Overview
In a visual communication course at CMU, I was tasked to create a 45-second-to-1-minute-long video explaining a design principle of my choice using Adobe After Effects. Since I'm always fascinated by the visual hierarchy in design, I wanted to pick a related design principle and landed on "dominance."
My personal goals in this project included communicating clearly without a voiceover and making the video fun to watch.
PROJECT TYPE
TIMELINE
MY ROLES
Process
Once having a design principle in mind, I began researching it and drafting a brief outline of the video content. The main points that I wanted to cover were the following.
- What is dominance?
- Why is it important?
- A practical example showing how it is used.
Storyboarding
Then I started making a detailed script but decided to move straight to storyboarding because I didn't have a voiceover and because I'd like to visualize the elements and movements while crafting the story.
Adobe After Effects
Without completely finalizing my storyboard, I moved to After Effects because I realized that the pace of my video was going to be highly dependent on the music that I had chosen and I had to get familiar with the tool early in order to determine what exactly I can and want to accomplish in it.
Reflection
As my first attempt at animation and at Adobe After Effects, this project taught me a lot about the basics of animation and best practices when using multiple Adobe software. I was able to see the growth in my ability to produce animation that's more dynamic through the progression of this project, which also means that I would like to rework on the beginning portion of my video.
The process involved many live tutorials in class, YouTube tutorials on my own and feedback sessions with my peers, TAs and instructors. But I'm very proud of how my video turned out in the end.
