Chi’s World – Self Portrait Motion Graphics

Task: Create a motion graphic piece that uses animated images, shapes or footages to express yourself. The piece can be a literal expression or yourself or a projected/imaginary self in the future.

Final Piece

Concept

What a lot of people don’t know is that under the reserved facade that I show, I am in fact a little bit crazy as my mom would like to call me, haha. I thought it’d be interesting to show that aspect in the form of animation. I used a plain container box to represent this facade. I would then open up the box to reveal colours spilling out, to represent the “inner” me that is often reserved for family/close friends.

Storyboards

The initial idea of colours spilling out was kept. However in the end I cut out the alien part (that was meant to represent an “external force”) due to time constraint (and also uncertain of solution). I added in scenes as I executed the shots, based on what feels right.

Inspiration

Besides actual motion graphic animations, I was actually inspired by Japanese poster designs. The colour schemes are extremely striking yet harmonised. The visuals of the posters also prompted me to think back on things that relate to me back then and now, which became the motifs included in the short.

PROCESS

I tried to visualise the final outcome through more detailed storyboards. The toughest part of this project was planning out the shots and transitions.

I created the assets in Illustrator (characters / motifs) and Photoshop (background). I animated them fully using After Effects.

 

I had trouble with this cat popping out sequence as I did not know how to go about animating swirly lines at first. I thought of using Stroke but the lines were too rigid for what I was going for. I decided to look around for tutorials and found that using Roughen Edges and Turbulent Displace helped achieve the soft liquidly feel. I was still dissatisfied with the look as the lines had uniform width throughout. So I installed a Tapered Stroke plugin to achieve the tapered ends.

 

I also tried using the Puppet Tool for simple fish animation.

 

 

The worlds that I created convey a childlike innocence and playfulness, which reflects who I am inside. The art style is pretty flat and hand drawn to go with the playful theme of the animation.

Takeaways

This is my first ever project done using After Effects. The main takeaway would be that projects using After Effects requires lots of planning. Surprisingly I did not face much problem with the actual execution since I could easily look for solutions online. I was mainly stuck at the transitions because I did not plan those well enough. I also underestimated how much assets I’d need to create.

Through the project I learnt how to use different effects, some of which were not taught in class like Turbulent Displace and Roughen Edges. Overall, I think I am now less intimidated by the software.