Tan Yi Yun 0345559 Bachelor of Design (Hons) in Creative Media Project 3/Channel
Identity
INSTRUCTIONS
PROJECT 3 : CHANNEL IDENTITY
Students will synthesis the knowledge gained in Task 1 and 2 for
application in Task 3.
Students are to continue with previously chosen channel in Task 2 to
create a channel ident motion graphic video.
My chosen channel is Studio Ghibli, and its product that I wanted to highlight is an Oscar-winning film, "Spirited Away" directed by Hayao Miyazaki.
Figure 1.1, Spirited Away, Week 9 (30/5/2023)
Initially I wanted to go for "Kiki's Delivery Service", also a famous film by Studio Ghibli, but I changed my mind afterwards because I think that the magical realism in "Spirited Away" has left a stronger impression on me since young, and thus I can still remember the iconic moments of this film compared to "Kiki's Delivery Service". Furthermore, I was honored to be given a chance to conduct a piece "‌Reprise" from "Spirited Away" during an orchestra performance night. This is why this film hold a special place in my heart.
Spirited Away Suite Reprise, conducted by me
Moodboard
The characters, storylines, animation and cinematography, I love all of that and I wish I can compile everything in a short motion graphics. However, I can only choose the most important scenes and connect them to form the final video that best represents the channel identity. I spent around a week to gather the moodboard and decided the desire art direction.
Figure 1.2, Moodboard, Week 10 (5/6/2023)
Figure 1.3, Moodboard, Week 10 (5/6/2023)
Figure 1.4, Moodboard, Week 10 (5/6/2023)
Figure 1.5, Moodboard, Week 10 (5/6/2023)
Sketches
I sketched the characters like Chihiro, Haku (human form and dragon form), No face, Boh, The Three Heads, and dust bunnies. There is also some non-human sketches like the bathhouse (Aburaya) and the train, which highlight the iconic scenes of the film.
Figure 1.6, Idea sketches, Week 10 (9/6/2023)
Storyboard
I will use two different art approach, sketchy texture brush with a combination of vector background or elements. It is a brand new challenge for me to maintain the consistency and also convey an interesting art style. It is also challenging to make the transitions look smooth.
Figure 1.7, Storyboard, Week 10 (9/6/2023)
Figure 1.8, Storyboard, Week 10 (9/6/2023)
Proposal
Animatics
Animatics, Week 10 (10/6/2023)
Visual assets
All the visual assets are created by me using Photoshop and Illustrator. I first created the character, No face in Adobe Photoshop using a texture brush. Then, I drew the bath tokens in Adobe Illustrator. Although we are allowed to use the clips from original film, I decided to recreate all the scenes (except for one scene - dragon fighting with Shikigami, which I will explain why in the next section) because I wish to animate something that I create by my own. I tried to make this motion graphics as unique as possible.
Figure 1.9, Creating "No face" in Photoshop, Week 10 (7/6/2023)
Figure 2.0, Creating bath tokens in Illustrator, Week 10 (7/6/2023)
Figure 2.1, Chihiro and the lamp post bow to each other, Week 10 (10/6/2023)
Figure 2.2, Creating poster composition in Photoshop, Week 10 (10/6/2023)
Figure 2.3, Creating the bathhouse (Aburaya) in Illustrator, Week 10 (10/6/2023)
I composited the assets in After Effects, added a camera and switched on the 3D layers.
Figure 2.9, Compositing and animating in After Effects, Week 10 (8/6/2023)
I used puppet tools to animate the character. I also added some details like eye blinking by adjusting the size of the eyes (which are from different layers).
Figure 3.0, Compositing and animating in After Effects, Week 10 (8/6/2023)
The focus distance and the aperture of the camera was adjusted so that the bath tokens that are close to the camera appears blurry. This is to make sure that the audience can keep the eye focus on the character.
Figure 3.1, Compositing and animating in After Effects, Week 10 (8/6/2023)
The rope was animated separately using the trim path function in After Effects. Text animation was also added to enhance the flow.
Figure 3.2, Compositing and animating in After Effects, Week 10 (8/6/2023)
In the original storyline, when the bath token was being hung up, they can get the water that have certain herbal remedy baths in the Bathhouse. This is why I came up with the idea to add water transition after this scene. It is drawn in Illustrator and animated frame by frame. The water is supposed to be clear and near to turquoise and so, I changed the blending mode to linear light, and lowered the opacity of the bottom layer to give a transparency effect of the water.
Figure 3.3, Water transition, Week 10 (8/6/2023)
Figure 3.4, Water transition, Week 10 (8/6/2023)
Let's go back to the first scene. I used another angle to reveal the characters one by one using camera movement.
Figure 3.5, Adjusting camera angle, Week 10 (8/6/2023)
To ensure a smooth transition, I made sure that the title of the film fades out and enlarge towards the center of the screen and the next text "2001" appears from the center too.
Figure 3.6, Transition, Week 10 (8/6/2023)
I animated each gear in the correct direction with a convincing speed according to the size of the gear. I also added 4-looping texture brush frame within the silhouette of Hayao Miyazaki to create interesting texture.
Figure 3.7, Animating the gears, Week 10 (8/6/2023)
The most time-consuming part is animating the line path coming out from the mind of Hayao Miyazaki, which represent the endless source of idea by Hayao Miyazaki.
Figure 3.8, Animating the line path, Week 10 (8/6/2023)
In the dragon scene, I decided to take the original clip of the dragon movement because I wanted to highlight the stunning hand-drawn animation of the film. So, I traced a few frames, started by showing my sketches and slowly transforming into real animation. I added quite a number of effects on the original clip since I wanted to create a nostalgic feeling of old film. I reduced the saturation, added camera blur, tuned the exposure, keyframed the vignette effect, added a warm filter and overlayed an old film grain.
Figure 3.9, Colour editing the original clip, Week 10 (8/6/2023)
Figure 4.0, Keyframing the effects, Week 10 (8/6/2023)
Figure 4.1, Frame-by-frame tracing from the original clip, Week 10 (8/6/2023)
The lamp post and Chihiro bowing scene was more straight-forward. I used puppet tool to make the characters bow. I focused more on text animation in this part.
Figure 4.2, Puppet animation, Week 10 (11/6/2023)
Figure 4.3, Text animation with motion blur, Week 10 (11/6/2023)
The train moving scene is apparently slowing down the pace and let the audience have a look at the breathtaking scenery. It is one of the most iconic scenes that have no dialogue for around 1 minute, that allows the audience to have an emotionally resonant experience and also acts as a symbol of the characters' inner journeys and transitions.
Figure 4.4, Animating the train scene, Week 10 (12/6/2023)
In the final scene, I decided to animate each individual layer of the building (Aburaya), and zoom in slowly to create the effect that the audience are moving towards it.
Figure 4.5, Animating the bathhouse (Aburaya) scene, Week 10 (12/6/2023)
Although they were almost unnoticeable, I still animated the smoke and the flag movement using puppet tool.
Figure 4.6, Animating the smoke using puppet tool, Week 10 (12/6/2023)
In the final step, I added the music taken from YouTube. The calming music of "Always with Me" with a consistent beat is the best music that can fit this motion graphics in my opinion.
Always with Me (lofi) music
Final Submission - Channel Identity
Final submission - Channel Identity
Final submission - Channel Identity (amended)
FEEDBACK
Week 9 :
In the industry, we usually work on individual scenes and then there is a
post-production team to compile all the clips. So, you can work on your
favourite scene first, and slowly expand to form a complete
storyboard.
Week 10 :
Good progress! You can randomly screengrab your animation, if the
composition is good, that means your animation is good.
Week 11 :
It is an informative animation so even though it is 40 seconds, people can wait to finish watching it. One thing you can improve is to add nuance details on logo animation. Increase the speed, and after the text appear, you can animate the eye and ear so that people can look back to the logo mascot. The rest is good job!
REFLECTION
This is one of the most satisfying projects of this semester because I get to express my drawing skills and play with motion using After Effects. I did not like using After Effects in the previous semester because I was not familiar with the software, and I always faced problems like missing layers. However, this module changed my perception after I got to explore more possibilities of this software. Motion graphics has definitely become my favorite approach to animation. Not only can I bring static elements to life, but I can also play with typography and experiment with various effects and transitions, essentially letting my imagination run wild. From a technical standpoint, I learned a lot of effects that can be applied to my current project, which further enhance the visual aesthetic and motion effects. The camera tool is also worth exploring in future projects. Besides, I enjoyed creating my own visual assets in Photoshop and Illustrator. Although the tight deadline urged me to focus more on animating the assets, especially when my storyboard was not finalized yet, it did not stop me from creating the concept art that I always pursue. All in all, I enjoyed this project, even though it was also the most stressful project for me as I wanted to make it look as perfect as possible.
