Merritt Lum
Multimedia Digital Artist
Artstation (3D works):
https://www.artstation.com/merrittlum121
Contact:
mgl13@sfu.ca
Date:
March - April 2022
Software Used:
After Effects, Inkscape
Overview
This project, made for SFU's Digital Image Design class, was made on the basic premise of creating kinetic typography (animating words to give weight and personality to them) and motion graphics to transcribe an audio clip in a creative way; this uses audio from German personality Flula, taken from a particularly strange vlog of his, titled Escape Goat? Please Make Me That. (8:02am), found here.
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Independently made in After Effects (save for a few original drawings), this was largely an experience in learning & executing standalone motion graphics in the software; while I had done some before, my main experience in After Effects was in VFX, and I had never done motion graphics as being the main focus of a video, only as a supplementary element.
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Process
The overall creation process was highly spontaneous, iterative, and learning-based; though I had most general ideas & the aesthetic direction set out during initial storyboarding, most time was spent figuring out the finer details of scenes, how to execute them, and iterating & adding on to the video based on sudden ideas.
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One scene captures this particularly well; in the sequence from about 0:47 - 0:55, the initial plan was to simply cut to a simple nature scene of goats, and then have the large "stupid" come down and crush them, with no real consideration of how to transition into or out of the scene smoothly. However, thinking more on it, I realized I could have the scene transition instead into a TV displaying a nature documentary, with the "camera" slowly pulling back, and then having the "stupid" knock the "TV" out of frame, making the scene both more memorable and adding to the comedic element.
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To accommodate this, I had to implement a mix of existing knowledge and new learnings; the TV effect, for one, was made using effects I had used in earlier projects, whereas the 3D depth effect in the nature scene was taken from class learnings, and animating the "stupid" in particular required learning more on animation principles and fine-tuning the animation to properly sell its weight. Though this was likely the most work-intensive scene, many went through a similar process.
Project Type:
Kinetic Typography / Motion Graphics
One of the main ideas I had for the project was, to give it a more unique & cohesive visual identity, to make a variety of vector drawings to be used throughout the video, done in a geometric and flat-color style, allowing me to add more visual representations to scenes without distracting from the text too much. While I likely should have better established a color palette for them and used them more widely throughout, I feel this was largely successful in helping the project.
Reflection
Overall, I feel that this project allowed me to both put my existing skillset into practice, whilst learning more about an adjacent field, creating a result with a good bit I find to be proud of; that said, I think I could have done better in creating a stronger & more cohesive visual language of the project, and perhaps should have shot for more consistently strong ideas than focusing particularly hard on a few sections, regardless of how well they turned out.