Created as a bumper into a message by a guest speaker at Awaken, this project took a few attempts to communicate the core concept. Many designers struggle with articulating what their core concept is. Understanding the core concept is the key to unlocking the design. It’s like writing a story. Once you know the personality of your lead character, the story practically writes itself.
The next thing is just as important. Once I’ve honed in the core concept the very next thought (often subconscious) is:
What do I want people to feel?
Nostalgic? Creative? Tranquil? Anxious? Contemplative? Assured? Curious? All of the above?
Do I want people to feel light and fluffy or do I contrast rest with the chaos that is our lives? In the end, I chose a bit of both. The white backdrop with the pattern behind the logo (see 0:30 of the below vid) reminds me of a pillow or a plush comforter. The intro of the video being tied to the to-do list gave the short video a bit of tension and release. Even a narrative arc, if you will.
Here are a few practical things that I did as I got the project started:
- So the main element needed to create the to-do list was simply a high resolution png file of lined paper. I rotated it in Z-space to give it believability as an actual 3 dimensional object. I also tiled the paper to continue the list beyond the size of the original png file.
- After copying a relatively true-to-life to-do list that I or my wife would make and entering it into a text layer, I was almost ready to begin animating.
- Before creating keyframes within the timeline, I needed the position of my objects to become interdependent. I did so by pick-whipping (an After Effects term) the position of the text layer to the tiled paper layer. I rotated the camera on the Y axis a bit and also pushed it back in Z-space while moving the position down along the Y axis.
I could get into many more of the details but those are the main ones the helped this video take form in a relatively simple way.
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