IN TRANSIT

This piece was made for the Parsons School of Design 'Parsons Challenge'

25.12.19

Film/Animation

Director/Animator/Writer/Cinematographer

Following upon the thematic content of my film 'Acceptance'. This film further explores in a more realistic setting, the challenges one faces in changing home and country. Battling with ones animated fears and concerns of navigating a new land.

I shot the film on 18mm wide angle lens to present the physical world in a grand open setting.

I superimposed vector graphics onto planar surfaces by tracking the position, scale and rotation of the surface and motion. I did this in After Effects and at one point incorporated the use of Cinema4D’s more adept tracking system, one of which I am aiming to implement more and more into my projects. I animated the graphics frame by frame by redrawing each frame as I feel this develops a liveliness that cannot be replicated by the manipulation of a graphic simple in After Effects.

I always first sketch out/storyboard my ideas of a concept I have in mind. I sketch out the symbols I wish to present to the audience in communicating my message and thematic qualities of isolation and displacement. I sometimes further sketch out words and sentences I want associated with these themes, these also contribute to dialogue further on in production. Towards the bottom of the page I develop the ideas of interconnectivity and support symbolised by a wide hand pushing past all matters. I became fond of the eye representation, being symbolic of social pressure as well as feeling of being trapped and judged. Following this phase in production I begin to make my illustrations in Adobe Illustrator.

I number my scenes and segment the sequences, while presenting the complementary colour scheme of bold, rather strange hues, to be fitting of the demon. This colour scheme is always easy to draw from as I keep it side by animated sequence. I further draw out the range of motion, with all major poses of the asset being drawn out first, before filling in the frames upon 2x2's meaning every second frame is animated. This helps plot the correct motion and look of the assets without committing to full animation.

I 3D tracked the motion of the camera and paired this with a null object, and thus finally pairing this with the asset, keeping it in place. I added various effectors such as motion blur, gaussian blur and a glow in this piece as well a a drop shadow to make this sequence appear as realistic as possible. I believe the glow added a more interesting, 3D dimensional effect. I also used the curve editor to get the correct ease of animation.