Post-Internet Project Animation
This Animation was illustrated in Adobe Illustrator and the motion design was done in Adobe After Effects
The narration was written and performed by Annie Margaret
The Process
1. Draft a Creative Brief
I did some work collaborating with the CEO of Post-Internet Project on a general description of what the animation would include, who the target audience would be, what we wanted the viewer to walk away with (outcome/goals) and included some mood boards and visions of the illustrative style of the animation that were good options for inspiration.
3. Create Illustrations in Adobe Illustrator
Using the color palette as a guide, and the style inspiration from the mood boards, I used Adobe Illustrator to create the illustrations and used an extension called "Overlord" to push the layers directly into Adobe after effects for each scene. This process was tedious as designing each layer for motion, especially the characters requires special care. Each scene became its own file of illustration layers. I had to veer out of the original color palette just for object context and thing the coloring could probably still use some work but ended up pretty happy with the quality of illustrations that resulted from about 2 weeks of working on them.
5. Animate illustration in Adobe After Effects
The motion design took about a month and a half. I started with the rough movements of when things needed to be and where the ended up, built the transition between scenes, and then went on to adjust the smaller movements (which I could probably continue to fine tune infinitely). This was an incredibly challenging process, with thousands of keyframes guiding the motion of each layer. Certain built-in effects were used as well, but about 97% of all movement was custom. The most challenging part of the animation was certainly the walk-cycle which took many tries to get right for each character.
2. Build a script & Storyboard
The CEO and I worked to build a storyboard with the scenes we wanted to include and then added a script for each scene. This part took some time and required a lot of changes in the end, but it was a good structure for how to start illustrating the animation and gave us a good idea of the elements, scenes and characters we really wanted to include.
4. Record the Audio
The Audio was recorded by the CEO, and ultimately set a standard and skeleton for the timing of transitions and movement in general. It was important to get a high-quality audio file before designing any of the motion.
