Ideation 

Coming up with the idea was an easy task for me. I knew exactly what I wanted to do for my short animated story. It was going to be the typical teen romance gone the wrong story. Two people cross paths, fall in love but can’t keep choosing each other because they didn’t love themselves enough. To showcase their self-love and love for each other, I wanted to draw and heart and make the heart have battery-like properties. This will show the audience the level of self-love and the love they give each other. 

Execution 

To make this short animated film a reality, I decided to draw my main characters and use vector backgrounds from the internet. Creating the characters on Adobe Illustrator was a hustle. I felt like I understood how the animation would look based on the different poses and the layers I was creating. After days of just drawing all of the poses, I only got Adobe After Effects, and I realized that I didn’t do half of what I had drawn. On top of that, I had to redraw and rearrange some parts of the illustration I did need. So, it is safe to say that it was a continuous back and forth from those two Abode software. I used still images for the backgrounds, but I manipulated the sky, cloud, sun, and moon whenever I felt it was necessary to the story narrative. 

In the first scene, I played with the opacity to show how their self-love was increasing/decreasing, corresponding to the changes (appearance and disappearance of their blushes on each of the characters’ faces). To show their connection, I made their hands touch, and when they broke up, they moved their hands away from each other. I also used the rain effect to show the presence of rain, and I used the particle effect to have a bit of interaction, meaning to show the audience that the rain is hitting the floor and bouncing off the ground, the bench, and the main character. 

For the feel of the environment, I introduced dark clouds and a change of lighting (made it darker) when the break-up happens. I added the lightning effect and changed the light intensity accordingly to the dramatic effect. This means that I added a flash-like effect when the lightning struck. 

Moving on to the living room scene, I wanted to portray a montage by implying that days and nights have passed by. I moved the sun and moon in orbit to depict the main character sitting on the couch for days. To correspond that, I regularly changed the lighting intensity accordingly. 

Here, the character is spending her time on her phone scrolling on TikTok, and I wanted to show the audience what she was watching through a hologram type of effect. So I used an old tv effect and decreased the opacity so that it is a bit believable. 

Throughout the whole project, I tried to implement everything I had learned in this class. Making a short animated film was definitely challenging, considering it is my first time, but I am very proud of my work. Also, I can see the growth since the beginning of the semester, so it is definitely something worth celebrating. With that being said, what a way to finish with a bang! Till next time, bye.