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Qistina Nuralya Maria Binti Azly / 0354180
Information Design / Bachelors of Design (Honours) in Creative Media / Taylor's University
FINAL PROJECT: ANIMATED INFOGRAPHICS - HOW TO BE A STRAIGHT-A STUDENT
Table of contents
1. MODULE INFORMATION BOOKLET (MIB)
Week 10 - Week 11 - Week 12 - Week 13 - Week 14
1. MODULE INFORMATION BOOKLET (MIB)
This is the Module Information Booklet for this module:
2. LECTURES & ACTIVITIES
Week 10
This week, we got into our groups for the Final Project. My team was the same as it was from Project 2 Kinetic Typography so I'd still be working with Alicia, Hu YaoPing, Wang Ji Heng, Ma Xiai, Chika and Li Shi Qing. The entire class time, we were given time to start brainstorming our assigned part of the How to Be a Straight-A Student book. Mr. Martin encouraged us to work on the project script/concept with using Notebook LM as a tool. We first used it to get a summarised version of the book to understand better the message it was trying to convey.
Using Notebook LM, Alicia separated our tasks into 7 parts:
- Chika Intro & Point 1 (The Calendar)
- Ma Xiai: Point 2 (The Daily List)
- Wang Ji Heng: Point 3 (The 5-Minute Morning Update)
- Li Shi Qing: Point 4 (The Work Progress Journal)
- Hu Yao Ping: Point 5 (Feeding the Machine/Nutrition)
- Qistina: Point 6 (Making an Event for hard tasks)
- Alicia Low: Point 7 (Study Early), Point 8 (Isolation), Point 9 (Breaks), & Outro.
Week 11
This week was a bit of an empty week because some of our groupmates didn't attend so we just continued on with the creation of assets based on the parts we'd gotten. This week we wanted to get all our graphics done.
Week 12
This week I was slightly overwhelmed with my modules and tests coming up so I decided to take a break from class to try and catch up with everything. I still communicated with the group in WhatsApp about my progress though. This week we mostly focused creating the storyboard and starting slightly on the motion graphics.
Week 13
Unfortunately, I'd gotten really sick from a viral fever so the doctors gave me an MC to spend the day to rest at home. I still worked on my part of the project as best I could with the little energy I had (* ´ ﹃｀*). This week we mostly focused on a draft of our motion graphics to show each other for feedback
Week 14
The final week of the module had us finalising our motion graphics which meant we finally used Eleven Labs AI for the voice-over. We chose Adam as the voice model.
Feedback:
- The voice fits the graphics.
- Try make the 'Strategy' and 'Social Pressure' come out of the Lightning instead of going in.
- Add the main words as text in the scenes so that it would be more comprehensible.
- Make the gap slightly longer from one part to one part
- Change the speed of the voice to 1x speed.
3. PROGRESSION
3.1 Script Planning
During class, we were given time to test out NotebookLM by using it to summarise points of the 'How to Be a Straight-A Student' book. So I played around with what the prompts I gave could provide me.
Afterwards, Alicia started to distribute the tasks to everyone by separating the part we'd work on into 7 parts. Using Notebook LM, Alicia separated our tasks into 7 parts:
- Chika: Intro & Point 1 (The Calendar)
- Ma Xiai: Point 2 (The Daily List)
- Wang Ji Heng: Point 3 (The 5-Minute Morning Update)
- Li Shi Qing: Point 4 (The Work Progress Journal)
- Hu Yao Ping: Point 5 (Feeding the Machine/Nutrition)
- Qistina: Point 6 (Making an Event for hard tasks)
- Alicia Low: Point 7 (Study Early), Point 8 (Isolation), Point 9 (Breaks), & Outro.
For my part, I started prompting for some summarisation of the 'Making and Event for hard tasks' point.
Notes
Anti-procrastination strategy designed for tasks that are so "horrible" or boring that starting them feels impossible
e.g. writing personal statements or slogging through exceptionally dry reading assignments
Creating events in this case does not mean arranging an event for people to come by while you study hard tasks but to create a situation for your brain to make sure your brain doesn’t distract you.
Carl shows three steps to transform a task into an event:
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Find an Out-of-the-Way Location: Choose a restaurant, coffee shop
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Create a Commitment: If you do not have a car, arrange to be dropped off and picked up at a specific time. This ensures you cannot easily change your mind and leave when the work becomes difficult
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Utilize Social Pressure: Tell your friends and roommates where you are going and emphasize how "horrible" the task is. The more people who know about your "quest," the harder it will be for you to cancel or quit without embarrassment
Then I went to ask for a bit of help to condense the notes into a 10 second long script. From there I edited where I could to make it less awkward sounding. I also made a guide for myself for the visual elements/graphics I'd use for motion graphic.
Script
[00:00-00:03] To conquer horrible tasks, "make an event" of them.
[00:03-00:07] Travel far from campus to an isolated spot and tell your friends about your mission..
[00:07-00:10] This strategy and social pressure will jump-start your motivation!
Visual Elements and Graphics
[00:00-00:03]
Narration: “To conquer horrible tasks**, "make an event"** of them.”
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Visual Element: A vector of a stack of books. A calendar icon with a checkmark.
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Animation: Stack of books fall onto another to give a sense of stress build-up, then slide-transitioning to a calendar followed up by a pop-in of a checkmark.
[00:03-00:07]
Narration: “Travel far from campus to an isolated spot and tell your friends about your mission..”
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Visual Element: A car graphic, a campus building icon, a Coffee shop icon and a megaphone graphic.
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Animation: Use a split-screen or transition. On the left, a vector of a car moving away from a "campus building" icon toward a coffee shop icon. A megaphone icon to symbolize the act of "telling your friends".
[00:07-00:10]
Narration: “This strategy and social pressure will jump-start your motivation!”
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Visual Element: A "Lightning Bolt" vector graphic.
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Animation: The Lightning Bolt vector “filling up” to symbolize high-intensity energy and focus.
Feedback from group:
- All good, clear and easy to understand.
3.2 Moodboard and Storyboard
Going into the planning of the visuals, we decided to figure out the colour palette and typography first. We discussed in the group about which to choose (choices were provided by Alicia) and voted on which we liked the most and thought would fit the vibe of the motion graphic. In the end, we chose a warm colour palette that was simple and clean. For the typography, we landed on using Nunito Sans (Fig 3.2.2).
For the style of the graphics, we agreed that something similar to Fig 3.2.3 would be a nice choice as it would be simple to work with and wouldn't be too overly detailed for an advice-like video,
After settling the aesthetic of the video, we went to creating a rough storyboard so that we could visually understand what each of us were going to do for our parts.
File 3.2.1 Rough Storyboard.
Evidently though, everyone was a bit busy during this part so the storyboard ended up being quite rough, messy and unorganised but it was still a good thing to observe for our planned parts.
3.3 Creating Assets
Alicia recommended we went to Vecteezy.com to base our graphics from so I did a mix of that and also other websites that had simple graphics for what I needed. I need a total of graphics:
- Stack of books
- A calendar icon
- Checkmark
- Car
- Campus building
- Coffee shop
- Megaphone
- Lightning Bolt
I started by creating the car graphic first because I wanted to settle out the more "complicated graphic. I had to separate them by what was moving and what wouldn't which in this case was the tires that would be moving in the animation.
Then for the othher graphics, I mainly applied the same workflow when creating them, but most of them would remain static in the composition so there wasn't any major techniques I'd used differentely.
Feedback from group:
- Adding a shadow to the books would be nice.
From the feedback of my group about the books, I went and added subtle shadows so they wouldn't feel too flat.
I then tested out the placement of the graphics in the 1920x1080 format we'd be using for our composition later in AE.
After confirming everything with the group, I started to prepare the graphics for exporting.
3.4 After Effects
I immediately started by animating the books falling into a composition. This process was a simple keyframe movement along with using a null object in the Final Comp where it would pan up with each book stacked.
Afterwards, I worked on the Lightning Bolt meter filling up. I used the track matte method to achieve this effect and also the Wave Warp effect on a shape that the Lightning Bolt track matted to.
The initial plan for the transition from books to calendar was only a slide in but I thought a 3D flip would make it more interesting. So I played with the 3D rotation of both of the graphics making sure to overshoot some movement to give a bit of a bounce.
I then went to animating the Campus to Cafe scene but I wanted a bit of a "delay" when the car would arrive at the Cafe so I separated both Campus and Cafe into different compositions.
Then I combined both into a single split screen-like scene by masking out the unneeded side of each of them and adding a line in the middle.
Feedback from group:
- The colour of the sky feels too saturated, maybe desaturate it a bit so it doesn't fight the graphics on screen.
I adjusted the colour of the sky in the scene multiple times but landing on a very light blue which ended up definitely looking better on screen.
Feedback:
- The voice fits the graphics.
- Try make the 'Strategy' and 'Social Pressure' come out of the Lightning instead of going in.
- Add the main words as text in the scenes so that it would be more comprehensible.
3.5 Voice-Over
For our voice over, we decided to use the Adam voice from Eleven Labs. We prompted our script into the site and received our voiceover. However, we did need to make some adjustments to the speed and stability since some parts felt awkward and too fast when we first tried.
Link to the voice: https://elevenlabs.io/app/voice-library?voiceId=wBXNqKUATyqu0RtYt25i
I asked Alicia if I should add in subtle sound effects to the video since I felt it would add an "official" video feel to it; Alicia said it was a good idea and let me try it out.
I sourced most of my sound effects via Freesound.org.
Feedback from group:
- The sound effects are an awesome addition
- But the sound effects version is scrapped because other group members didn't do any sound effects.
I was bummed out everyone didn't do sound effects but I understand everyone else was busy too. So, the final version of my part is without any sound effects.
4. FINAL
Google Drive View: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1r80tP6RerinwLPM3ON2G_6XLfftdRaK7/view?usp=drive_link
Google Drive View: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nmU-uhQwPSFaXpdSfBpaBYw7GLxxk30A/view?usp=drive_link
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For the full project files of the project, you can view in the link below.
Google Drive Folder Link: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1AePIhyEe0vHSsu_ZZVozgo1rKeK3syk3?usp=drive_link
5. REFLECTION
This project was definitely a showing of all the things I've learnt throughout the past few months of the semester. There were definitely some obstacles during this project though, with some people being busy with other modules, there were some clashing over the deadlines given within the group of showing our progress but all in all everyone is okay with each other, just that we definitely could use with better communications skills (me included). As for my experience on this Project, I think I had a good balance of showing my work consistently and also having a bit of fun in the process. Similar to the last project though, I think I could have done a bit more in giving feedback to everyone's works but I couldn't find proper time to say my piece.
Overall, this felt like a good project to end the module with and I'm definitely going to look forward to maybe using AE more during my future modules and hopefully making myself more efficient with it plus being able to use my knowledge of arranging information and such into comprehensible stuff is definitely a useful skill ✧｡◝(แตแแต)◜✧*｡
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