A Break From ‘The Norm’
Those expecting a Discovery Time on design will be disappointed as I’ve broken free from my silo and branched out into animation.
I’ve always wanted to add animation to my skillset. Hence, I thought I’d put my discovery time (and a lot of free time) into creating a reasonably ambitious (for me) animation. I’d dabbled with After Effects before in jazzing up illustrations and logos that I’ve created in the past; so for this project, I wanted to create a ‘feature-length’ animation.
Inspiration
Early on, I decided I wanted to animate my experience of lockdown. There was the obvious advantage that living in a 1m2 London flat meant I didn’t have much choice but to do so; so no expansive scenery or backgrounds to worry about and not a lot of character movement.
The Story
In terms of the story, I wanted to show the repetition of lockdown life and the mental challenges that can arise, but I wanted to represent this in a light-hearted way. To add to this effect, time passes faster as the animation progresses, exaggerating the sense of repetition. The changing artworks on the wall work as a metaphor of the characters mental state and the plant flowering at the end signifies potential hope or renewal (I’m a smelly hippie).
Creating The Animation
Stylistically, I tried to keep it as simple as possible as a lot is going on all at once. To achieve this, I made sure to use bold, flat colours and lines to distinguish the different elements.
Whenever I struggled with the world of animation and After Effects, I explored the wealth of Youtube tutorials on simple motion design; helping me create this within the time limit I’d set for myself.
