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Steven’s success: Final version Reflection + Rationale

This is my final version of my animation. Overall I was happy with how my animation turned out, as I did struggle to use adobe after effects and with how achieve what I originally planned. I found It quite a challenge to understand the mood and tone of my speech as I was looking for that deeper connection that most other students speeches had. 

I found it really interesting researching into Steven Adams life and uncovering what type of person he is, and why he sounds the way he does when he talks. His relaxed, calm nature comes through when he talked, therefore is why he talks in one tone. I found this a challenge as I didn't know what to emphasis because the tone of his voice was not changing or emphasising on certain words. 

Therefore I decided to take a simple, clean and modern approach and started to think about the sport basketball and what elements are basketball associated with. I decided to use a lot of circular shapes and effects as well as a basketball magazine style grid which uses a lot of different scales and or weights. I really enjoyed playing around with different weights to emphasise words which I felt were important in his speech. I wanted to include some illustration but didn't want the illustration to override the speech, thus I only used it in certain areas. I also didn't want very obvious illustrations which relate to the word such as a trophy for success... as I wanted the scale of the words to speak for themselves. 

Through researching I found similarities and predominate colours which were used in basketball, on Steven Adams basketball tops/sports clothes/shoes as well as in the arena. I felt as though black, white and orange really spoke to the sport and what Steven Adams life is about. Black represents the power of the sport, whereas white is clean and also calming and orange is a pop of colour to represent Steven Adams personality, his journey and what lead him to the court. I also thought orange was appropriate as it is used everywhere throughout basketball. 

Overall, I think I managed to represent Steven Adams speech well, however I do think there is always room for improvement and I could have done so if I understood the program a bit better than I did. To improve my animation I would have looked into more advanced effects which would help display the tone and manner of my speech. Furthermore, It was interesting a new program and seeing how type can move digitally... I think the learnings in this project will be really helpful moving forward with design and thinking about how to digitise type.

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This was the second to last render of my animation. I worked on tweaking all the problems I found within my feedback sessions. Overall I liked how the video was clean, simple but still reminiscent of Steven Adams and his passion for basketball. I think that the typeface stay true to the tone and manner of the speech. However there are still small adjustments I needed to make to this, such as the first “successful play” sizing and the question mark on “and ya know.”

I decided to call my speech “Steven’s Success” as it is reflective of what the speech is about and him talking about what ‘makes a successful play.’ 

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Direction

After trialling some ideas in my first full animation and then thinking about whether these ideas are working and gaining feedback I then made a copy edited and refined based on the feedback. This was really really helpful in my process. 

The direction I took from Steven Adams speech was all about basketball and having a successful play. It was hard to pull together any deeper or cultural connection and I felt like Steven Adam’s being the character he is, is a relaxed, kiwi bloke who ultimately wants to get the job done, give it a go and have a successful play/good play. I felt like adding anything overly illustrative or cultural would take away from what he is trying to say, which is that he enjoys basketball and just does his best. 

I think that the direction I took was suitable for the overall mood and feeling of the speech. It is an overly empowering speech, very monotone and chill which is reflective of his humble nature, thus I wanted to keep it simple and clean with the typeface Forma DJR. However I also wanted to reflect his sport and passion so which is a fast paced, exciting sport... thus I chose the colours I did and also wanted to use uppercase lettering which is often used in basketball on advertisements or arena barriers to emphasis the high impact sport and excitement in the arena. 

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These were snippets of my first few trials. Initially I didn’t save every version of my after effects animation which made it very difficult to adjust and make changes to... until George suggested it after feedback and I made another copy to then edit and refine.

With this trial I was aiming to get all the words onto the screen, however with the top layout I wasn’t really thinking about grid. I wanted to try the effect where the writing overlaps over the edge, however it just made the text more un-readable and also there was something wrong with the hierarchy and unbalance of the layout. I decided to further refine and simply this, looking at centred the words to give them more negative space and emphasis.

With the “guards cutting” layout I had this moving from the bottom of the screen to the very top and off the screen. Again I didn't think this layout worked properly with the mood or functionality of the animation as well as readability. I also tried out a interesting typeface with these words, however after gaining feedback for my peers, they were unsure whether the typeface actually reflected the meaning of the sentence, instead reflected the individual meaning of the word. And even though I thought the lines created a sense of speed for the words I knew that it didn't quite reflect what it means it basketball language.

Through a series of testing I also trialled out key framing individual words and then adjusting them within different times as shown “that’s, just, the.” This was not as successful as I had hoped as the words were replacing at the left hand corner of the word as this is where I placed the anchor point... thus when the words were at a larger scale they didn't have the space room or negative space around the word, and it lost its effect. Therefore in my next edit I decided to place the anchor point in the centre of the word. 

Lastly another aspect I noticed from my testing was the animated clock. I didn't think that the layout of this was very good as I had words overlapping the clock and this part of the animation moved really fast.. therefore I decided to simplify it, remove the extra dots which previously linked two layouts together and scale down the clock.

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These were some more class activities which I later rendered. With this activity we were learning how to use type on a path. This was a really helpful task as I wanted to use it for my animation in some areas and it was good to integrate certain elements we learned in class into our own animation.

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This activity we did in class was lots of fun, however I didn’t think I would use it for my animation because it is quite a fast movement and style of kinetic type. it was helpful to see how you could move around text like this and I could play around with moving the keyframes to change the speed etc.

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First full adobe after effects animation

This was a version of my first full trial. I have screenshotted different aspects of it to show improvements I made throughout it, however did not export individually as changes were made on the same adobe after effects animation. I think this was a good start to base my project around. I found it a challenge trying to achieve what I had in mind digitally, so there were definitely aspects of this animation that I liked and had good potential.

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First full animation

These were some screengrabs of aspects of my first trial that I got feedback on and then further improved. The introduction was a large “YEA” however i got peer feedback saying that when he says yea it is not that intense and forceful, thus maybe lower case sentencing was better. 

Also for the first part of the animation I had planned on zooming into the large yea and then writing the next part of the speech within the “e” of the the “yea.” However, personally I felt like this was not working and also Logan said that the type was too close and it needed some breathing space. I also thought that the balance between “and ya know ?!” wasn't quite right too, and feedback from George clarified that we do not have to fill the entire page.. therefore focus on working smaller maybe within a shape or grid etc.

For the “sometimes its me scoring” George noticed that the type was not following the shape of the basketball line illustration, thus I needed to work on this. Also the colour and the stroke weight was incorrect for the layers, therefore when it played the type looked different. 

Lastly another edit we found was spelling. I noticed that I had spelt successful wrongly in two areas of my first animation, and I had also spelt “obsession” wrong too. This made me realise how important it is to get someone else/ a buddy to proof read cause often I couldn't pick up on small spelling mistakes like that.

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With this trial I made it on illustrator and tried to animate it however I must have not properly made my layers correctly and I had trouble moving the words and making them come in individually as well as following a path. I also trialled placing this onto one of my after effects animation trials, but the lines didn't add up and therefore I decided not to continue using this illustration/idea. 

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Mood/animation approach

From all my research I did I chose to keep my animation 

Clean, bold, basketball focused. 

The overall mood I got from the speech was

Straightforward, monotone, relaxed 

I found that Steven Adams speech is very monotone and doesn't really have a deeper connection other than the obvious which is his passion for basketball. I divided deeper into looking at his cultural/heritage which was really interesting.

But I felt as thought it connected more with him and not the actual speech, thus I didn't think it was appropriate and would be confusing for the viewer if I decided to pair cultural pattern. 

I decided to look further into the basketball aspect and looking at what his passion is all about. I found interesting linework, bold typography and bright colours were re-occurring, thus I decided to move forward in this direction. The planning and brainstorming at the beginning of this project clarified to me the overall mood and possible directions to explore. 

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Designing 

I started to develop my type into a more illustrative style. I warped the type out in “kicking it out” to mould it to the basketball shape, and I created this shape on illustrator. The idea for this frame is for the balls to bounce and the “out” ball to end up moving off the page. 

For the middle design I took some lines from the basketball court and decided to make the text follow the path/lines. With the top design I sketched out the 3 pointer line on the basketball court. My idea for this was for the text to follow a path (on the basketball court lines)

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Sketches/Ideas 

I started sketching out some ideas without the framework. I found this really helpful sketching without it being in a confined space. I really liked the bold type and started to think about how I could illustrate the words.

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Frame sketches/Story board 

I started to sketch some ideas for my adobe after effects animation... I thought about line and where I would want to position my type as well as how it would move. Some of the story boards are in a linear order whereas some are just ideas that came to mind, that I started sketching out. This really helped me process how I would layout my ideas and what they would look like.

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Class notes 

I made some class notes from type and tone presentations that George did, as well as some after effects tips and tricks. This really helped when I went to make my adobe after effects animation 

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Basketball trial

This was another trial we did in class where we were practising moving around objects to get a bouncing movement. This was a very helpful after effects  technique as I thought about doing this for my own project to get the “movement” and “speed” I was aiming for.

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Typeface exploration

This was a quick typeface exploration I did to see what I could use in my animation. I decided to use the typeface “forma j” which is 4th from the bottom, as it was simple, not too tall and the right width and curve. I also am interested  in the 8th typeface which the line detail as this reminded me of the court, thus I could emphasis certain words with this typeface. Forma j is suitable for my animation as it comes in a variety of different weights, thus I can emphasis different words and show importance. I also tested it at the thickest weight in caps and liked it because it wasn't too forceful.

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I was gravitated towards these different animations or effects however feel like they wouldn't work for my own speech as they are too flow. I did like the movement on the middle animation. I thought it was interesting seeing how the letters change size and width.