A 2D animation project I created for fun to celebrate my childhood in middle school (2002-2005) - By Jellyfish SW

I wish I could go back to my childhood days when there were lots of fun and no worries.

As a designer, I always like to share my story with others in a narrative and expressive way. The day has finally arrived. I'd like to tell you now, a story of my unforgettable English learning experience I had in middle school, from 20 years ago.

Published in 1992, A Ticket to Tomorrow (ATTT in short, not AT&T) is an ESL textbook I use in middle school (2002-2005). This is an audio-based, radio-magazine format series that presents a basic course in English through entertainment. Songs, scenes, and teaching segments focus on grammar, pronunciation, and functional language.

The textbook depicts Mr. English (the male character), Tamara (the female character from the 21st century) and their friends' adventure in a world of the past and the future.

In the very first program, Mr. English meet Tamara for the first time. They introduce and teach audiences to sing the theme song, which is also named A Ticket to Tomorrow.

What makes it special?
Okay, this is an ESL textbook, so what? What makes it so special?

ATTT IS special: it greatly influenced my passion of learning English.

Back in middle school, learning English as a second language has never been a pleasure for me. I was afraid of speaking English in class, did poorly in grammar exercises (and I know, I am still not good at grammar as you can tell while reading my writing), and fell behind almost everyone on exams. Informing my parents to place a signature on my failing English test report has always been my childhood nightmare. 

Most traditional ESL textbooks we used were written and being taught in a didactic and tedious way, with wordy and lengthy paragraphs, and emotionless audio contents recorded on tapes. I was frustrated and never motivated to learn.

I met ATTT when I was in 8th grade. This was my first interactive/entertaining ESL learning experience. I was fascinated by the story of the mysterious visitor from the future, the time travel narratives and all those happy songs from this textbook. For the first time, I felt that learning English could be exciting and fun.

All of a sudden, I was no longer a passive learner: I am eager to know how Mr. English and Tamara's new adventure unfold, and how to sing those happy songs. This motivates me to repeat listening the audio contents, and with a good sense of musicality, I even recite all of them! I quickly became the fastest learner in class. For the first time, I feel I am on the top of the world.

While most of my peers felt those songs and the storytelling were childish during those days (they prefer to listen to Jay Chou when it comes to music), I never thought in that way. ATTT had became my BEST childhood memories and I still love it today. It has been almost two decades since I graduated from middle school, but I can still recall a lot of songs and conversations from the textbook. Obviously, the one I would never forget is the theme song: A Ticket to Tomorrow.

How to celebrate 
As a designer who loves graphics and music, I want to celebrate my childhood by creating an ATTT theme song music video, which require the preparation of audio and graphic assets.

Audio
Because ATTT is a very old textbook, for a long time, ATTT songs can only be played on a cassette player. Thanks to the Internet, they are now available on Youtube.

However, rather than borrowing the song from the original cassette soundtrack, with past experience in audio remix and midi creation, I decided to remix a new karaoke version of the songs with guitar and piano using Overture (a sheet music/midi editor on Windows, similar to the Garage Band on Mac, I am a Windows user so...), and use Vocaloid Tianyi Luo, a vocal editor developed by Yamaha, as the vocalist.

Graphics - Character Design
The vocalist TianYi Luo, introduced by Yamaha, is a virtual singer that has an official persona. 

Meanwhile, ATTT is accompanied by guitar as you could tell from the original sound track attached above. So it makes sense for me to draw a mini TianYi Luo singing while playing the guitar. It is time for some Adobe now!

To prepare for animation, I also need to draw her facial expressions and hand gestures (based on real guitar chord).

What would be an ideal stage that could best express my nostalgia, while also be a good background while TianYi is performing? Recall from my memory in middle school, there were often performing activities in class. So it makes sense to use middle school classroom as the background. 

To better recreate the actual scene, I dig through my photo library and social media account to find a few classroom photos taken 20 years ago as reference.

Of course you don't want an empty classroom. As a way to commemorate the past (2002-2005), I added few symbolic/iconic objects to the illustration that were popular during those days:

 • Cassette player (do they still exist today?)

 • Flash player (quite new during those days, the original iPod was introduced in 2001 btw)

 • Jay Chou's album - Fantasy (published in 2001, Jay Chou was, and still is, incredibly popular)

 • Electronic dictionary (there was no smartphone and no wifi. You need this, or a real dictionary to learn English)

 • Nintendo Gameboy Color (whoever has this is the king in class)

 • Tarot cards (Astrology was quite popular among girls back in the day)

 • Characters from Stone Age (very popular online games released in 1999)

And of course, other stuffs that we are all familiar as a student.

 • School uniform and school bag

 • Textbook and exercise book

 • Drinking bottles

 • Stationery

 • Basketballs

Then we have this:

And finally, let's put my favorite ATTT illustration along with few sketches on the chalkboard!

Next step is motion design. I think of this as a script.

There you go! Below is what I have when put these together.

Goodbye, my childhood. Only memories of my childhood will live with me forever.