decision for me to take, but I am glad that
I did.
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Final Project: Animated Infographic
Group Members:
My group members are Christine, Aziera, Caiwei, Zien, Sinyi, and
Firas.
To keep track of all our group tasks, I created a
mastersheet. Some tabs are shown below:
Task Delegation:
All our task delegations have been compiled into one. Refer to see what
we each member's tasks:
Fig 1.1: Task Delegations
Project Timeline:
Since our group is working on 2 projects, timelines have been made for
both to avoid confusion.
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| Fig 1.2: Screenshot of Project Timeline |
1. Pre-Production
i) Research:
We were first tasked to do some research about burnout to gain a better
understanding of accurately portraying it in our infographic. I created 7
research subsections to split the task equally amongst our group.
Fig 1.3:Burnout Research Document [PDF]
ii) Storyboarding:
We were then required to listen to the audio, and do a script breakdown to
identify the key pieces of information in it. This enabled us to create
the necessary visual notes for storyboarding. Christine, Firas, and Zien
were in charge of separating the info, while Sinyi, Caiwei, Aziera, and
myself made the visual notes. With a total of 12 frames, the storyboard
sketching was once again split evenly amongst the group.
Fig 1.4: Final Compiled Storyboard Sheet [PDF]
iii) Animatic:
Once the sketches were completed, I added a few sketches in between and
made quick changes to some so everything was cohesive. Then I compiled all
of them on Premiere Pro to create an animatic.
Upon receiving feedback from Mr. Martin, we went back and reviewed the
storyboard. I replaced some of the sketches on frame 1. Scenes 1b, 1d,
and 1e have been changed, and 1f omitted.
|
| Fig 1.5: Amended storyboard scenes |
iv) Moodboard:
Since the Tokyo trip was coming up, everyone was too busy completing other
assignments to have a group meeting to discuss the art direction.
Therefore I created a
Miro board, and asked everyone to put in their ideas, so we could take a vote on
the majority consensus on whatsapp.
Since a few of us went to Tokyo during week 5, we were too preoccupied
with the other module to have any further discussions about our project.
Our group was a bit behind schedule, as we couldn't begin the
illustrations yet due to not having settled on the art direction. As the
group leader, I was a bit disheartened that only myself and Aziera filled
the moodboard, since everyone's opinion and creative input are valuable in
a team project. At this point, I panicked as I felt that our group
communication was somewhat lacking.
|
| Fig 1.6: Brainstorming on Miro |
To make sure everyone was on the same page, I proposed an emergency zoom
call, as texting was unproductive. I'm grateful that it got our members
engaging with each other. Our idea was to make a heavy topic like burnout
light, approachable, and digestible to the audience. Hence we went for
earthy, pastel tones and round amicable characters. For fonts, we decided
on bubbly, handwritten ones.
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| Fig 1.7: Final Moodboard |
Once everyone was content with the art direction, the group was divided
into 2 teams: illustration & animation. Since I am okay with both, I let
my group members make their decision first.
Firas suggested dividing workload by characters instead of frames. We have 5 characters in total, so each of them did 2. The main character was shared amongst them according to their designated frames.
The characters featured in our infographic are as follows:
|
| Fig 1.8: Task delegation |
2. Production
The illustration team was further divided to characters and
backgrounds. We each had to work on 6 frames (as there are 12
total). The frames have been divided so we had an equal amount of scenes
to work on.
Refer to task delegation document.
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| Fig 1.9: Illustration Task Delegation |
A guide was created for everyone to refer to so everyone had the
necessary common resources.
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| Fig 1.10: Illustration guide |
Firas suggested dividing workload by characters instead of frames. We have 5 characters in total, so each of them did 2. The main character was shared amongst them according to their designated frames.
- Firas: Main Character, Narrator, Friend 1
- Sinyi: Main Character, Therapist, Friend 2,
Upon receiving the character sheets from Firas and Sinyi, Aziera and I
began to work on the backgrounds. I made some changes to the narrator to
set them apart from the rest a bit:
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| Fig 1.11: Narrator re-vamped design |
The characters featured in our infographic are as follows:
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| Fig 1.12: Featured Characters |
Some scenes have been slightly altered from the storyboard, for example,
the characters in scene 3d have been replaced so the
narrative revolves more around the main character (MC). I reused
parts from the character sheets Firas and Sinyi made to make the new pose
for the MC.
|
| Fig 1.13: Scene 3d before and after |
I made all scenes on one ai file to be able to see how the colours and
frames related to one another. While illustrating, I realised that I may
have miscalculated the workload when dividing the tasks. The
workload on Aziera and I to create both the backgrounds AND the assets was
a bit too much. We each worked on around 23 frames! Since we both caught
colds during the Tokyo trip, it took us some time to complete everything
to pass on to the animation team.
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| Fig 1.14: Workspace on Illustrator |
Once each scene was complete, I copy pasted each of them onto separate ai
files. The layers were then separated and labelled accordingly and then
passed on to the animation team. Scenes with only text were left up to the
animators to add on After Effects for ease of animation.
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| Fig 1.15: Separating Layers |
This is the compilation of all my illustrations:
Fig 1.16: Frames 1-5 & 8 [PDF]
I left it up to the animation team (Caiwei, Zien, and Christine) to
decide how they wanted to divide their workload. They divided according
to the number of scenes, which was roughly 14 each. Due to a
misunderstanding, frame 3 was not designated to anyone, and so Caiwei
and I quickly divided the 4 scenes amongst ourselves as the others were
busy. I animated scene 3c, and 3d.
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| Fig 1.17: Progress of scene 3c on After Effects |
Learning to utilise the expression loopOut("pingpong") has been very
very handy, as it saved a lot of time.
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| Fig 1.18: Progress of scene 3d on After Effects |
3. Post-Production
I was grateful that the animators compiled their scenes according to
their frames. After importing the audio and .mp4 files into Premiere
Pro, I began to compile everything.
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| Fig 1.19: Adding SFX and compiling clips |
Some frames unfortunately didn't last as long as the audio, therefore
there were some black cuts in between the transitions. To fix this, I
altered the speed duration of some of the clips, and added frame hold to
some others. After adding in SFX from freesounds.com, the video was
finally complete!
Final Outcome:
Fig 1.20: Final Illustration Frame Compilation [PDF]
Feedback
Animatic:
The beginning is a bit hard to understand and cluttered, but is good
towards the end.
Animation (Scene 1a):
We were only able to show this scene as we were really short on
time
Difficult to put into context and assess pacing since there is no
audio. However, the finishing of the animation is good. If the rest of
the video is like this, then things are looking good for us.
Reflection
Experience
This is my first experience as a group leader here which has been
mostly stressful as I was constantly worried that my poor sense of
time would affect the group. Creating a mastersheet was quite helpful
so that all our resources were organised and in one place. I tried my
best to stay organised, and make my group members feel heard and
involved as everyone's creative input is important in a
project. My group members were all very nice and hard-working,
however was very quiet at times during discussions. In all other
aspects, everyone got along well, and was very responsible with their
tasks which I am grateful for :) This project was fun and interesting,
but ironically I got burned out towards the end.
Observation
I found myself neglecting my individual tasks in attending to this
one as I felt pressured that I might fail my group members. I
reflected on my experience with an amazing group leader from last year
to understand how she managed things. While I may not have been as
efficient as her, I am happy with my attempt. My group members were
kind enough to help when things got confusing: Firas often helped
summarise tasks, and Christine helped a lot to manage our F.L.I.P.
slides. I also observed that as a leader being
overly democratic may not be the most efficient thing to do
under extreme time constraints as it slows things down, and often
everyone felt lost.
Findings
I have learned a lot from this project. Being direct and assertive in
your communication as a leader are equally important characteristics
as being empathetic and understanding. There are a lot of stages to a
project such as this one, and since the work was passed along from
member to member at different stages, being organised and having a
plan of action are crucial. I'm glad that I got to experience both
illustration and some animation aspects in this project. I hope my
lovely group members found this to be a pleasant learning experience
as much as I did.
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