Information Design- Final Project: Animated Infographics

on

13/1/2023- 3/3/2023 / Week 1 - Week 8
Chuah Kwai Pin / 0348376
Information Design / Bachelor of Design (Hons) in Creative Media / Taylor's University 
Final Project: Animated Infographics

INSTRUCTIONS


LECTURES

All lectures have been completed in Information Design: Exercises, FLIP Topics and Practical

TASKS

Week 1:

We were required to share our personal experience on burnout. Limited to 30 minutes writing time.

Fig. 1.1 Personal experience on burnout

Our next group task is to research a little more about what burnout is all about. All of us compiled our findings into one Google Docs and also left the source for where we found it from.

Fig. 1.2 Group Burnout Research

Week 2:

For this week, we were required to breakdown the final project's script and voiceover according to the keypoints. We are to breakdown the duration, scenes, visual suggestion and graphics in a spreadsheet.

Fig. 1.3 Final Project's Script Breakdown

Week 4:

After breaking down the script, we began working on the draft animatic with the visual sketches and voiceover synced together. I worked on the first 37s part of the introduction and included most of the visual suggestions that I had planned out.

Fig. 1.4 Draft Animatic - First 37s

Once all of us were done with our draft animatic, we then compiled it all together for the first round of checking.

Draft Animatic

Fig. 1.4 Burnout Draft Animatic

Week 6:

After finalising our draft animatic, we then moved on to discuss how we want to split the work amongst ourselves. Since we have 8 group members, we have decided to split ourselves into 4 illustrators and 4 animators. I have chosen to take up the animator role because I found it quite fun from my experience with the previous project.

Fig. 1.5 Delegation of work 

We then started discussing the kind of character art style we would like to go for so that it will be consistent throughout the whole video. In the end, we decided to go for a bear to be our main character. Our illustrators drafted out a few sketches of the bear's body and also the expressions that will be useful in the context of the burnout video.

Fig. 1.6 Character Moodboard

Week 7:

Our illustrators began illustrating the assets based on the draft animatic with all the layers already separated so that it will be easier for us animators to animate. All of the files were labeled with timing of the voiceover so that we know which scene belongs to which.

Fig. 1.7 Illustrated Assets (Ai files)

I decided to take up the first 37s to animate since I also did the same in my draft animatic. The illustrators did a great job in creating the assets, but there were just a  few assets that were not separated into layers to be animated so I had to separate it on Adobe Illustrator. Other than that, the animation process went pretty smoothly. It did take me quite a long time since there were so many layers, but it turned out great so I didn't mind the work.

Fig. 1.8 Animation progress - First 37s

First Animatic

Fig. 1.9 First 37s animation

After finishing my first animation scene, I moved onto another scene that was from 2:19 to 2:55. Before I worked on this part, I referred to another scene that was animated by my teammate to see if there was anything that I needed to keep the same. I realised that the words in the previous scenes had a bit of wiggling effect so I went to consult my teammate on how the effect was achieved so I can also apply it in my own animation to keep the consistency. 

I watched the tutorial video that my teammate sent me for reference and it was really helpful because I managed to create the same effect as well. I used fractal noise and displacement map to achieve this result.

Fig. 1.10 Animation progress - Word effect

Second Animatic

Fig. 1.11 Second animation

After all the animation parts were done, we then compiled all of our videos together and then submitted it as our final burnout animation. We also added subtitles to our video through the subtitles function in YouTube studio.


Fig. 1.12 Group Animation 
Fig. 1.13 Adding subtitles 

It was my first time using this function but I got used to it really quickly. I adjusted the timings so that it would appear when the sentence is being narrated.

Final Outcome




FEEDBACK

Week 5:
- Some of the scenes were not conveyed well enough
- Might need subtitles as a caption

REFLECTION

While working on this project, I have learned new things about Adobe After Effects and also tried out new animation skills. I was honestly quite drained when I was doing my part of the animation because there were a lot of layers that had to be fixed, which I find it to be unnecessary if we had communicated well as a team. Our working pace also began to slow down overtime and I was getting a little demotivated at how we were getting by. However, I am grateful to some of my teammates who were still passionate about seeing the end of the assignment and actively do their parts as they were given. Although we did work a little slowly this time, I am still glad that our final outcome turned out well.

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