Task Description
The aim of this assessment is to create a kinetic typography animation sequence based on an audio clip of your choice. The audio may be sourced from film, television, a song, or simply spoken word.
There are three components to this assessment: (1) animation sequence, (2) project documents, and (3) a video reflection
Animation Sequence
- Animations should be created with Adobe After Effect
- Duration: 40-60 seconds
- Aspect ratio: 1920x1080 HD
- Frame rate: 25fps
- Export format: H264 .mp4
- Sequences should demonstrate a range of animation and typographic techniques.
Project Documents
- Audio Clip
- Color Scheme
- Style Board
These project documents will be required for final submission
Video Reflection
- Each team member prepares a 5-minute individual video.
- Describe your contribution to the animation in relation to the other students’ work (contextualised within the activities of the team)
- Your experience doing a collaborative project.
- What you learned in completing this task
Students should provide a YouTube/Vimeo hyperlink to their video reflection and supply this with their project documents.
The project is to be entirely original.
Stages of Development
1. Audio Choice
We've decided to use our song as our audio choice. We're looking for something upbeat that would be easy to translate into the bright mood we are aiming for. This choice was made keeping the PG requiremnet of the brief in mind.
Options
Happy ~ Pharrell Williams
Things associated with happiness/ 'Happy'
- Smiles
- Circles
- Children
- Cute animals
- Despicable me (minions)
Colors associated with happiness/ 'Happy'
- Bright colours predominetly yellow
Fonts associtaed with happiness/ 'Happy'
- Retro
- Thin
- Calligrapghy
Style Inspiration for 'Happy'
(I like this sucker one)
(This is from 8 years ago, with a lot less resources than we have now so i like it for motivation)
Dance The Night - Dua Lipa
Things associated with 'Dance The Night'
- dancing
- discos
- lights
- sparkles
- shininess
- neon
- stage lights
Colors associated with 'Dance The Night'
- Bright colours, mainly pinks, blues, whites, yellow. Mostly neon colours and bright variations of most colours could be nice.
Fonts associated with 'Dance The Night'
- modern sans serif fonts (Helvetica, San Francisco etc)
- Retro fonts
Style inspiration for 'Dance The Night'
Viva la Vida - Coldplay
Associations with Viva la Vida
- Hopeful melancholy
- Clearing skies
- Moving on
- Recollection of the past
- Walking through a forest alone
- A fallen kingdom
- Processing war
Colours associated with Viva la Vida
- Dark background colours
- Select few bright colours, for example a bright blue sky or the yellow of the sun
Fonts associated with Viva la Vida
- Thin serif fonts
- Thick brushed calligraphy
Potential examples of fonts
Style inspiration with Viva la Vida
While the complexity of this type of style is quite big, the contrast between elements is quite stark at points, which I believe suits Viva la Vida. The transition from 24 seconds to 26 seconds from the dark background into lighter colours could also be interesting use for the hopeful melancholy feeling of the song.
Final Choice
After discussion, and through consideration we unanimously chose Dua Lipa's dance the Night as our audio of choice as we see the potential to create a vibrant video with some interesting effects and disco aesthetic.
Alistar's note
The beat is a key part of this song so it should be kept in mind in our ideation process.
Splitting the audio
Each member of the group is to tackle a designated 20 second time allocation as outlined in the brief. However, we noticed that starting at 0.0 does not allow each member to have an equal lyrical portion of the song. Thus, Adrian studied the song and made 2 options in which the workload is more balanced and the song does not end abruptly.
We choose the 1.10 option with the following part breakdown
Nicole - Section 1 – 23.40
Harry - Section 2 – 22.25
Adrian -Section 3 – 24.36
We chose brainstorm ideas for these parts separately and thereafter review each part to ensure coherency.
- Nicole's Part (0-20)
So, I have done a line-by-line breakdown and put the word I want to focus on in bold. I have added the idea I have for it, the asset I will need to make to do it and a reference image for that asset. I haven't added what I'll do with the text or transition yet.
Intro Title ' Dance the Night by Dua Lipa'
Strobe Disco floor with tiles written 'Dance the Night',(switches colours) then by Dua Lipa appears.
- Dance Floor
- 2 sets of colourful tiles
Baby, you can find me under the lights
- Idea: Have a disco ball spinning
- Asset: Disco ball
Diamonds under my eyes
- Two Diamonds for eyes and just have the words under my eyes where a mouth should be.
- Assets: Diamonds
Turn the rhythm up,
- Have a DJ mixer volume up go up as the word turn the rhythm up move up in a step ladder in the screen.
- Asset: DJ mixer
Don't you wanna just, Come along for the ride?
- Roller skate shoes across the bottom bringing in transition
- Asset: Roller skate shoes
Oh, my outfit so tight
- Write the lyrics in the shape of an hour glass or write every word normally except tight which will have its shape outilined the word briefly
You can see my heartbeat tonight
- Idea: Neon power puff girls type heart
- Assets: Hearts (multiple?)
2. Develop a color scheme and style board (present to tutor)
We noticed that kinetic typography videos usually have 3 or four main colours. However, disco's use a wide range of colours for this reason we decided to use a number of colours but not use them equally. We also used neon versions of these colours in the video.
We chose Light blue, Pink, Purple and Gold and Blue.
Fonts
We choose a bold font as our main font and selected complementary retro styled fonts.
Main Font
Secondary Font
Tertiary Font
Transitions
We decided not to choose one fixed transition as the randomness would contribute to the chaotic and unpredicatable nature of a disco party.
3. Create visual elements
Section 1 Elements
I chose a 2d vector art style for the assets and added an outer glow effect, so they match the disco theme. I used assets sparingly as the song is very fast paced and overuse of assets would distract from lyrics of the song which are the focus.
Section 2 Elements
Section 3 Elements
For section three, two final art elements were created. These are the cliff edge and the neon heart assets. While other assets, including variations on these aforementioned assets, were created, they were found to be unnecessary and distracting for the final version of the section. Both were designed with a using the colour scheme and made from simple lines to represent a neon signage like effect.
4. Create the After Effects project with the correct specifications and import the visual elements
5. Block and polish the animation, equitably dividing the animation production between team members.
As we worked on our portions seperatly we dicussed key feautres to ensure a seemless tranistin i.e the ending colour of one section would be the starting section of another. We reviewed and critqued each others drafts before submitting and combing
6. Finalise the animation and export
The 3 sections separately (note these are a mesh of drafts and final submissions).
Final Product
This Project Documentation was curated by Harrison Job, AdrianBuijk and Nicole Chipangura