Thrive Sustainably
Brief
Chose an RSA brief and created a prototype for it.
Client
RSA
Timeframe
13 weeks
Programs Used:
Illustrator
Procreate
After Effects
Photoshop
The RSA brief I chose was the moving picture’s brief called: Ambitious cities. The question the brief is trying to answer is, “How do we meet the needs of all people within the means of our one planet?” The transcript talks about thriving cities, their development, but also how that development led to global warming. It, therefore, poses the question of how thriving cities around the world can continue to thrive sustainably.
Before starting any project for year 2, I wanted to make sure that I incorporated the Design Thinking principle into my work. This was one of the main comments for improvement that I got last year and therefore, thought it would be good to have this diagram above as a guide while I did all my design work from now on.
Empathise
To make sure I empathised with the viewer of my animation, I created an empathy map where I explored what the audience would they would: say, hear, do, think and see. This allowed me to understand what topics and ideas my animation needed to target.
Define
For defining the problem, I looked at the brief in detail and made sure to highlight the keywords and topics the transcript is focusing on. This way I would be sure that my animation is relevant to the audio file.
Ideate
The ideate stage came in with my research, mood board, colour pallet and storyboard, as this is what helped me generate the idea for the animation.
Prototype
Prototyping for this project was me experimenting with different programs, animation styles, and illustrative assets as it took me a while to figure out which direction to go in with all three.
Test
The final and hardest step was the testing, which for this project was trying to put an animation together.
I created an empathy map as a way of better connecting with the audience of the animation. Since I can’t possibly know who will watch the video, I could not create personas, so an empathy map still allowed me to have some idea of what the audience might think, see, say, hear and do.
Once I had my target audience figured out with the empathy map, I moved on to exploring the transcript and making sure I understood the message it was trying to get across. I did this by taking the transcript and reading it through several times, highlighting any keywords or sentences that sparked ideas for the storyboard.
The key message I got from the transcript is: How can thriving cities be more sustainable?
For the mood board, I looked into different styles of animation and illustration as by this point, I still was not sure as to which direction my animation would follow.
Perhaps the most important part of the process for me was research. I broke my research into two sections: researching sustainability in thriving cities (as this was the main theme of the brief) and researching animation. Since animation is a completely new skill to me and although quite intimidating, I believed that for me to develop the skill, I would have to understand it first through research.
Researching sustainability in thriving cities would give me a good insight as to what to include in the animation video.
I focused my research on one specific city, Dubai, and found out how such a thriving and developing city plans to become sustainable. If Dubai could do it, could other cities around the world follow in their footsteps as well?
This is what my case study focused on. If you would like to see more of my research on sustainability in Dubai or read my case study please click the button below.
Colour schemes and harmonies:
There is two colours model: the RGB model for primary colours and the CMY model for secondary colours. Since I the brief requires a digital animation I will be using the RGB model as it is used in computer graphics.
I will be using monochromatic and complementary colour schemes for the animation.
Colour terminology:
The first thing I had to learn about colour theory is the terminology. The are three key terms that are associated with colour and those are:
Hue: the colour, tone, shade or tint
Saturation: the colourfulness
Value: Lightness
Colour psychology and emotions:
Psychologist Robert Plutchik developed one of the popular emotion wheels, known as the Plutchik wheel, where he suggested that people experience eight core emotions, which he arranged in opposite pairs on the wheel:
sadness and joy
anger and fear
expectation and surprise
acceptance and disgust
Example of 2D animation
Example of hand-drawn animation
Animation Styles I will be using:
2D Animation: When the images have only two dimensions – width and height.
Hand-Drawn Animation: The classic hand-drawn look of the old Disney movies with each animated element being drawn by the artist, only I will be drawing on the iPad rather than paper.
Motion graphics: A style of animation that adds movement to graphic design elements like typography, geometric shapes, and simple illustrations.
The 12 principles of animation were create by Disney animators Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas in 1981. The principles were based on what animators in Disney were doing and have now become the industry standard. I thought this was a great way to understand what makes a simple animation come to life. Even though I could not incorporate all 12 principles in my animation, I found that having them as a guide helped me.
Squash and Stretch
The squash and stretch principle gives the illusion of weight and volume to a character or object as they move.
Anticipation
Anticipation is used to let the audience know that a major action is about to take place.
Staging
Staging is the principle that every pose or action that a character makes should convey a clear intention.
Staging also applies to the movement and placing of the camera.
Straight Ahead Action and Pose-to-Pose
Straight ahead and pose to pose refers to the techniques by which animation is crafted. The pose to pose technique involves drawing the key poses that you’d like the character to take first and then filling in the transitional poses second.
Follow Through and Overlapping Action
The follow through principle argues that when a character is in action and stops, nothing stops all at once.
Ease In, Ease Out
Slow-in and slow-out is another principle designed to add realism to the movement of characters.
Arcs
The arc principle is that almost all actions in life have a slightly circular motion.
Secondary Action:
A secondary action is an additional action that reinforces and adds more dimension to the main action.
Timing
Timing helps create the illusion that an action is abiding by the laws of physics. By adjusting the timing of a scene, animators can make that scene look either slower and smoother or faster and crisper .
Exaggeration:
Exaggeration is all about overstating certain movements in a way that helps evoke a point, yet doesn’t ruin the believability of the scene.
Solid Drawing:
This principle encourages animators to be mindful of the fact that while forms may be presented in 2D, they should strive to look 3D.
Appeal:
This principle posits that animators should strive to create images that will be interesting and compelling to audiences.
During this project, I faced some setbacks that I would like to reflect upon.
The first setback I faced was the actual creation of the animation. I am not an animator and before this project, I have never attempted animation. This was a skill that was brand new to me. Even so, at the beginning of the semester, I was very optimistic that taking on this project would challenge my design skills will also learning a brand new skill. However, I underestimated just how difficult learning animation would be with a project on this scale. Usually, when someone wants to develop animating skills they create 5-10 second videos at a time and slow build-up to the longer projects. This project was supposed to be 1 minute long.
I felt so frustrated with this project, that I restarted it 3 different times, and I am still not happy with the outcome.
Even after all the difficulties with the animation, I do not regret it as I believe it has put into perspective what skills I’m good at and which skills I’m not. I now know to stick to my strengths rather than challenge myself when it comes to a large-scale university project. I will admit, that choosing this brief was a mistake, but one I learnt from and will hopefully not repeat.
The second setback I had with this project was with my time management. This is a project that I was late to start as I simply did not have any ideas for the first couple of weeks of the semester. This was partly because I simply didn’t know how to start the process of creating an animation, but it was also because I felt very unmotivated. I simply did not like the transcript, therefore, I had no idea what to do with it.
Every time I told myself that it was time to do work for the animation, I would find myself going back to my other semester two project, The Closet. This was because I enjoyed that project more and I knew exactly what needed to be done for it, unlike the animation project. This can be seen in the difference between the quality and quantity of the work between the two projects. In hindsight, I do realise that I should’ve changed briefs but unfortunately, by the time I realised it, it was too far into the semester, and I was too far in to change the case study linked to this project.
Needless to say, I really struggled with this project. I simply did not have the skills, resources or necessary time to complete it, which is why the animation is unfinished.
I apologise for the incomplete project, there is no excuse for it, I simply was not skilled or organised enough to complete it, and I take full responsibility for that.