Videos

A Short Student Documentary on Perfectionism

For perfectionists, life is an endless report card on accomplishments or looks. It's a fast and enduring track to unhappiness, and perfectionism is often accompanied by depression and eating disorders. What makes perfectionism so toxic is that while those in its grip desire success, they are most focused on avoiding failure, so theirs is a negative orientation.

– Psychology Today

Special Thanks to Kate Juras

Once I finished all the scenes, I started moving them into After Effects to animate my characters to tell my story. However I didn't understand that After Effects reads only layers not layers within layers and I had to go back and reorganize my files in Illustrator to make it work. The way I went about making everything move is that I move anchor points around on layers that I wanted to move and made them swing, bend, and move in time. Considering that the way the Illustrator organizes layers and shapes is similar to cut paper, the best way to way to describe my characters movement is that is like that of a shadow puppet or a cut paper doll. Consider that I have never made an animation before the hardest thing for me to accomplish was the the timing of movements in order for them to look natural and have the right emphasis in the story, however I feel I did a good job. Considering that there is very little dialog in my animation the music really carries the mood and highlights the climaxes of the story. I chose music that not only carry the mood of the story but also the mood of location. By using a combination of Middle Eastern and Mediterranean music I was able to capture an distinctive location to my science fiction desert story.

This project was the creation of an animation that was text based, emphasizing the words of a famous person, movie or poem. The subject chosen was author and poet Shel Silverstein. He was chosen because his poems have a strong visual component and his poems are popular childhood favorites. This animation recreates a classic, 1950’s feel, creating a connection to the original styling of Frigidarie brand refrigerator. This was accomplished using soft color pallet and selective typography. Adobe After Effects was used throughout this project, as well as software to create the sounds, timing and scene transitions in the animation.