10/12/20
For class tomorrow, we are expected to bring a refined script, a storyboard, as well as some music choices.
I began by searching for my music since I wanted to form my script and storyboard based around the music. I looked for something upbeat, bold, engaging, and something that has room for me to make impactful transitions with. Serifa is bold, eye-catching, modern, and has potential of making an impactful typeface video with.
The three songs I have in mind are:
- Attitude- Lewis OfMan
- Aegean Okra- Bromeliad Music
- Former Slacker- Bromeliad Music
A similar trait between all these songs is that that have a strong, interesting beat and they are all moderately cheerful. I am leaning towards Aegean Okra because the beats have rhythm which complement the Serifa graphic I made on my spread.
After looking for music and finding the general sound I was going for, I had a better sense of what kind of graphics I wanted to include — pop, flashy, colorful, and bold.
For the script, I have a general idea and a common pattern of what I want to include in my video. However, I am still contemplating of whether to include the history first or the characteristics first. I am also still thinking of whether to include my personified “She is — —” in my video.
10/13/20
Today I am working on digitizing my storyboard. Now that I can add color, I am debating on which colors I should use and how many colors I should use. I am thinking of working around the color pallete I have in my spread, but I am exploring my option of adding more colors if I want to. Here are some of the colors I was looking at or considering:
I liked how vibrant the colors were but I am not too sure of how it will go with my final spread color. The colors above and the color of my spread are very different and I think I will have to choose whether I will continue to explore the color
Although the song Aegean Okra was very engaging, I realized that the ending portion of it was dragged out and very stagnant. I looked for more songs and decided to go with “Fever” by J.Y. Park. This song is very theatrical, upbeat and kind of reminded me of swing music.
As for the color, I knew I wanted to stick to the colors I chose on my spread because it was very bold and I wanted my spread and video to be consistent. I tried to add a few more colors to make it more interesting but after a few thumbnail iterations, I realized it was a little too much and chaotic. I chose to stick to the dark purple, orange, pink , and tan colors.
My initial approach to this video was refining as I went, however, that made the whole process very slow. I decided to map out the entire minute through thumbnails before I further animated my video. I wanted a solid plan and idea of how I would animate each scene in the video before actually making it.
Now I had to animate it on After Effects! I only used this program once in freshman year so my technical abilities were very limited. It took me around a few days to get really used to this program and begin comfortably relaying my visual thumbnails to animated frames.
While animating this video, I realized the introduction of the song really reflected the mood of “introducing” a big star. I just visualized big curtains and an MC saying “the next singer we have today is…” Taking this idea, I really played with keeping the viewer on their toes, with the letter forms coming in and out, and using descriptive words to describe the font before introducing the name. I really wanted to “tease” them in the first 10 seconds!
While iterating, a few problems I had to figure out was how to animate to the beat while also keeping clarity and good pace. The song is very fast and I learned that I had to give up a few beats if I wanted to keep communication clear. Some visual elements I had in mind that required many beats, I had to cut short because the script would need more time to be read. Although at times this was a little disappointing, I realized that in projects like this, communication comes first and then the fun visual elements. This class is called COMMUNICATIONS studio anyways!!
Final Crit 10/22/20
Today, everyone in my class showed their final video and we had professors like Kyuha Shim (Q), Kristin Hughes, and Dylan Vitone joining us to give us feedback!! Here are some of the feedback I received:
- The word “Univers” is squiggling around very slightly that should be adjusted
- The counter highlight in the letterform “d” is off and should be adjusted
- the small graphic portions could be refined a little more. and centering the words based off of how it looks rather than the grid.
Other than these technical feedback, the professors seemed to like the pace and my creative take on representing Serifa! I wanted to give Serifa a lot of personality and make my video super engaging. Personally, I am very satisfied with the video I created and that is what matters the most!
FINAL VIDEO:
Reflection:
I remember I saw the current junior’s typeface videos when I was a freshman and I was so intrigued. I couldn’t wait to work on it when I became a sophomore. Throughout the entire project, I had a lot of fun thinking of the different ways I could express my typeface and it was really satisfying just playing back the animation throughout my work process. Of course there were moments where I got frustrated while animating but it was all worth it at the end. I learned many things like how to plan for an animation, priorities in communication design, and how to give myself enough time for refinement at the end.
