Motion Design
Illustration | Typography | Animation
Illustrator | After Effects | Character Animator
– Project Overview –
This motion design is a visualization of a talk given by Laura Bates called everyday sexism. The idea for this animation was to use puppet like figures to bring attention to important points in Laura’s talk. Adobe character animator was used to bring the characters to life.
– Design Process –
Visual Inventory
To begin thinking of ideas for this project, a visual inventory video was created. The video details different styles and visuals that could be used in the animation. It is a good way to compile all of the ideas into one place to get feedback from peers.
Initial Styles
After creating the visual inventory, three distinct styles were created to narrow the concept and style of the animation. All three of the styles are for the same frame of the animation, where Laura says “Sexism doesn’t exist in the UK”. The first style is a cut paper puppet show style, where the characters would be on sticks. The second style shows a character interacting with a brick wall. The third style shows the character interacting with the words that she says and brings emphasis to the statement.
Story Board
After evaluating the initial styles, a 64-panel digital story board was created by combining the first and third styles into one cohesive style. The idea was to show the characters interacting with each other and with the important words that Laura says. This story board was then turned into a test animation to show the timing of the transitions before moving into creating the final assets for the animation.
Sketch Animation
Example Style Frames
After the example animation was approved, the final assets for the animation were created. To have a better idea of what the animation should look like, some example frames of the final animation were created. A protest scene with 5 women, a newspaper with three men in a photo, and a scene where letters are falling onto the main woman in the animation.
In Progress / Working with Character Animate
To animate each individual character, a puppet of each character was created in adobe character animate. Each of the characters facial expressions was individually animated using face tracking software within character animate. The arms and other movements were then added to make them come to life. Once the scene was completed in character animate it was imported into after effects and backgrounds and other details were added.