06 | Motion graphics (Redo) - Interdisciplinary Collaboration
Project brief
This project was a collaboration between students and a group of clients/practitioners on various early childhood interventions (ECI). A series of infomotions was to be developed that showcases strategies for equal collaboration in ECI provision, tailored to these practitioners’ needs within a South African context. The research from the practitioners provided various methods of collaboration and modes of communication, across 3 overarching categories that constitute a total of 9 information.
Students were divided into 9 groups of five students each with an assigned theme (a method of collaboration or communication). Each group of students were required to conceptualise, script, storyboard, design, and animate a 120-180 second Vox or Kurzgesagt‒style infomotion video that unpacks their assigned theme. The aim of this project was to create an animation that is engaging, relevant, and easy to understand for a viewer based on the research provided.
Project deliverables
- Medium article
- 1x 120-180 second animation
- Story board
Design strategy
For the infomotion, our group brainstormed with the two other groups who had topics on collaboration in order to have some sort of foundational unison across the videos. This resulted in the three groups deciding to use water metaphors, each relating to their theme of collaboration. Our team was given the topic of Interdisciplinary Collaboration and used the example of water channels in order to explain how this type of collaboration works, as well as relating back to other water systems to refer to the other types of collaboration. The opening scene of the infomotion starts in water and connects to the water channels throughout the video to carry across the metaphor and idea of Interdisciplinary collaboration. Throughout the video, the scenes transition to scenes showing practitioners in order to connect the metaphor to real-life scenarios.
For the project improvements, the team added additional transitions between scenes, improved the overall sound effects and voice-over, and reworked the background scenes for a cleaner look.
Process work
The above diagram is a simple explanation of what interdisciplinary collaboration looks like in a real-life setting. All the practitioners have direct access to the child as well as interacting with each other to help the child as needed.
Above are our mood boards. The first one is our illustration-style mood board. We went for an anime/outline style to allow for realistic elements to be drawn in enough detail to be recognizable but not be photorealistic and unachievable for the time frame given to us. The second one is our water-style mood board. This was to help us stick to a style of water animation and drawing style that fit our anime drawing style but was also achievable.
Some screenshots of the Blender, adobe aftereffects, and Premier Pro process screens.
Redone and added illustrations. As part of our redo, we added scenes into the animation to make it more dynamic and spend less time on the same scene as this got monotonous. The extra scenes also helped better explain our metaphor and add to the created environment that this metaphor was part of. We also wanted to add some extra details to some scenes to make them seem more realistic and lived in as opposed to deserted and unfinished. In addition to these illustrations, new effects were added to them in adobe after effects to create even more depth and detail.
Initial storyboard and narrative planning. This did not change from the original, therefore we just tried to better execute what we had initially planned to do and create better transitions between scenes as some of our previous transitions lacked imagination and finesse. We also previously had some pixilation which was fixed.
The idea in our storyboarding and planning was to have a balance of the already established water metaphor and a human element, this was to make the animation relatable to the target audience and also allow for the metaphor to be applied to a human situation. There is also a style shift when changing from the water metaphor to the human elements and this was done to show the contrast between the two but to also simplify the human sections and make it more focused on what is being said rather than the visuals.
The final story board
The captions show what is being said in the script as well as what music and sounds are played in the background. For the redo, we did all the above-mentioned redo elements as well as refined the voiceover, and added more appropriate and different sound effects to the animation.
The final animation
To read our Medium article please click here.
To view our more in-depth process work on Figma please click here.
