Project Brief
Create an animated short based off a piece of voice-over audio.
Kinda' inspired by the novels from the Brontë sisters, this is a period-piece romance set in the 1800s—however, nothing is what it seems.

Love's Shadow

Animated Short project

This was my most ambitious and unique submission, in the sense that *spoilers* it features to different styles of animation. Love's Shadow contains five acts, with most of it done in 2D animation. Then in the final act, things get really weird and it turns into a live-action animation. Every one of my projects for the Motion Graphics classes has turned into a passion project, but I put everything I had into this. This was bar none the most time-consuming project I've ever done and I had to sacrifice a lot. I just know I probably got a few kidney stones, with the amount of energy drinks I was drinking every day during the production!
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All my projects have been carefully planned, but for this project I needed to know every small detail. For one of the scenes in this short, I essentially had to film the scene 4 times (once for each character). For continuity's sake, I had to keep in mind of things like blocking, what article of clothing the character has removed, and what prop was previously in the shot. Since it was a one-man show, I needed to know where my eyes were looking when speaking to the character.

With exception of my Logo Reveal project, every Motion Graphics project has been a short film—and this project would be no different! I wrote, directed, illustrated, animated, acted, composed—well, I did everything for this animated short. I sacrificed a lot in my life and at school, in order to get this done right.

Tools
  • Adobe After Effects
  • Adobe Illustrator
  • Adobe Photoshop
  • Adobe Premiere
  • Procreate
  • Reaper
Skills
  • Animation
  • Rotoscoping
  • Illustration
  • Logo Design
  • Title Sequence/Opening Credits Design
  • Screenwriting
  • Live-action Filmmaking
  • Acting
  • Voice-acting
  • Video-Editing
  • Special Effects
  • Music Composition
  • Sound Design
  • Sound Mixing
Specs
  • Date: Dec.13.2023
  • Resolution: 1920 x 1080
  • Framerate: 24 fps
  • Runtime: 13m 11s

Here it is. Arguably, my best work (if not, the most passionate). Despite the required minimum length being under half a minute, I HUSTLED and delivered a 6-minute long animation. Even within the time between that semester and the next, I managed to increase the length to 13 minutes. I may have put in at least 960 hours into this, and I'm only about 2/3 finished. I had to take a break from this because rotoscoping for 18 hours every day was getting to me! For this project, we had to choose a word and animate it in such a way that the word represents. Originally, I was going to go with a twist and have the letters dance with each other—but I ended up doing a full-on short film epic with a much better word.

pre-production

After completion of the moodboard, I jotted down a rough story concept of key events that I would like to happen during my animation. And although a screenplay was not required, I typed out a rough draft in a note app, then proceeded to write a properly formatted screenplay. Since the animation will be dialogue-heavy, I felt it was crucial to include an actual script.

Moodboard
Screenplay (final draft)

I wrote two storyboards, one for the animation, and then a detailed one that included blocking for the rotoscoping segment. Since I needed to film and act out the rotoscoping scenes four times (once for each character), it was EXTREMELY important to know every minute detail, for continuity's sake. I needed to know where each character was standing and where they were looking when talking, at all times. If a prop has been moved previously, it needed to be put back on the reset. Once both storyboard were complete, I put together an animatics with some recorded voiceovers and improvised music.

Storyboard
Blocking
Character Design
Environment Design
Style Frames

production

Illustrations
Asset Building

I needed to stay organized because there were over 100 lines of dialogue. I put together a cue sheet for when characters were speaking, and numbered their lines in sequence. Each recording would be named by its respective number. I also colour-coloded the tracks when recording, to speed up my ease of workflow.

Voice recording
Animating

I essentially needed to do some video editing twice. Once for the rotoscoping shots, and one more time to integrate the rotoscope animation with the live-action. When filming the footage for rotoscoping, I had to exaggerate my expressions so that it would fit well with the animated counterpart.

Video Editing
Rotoscoping
act i — scene 1
act i — scene 2
act i — scene 3
act i — scene 4
act i — scene 5
act i — scene 6
act i — scene 7
act ii — scene 1
act iii — scene 1
act iii — scene 2
act iii — scene 3

post-production

I added some post-processing effects like grain and offset the colours a bit, doing so really tied the animation together (just like a nice rug). I also added an opening credits (although it was somewhat redundant).
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I did the sound design and mixed the music and the rest of the audio.

Title Sequence/Opening Credits Design
Post-processing

post-project scenes

New Scene 1
New Scene 2
New Scene 3
New Scene 4

Within the project's time frame (6 weeks), I've managed to animate 5m 43s of it, which was well over what was expected. But I was not quite done. So, over the break, within 4 weeks, I added more scenes, and included part of the rotoscoping segment (increasing the runtime to 13m 11s). And after all of this work—I am still not done, What with much of the rotoscoping scenes left to do, my animation will require hundreds and hundreds more hours. However, I most definitely plan to finish my animated short sometime this year!

Achievements

This piece is the one that I am most proud of. I utilized all my After Effects skills that I've learned over the year and polished it to perfection. I went deeper into learning full-body character rigging, with turning heads, switching hand gestures, and eyebrow movements. I composed a original soundtrack, and recorded many different voices that were all so different from each other. I also don't consider myself to be an amazing artist, but I'm pleased with how my digitally-illustrated scenic backgrounds turned out, having done so for the first time.

Challenges

With a huge project such as this, of course there were many, many challenges. One, being my decision to do rotoscoping during the final segment. I had forgotten how time-consuming rotoscoping was, and I had planned for 6 minutes of rotoscoping. I didn't get to finish everything on time but I still manged to animate 75% of my animation (13-minutes worth).
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I don't think people realize how many hours a day I had to work on this. I had to sacrificed so many things in my life, in order to get this animation right. I'm a bit worried that I probably developed some kidney stones, with how many energy drinks a day I was consuming (I've since cut down). Ironically, I just had one for this case study—but I swear, I've cut down!!