Projects

Bring in 2 Motion Graphic examples — one a motion graphic that you love, the other a motion graphic that you hate. Be prepared to explain your choices. Email me your choices by 9am Wednesday, 9/10/2014.

The purpose of this project is to give you some fundamentals of “Frame-by-frame” or traditional animation, and then how you can use that in a design context. The main objective is for you to produce a frame-by-frame animation of at least 100 frames. Stylistically it can be whatever you choose. Hopefully, you will begin to understand some alternate methods of animation and the complexities contained within each.

Using only shape layers, the shape tool and plain, formal elements, please make a short animation set to music. Pick a piece of (preferably) instrumental music. Make what you consider to be a “Motion Graphic” with the skills we've learned so far in After Effects that shows us what the music “looks like” with your formal and motion choices. If necessary, a jpg or video footage may be used as a background - but strive to use just formal elements. Consider pacing, rhythm, and how formal decisions relate to temporal ones.

This project is about using time and motion as emotive and descriptive forces. How does one make the design, layout, and animation of a thing define it? There are two components to this project: a printed book and a digital animation. The booklet is an opportunity to explore ideas, type, design directions, etc. The end goal here is to convey the meaning of an action verb in a constrained, printed form. The animation has the same goal: show an action verb’s definition through design. Think of these two works as companion pieces: together they should make each other better.

With more and more content moving to web, mobile and video arenas, brands and logos must no longer remain static. This project requires you to pick a company or product (or even yourself) that would benefit from a contemporary, motion-based re-branding. If you don't have any good ideas for a product or company, you could even just pick the class, GD3; or, let me know and I can assign something to you. As part of this choice, you must be able to describe “why” adding motion to this identity better represents the chosen brand. You also need to be clear how this can potentially be expanded by showing us some guidelines and various uses.

Ongoing over the term. By the last day of class please have made (at least) 8 short animations that deal with aspects of design that you enjoy… This means they can be formal explorations, actually try to tackle a subject, whatever. As you send them in, I'll populate our “Design-a-Mation” page with them.

Please explain what you think describes what “Time + Motion” mean in relation to Graphic Design. We’ve spend a lot of time over the term talking about this, but I want to make sure that you all really think about it on your own; as well as think about how you might explain it to someone else.