Project 1- Text

For our very first project for our motion class we had to animate words from a list of phrases preselected. We had to keep it strictly to one accent color, and no shapes. This was a very interesting and fun first project to get my feet wet for motion design. Prior to this I have had very little to no knowedge to the program After Effects, but knew that designers were able to create such amazing pieces of art. Just the very idea of combining motion to designs is so intriguing. It gives design a whole new form and medium. Design is all around us, and motion design is no different. From TV ads to promo videos, motion plays a big part in capturing the idea of video, audio, and design coming as one.

For this first project I decided to go with a quote from the very famous Mark Twain, "Courage is the resistance of fear; Mastery of fear; not absence of fear". Something about this quote spoke to me, Mainly because I wanted to give the motion much life. After watching some samples I realized I wanted to give my words a sense of "life" and a story behind it. What I did not realize going into motion design was the amount of pre planning you have to go through before actually starting the animation. I had to think of a concept and try to really get this idea across by making various storyboards. These storyboards are meant to showcase key parts of the animation to really get the idea across. From here I had to design key frames that basically were designed still frames of the animation. For the concept I wanted to personify the words "courage" and "fear" as two characters in my animation. The idea was that courage is scared and that we go into courage's mind. From here we see him battle fear which is suppose to represent a wild animal. This scene is meant to represent the first part of the quote, "Courage is the resistance to fear". For here they exit screen and come back to act out the second part of the quote, "The mastery of fear". This was the hardest part to animate for me, mainly because I was not sure how to even showcase the feeling of courage mastering fear. Finally I thought of the idea of courage whipping fear as lions are whipped by a show master in a circus. This gave the best feeling of courage dominating fear, but still having fear present. Finally we pan out of courage's mind to him breathing easy knowing he has conquered the fear in his mind. This does not mean fear is gone though, which represents the final part of the quote, "not absence of fear".

Overall, this was a fun and exciting way to start off this semester of motion. The final product came out good, however I do wish to revisit this and clean it up. There are definitely parts I can animate better, and make it flow nicer than originally made.