What Can I F#&K!%G Get You!?
I really wanted all of Scott’s dialogue to feel like it was being drowned out by Julie Powers, so his dialogue was made intentionally small throughout, with hers varying in size dramatically. His dialogue is also kept intentionally stationary and is revealed in a fairly standard manner, whereas her shouting whips onto the screen, moves the camera, and shoves his dialogue aside. I had the words from her rant fall on the screen to really emphasize the fact that she was completely trampling over Scott, and I thought the effect illustrated this nicely.
Her cursing was created by shifting between multiple frames of type and symbols as well as switching the colours between black and white before landing on black, which made it stand out from the rest of her dialogue. The only other times her dialogue is black is when she’s actively shouting at the beginning and end.
The main thing I wanted to do with this video was really distill the style of the graphic novels, without directly copying it. By using this style as a basis I could create colourful, dynamic visuals that drew attention to the type without detracting from the animation. I used bright primary colours along with white and yellow to create a high degree of contrast, and switched between them regularly to create interest and keep the composition fresh.
Stylistically I really wanted the video to have a stop-motion feel to it along with a bit of grain, to further bring to mind the paperback nature of the graphic novels. The grain was made using a similar technique to one I used in my second project, and the stop motion effect was based on a video tutorial by Ben Marriott on YouTube. This took my animations and gave them a bit of an accent, really bringing together the atmosphere I wanted to create.
Motion Graphics
Role
Two of my motion design projects. I try to create stylish, interesting animation that pulls the viewer in and really emphasizes the themes present in text and audio.
Timeline
Tools
Animator
Illustration
Adobe Illustrator
Adobe After Effects
Adobe Photoshop
3 months
Seconds - Graphic Novel Animation
I started the project hoping to take the soft pastel aesthetic of the graphic novel, and turn it into something that works well in motion. Alongside that, I decided I wanted to tell the story of how things slowly went wrong by counting down the steps she takes when she eats the mushrooms - simultaneously counting down the seconds in the video. A few things from these initial mockups didn’t make it in, like the mushrooms and some of the more illustrative pieces, since I decided to focus more on the typography.
After deciding how I wanted to narratively pace the piece, I had to decide on the aesthetic. Thankfully Seconds has a very strong use of colour, and I was able to choose colours similar to that. One thing I strongly deviated from was the typeface; Seconds uses a strong sans-serif typeface similar to Helvetica, and a bold decorative typeface on the inside for chapter numbers. In my case I wanted to use something similar to hand lettering, which would ideally bring to mind its nature as a graphic novel. Alongside that, I decided that I wanted the text to wiggle, and chose a typeface suited to that.