"Interruption"
An Animated Short
Designing something can be a great accomplishment. But to make that design move can really feel like you've brought something to life. For this project, I set out to design something entertaining that I could turn into an animated short. I wanted to be able to make people laugh if only for a quick moment.
Brainstorming and Storyboards
Over a year ago, I began an Instagram profile for sharing drawings and comics on Post-It notes. As part of this channel, I created a comic called "The Perfect Family." It was meant to showcase various parts of my life in fun little comic strips. I used one of these comics as a basis for my animation.
Once I had chosen my idea, I worked on a storyboard for my animation. This allowed me to figure out how everything was going to move and what assets I would need to create in Adobe Illustrator.
Animatic and Vector Assets
For my animatic, I sketched out assets in Procreate on the iPad Pro. I put each asset that would need to move into its own layer. This process would help me out later when it came to creating the Illustrator assets. Each of these assets would need to be in its own layer to transfer over to After Effects easily.
I created the assets for my animation in Adobe Illustrator. I made sure that anything that needed to change during the video had multiple states designed. I also made sure that everything that needed to move was on a separate layer. My design itself was very well-received. Once I got feedback and made sure that everything was right, I moved on to After Effects to make things move.
Final Animation
My final animation relied heavily on feedback from others. Their invaluable input helped me notice and fix issues with my animation such as timing and scaling. I needed to work on when things happened in relation to other movements on the screen to avoid any distractions.
I ended up creating new a few new assets to improve upon my original designs. I also added a title card and post-credit stinger to the end to get in one additional comedic moment.
Conclusion
This is my first time using Adobe After Effects, so I had a lot to learn. I still do. But I was able to use what little knowledge I had to create something that I could be proud of.
I am very pleased with how everything turned out. I think the design itself looks better than I originally envisioned. And when I showed this video to others, they all laughed. So I accomplished my original goal to entertain.
