Time is your advantage
Background
Time as we say waits for no man, it is an endless cycle of seconds, minutes, hours, unto years. Most times, we get blindsided by the shorter end of time, and when stuck on a thing for days, or months, we tend to feel that is all to it. But on a wider scale of things, when you look at time in the long run, we would see how things tend to work out very well over a long period of time.
For example, Learning a skill can be very tedious in the first few months, but over years of consistency in it, you would gain mastery and relevance through that skill. Time here worked to your advantage. It is a message for patience.
This project was completed in 7.5 hours, right from the conception to rendering.
Conception
The message being passed in this piece is metaphoric, but I chose to go with literal depictions of time to explain my point. Hence, the use of the wall clock, the stopwatch, and the hourglass
Having thought of it well, I chose to go with the stroked animation style, because it posed as the best way to convey the message I wanted to convey. I needed a calm way of passing the message, and using stroked animation worked for me.
Process
Writing
I have come to see that the very first thing to do in any animation project, is to write down ideas, as it helps clarify them for you. I took some minutes to pen down the ideas I had for the title, hence having a clear direction for the next phase.
Storyboard
I made some sketches using storyboarder to bring to life the idea I had penned down, and this phase really helped me visualize my idea, and right there, I started making tweaks to the story.
Styleframes
Having created a storyboard, I took some time to flesh them out in Illustrator, to see how viable my idea was, and how exactly each scene would flow together
Moodboard
I gathered a moodboard using pinterest, and I was able to draw inspiration from some of the pieces as shown below. This moodboard came particularly helpful when I got stuck, as I was able to draw ideas on how to go about the challenges after revisiting them again.
Challenge
One constant challenge I faced throughout the creation process was seeing that an idea I either penned, storboarded, or designed didn’t really go well while animating. The problem I see is that I did not clearly define transitions. I defined scenes quite well, but how one would transition into the other was not clear, hence the reason for me being stuck.
It is a challenge I hope to conquer in my future projects, as after defining the story, I got stuck animating, because the flow was not really pleasing to the eye, ,while animating, even though it sounded good in my head, while concepting.
Sound Design
I collaborated on this piece with John Green, a sound designer, and I am super excited about the great work he did on the sound. He really brought the project to life!
Takeaways
Having completed the project in 7.5 hours, it would be the first time ever I would be completing a project as this, in that time, I know now, that anything is possible if we push ourselves to do it. I know the piece is not perfect, but I look forward to making right all the mistakes in subsequent pieces moving forward.
Thanks for viewing.