ANIMATED INFOGRAPHIC
STARDEW VALLEY VS. ANIMAL CROSSING: NEW HORIZONS
SPRING 2023
This infographic was a two-part project- part one, in which we designed an infographic meant to be informative or comparative- and part two, where we used After Effects to animate the infographic in ways that enhanced the legibility of the statistics.
This was my first infographic as well as my first experience with After Effects, so this was a series of experiments all around.
Our final deliverable was a 16in x 24in infographic poster and accompanying 30 second looping animated infographic.
STATIC INFOGRAPHIC
PROCESS
RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT
All images, logos, products, videos, and other copyrights or trademarks featured, mentioned, or referred to within the project are the property of Nintendo, Inc. and Concerned Ape LLC. The use of the trade name, copyright, or trademark in my student portfolio for identification and reference purposes only and does not imply any association with the copyright or trademark holder of their product or brand. My work is not affiliated, associated, authorized, maintained, sponsored, endorsed by, or in any way officially connected with these copyright or trademark holders. Nintendo, Inc. and Concerned Ape LLC. does not sponsor or endorse any of the shown work. I declare no affiliation, sponsorship, nor any partnerships with any copyright or trademark holders.
My Freeform board where I collected all of my research links and ideas
Immediately upon learning the prompt for this project, I wanted to do AI art and the negative effects it has on online artists. At the time, January 2023, AI art had only recently started becoming an ethical conversation, and while my stance on AI art was pretty clear, a lot of people couldn't understand why I was so against the current AI art practices without a lot of explaining, so I was excited to make this infographic to make it easier for people around me to understand the ethical issues with the current age of AI art.
Unfortunately, the further I got into the first week on this project, the harder time I was having with creating this infographic. The information was there, and the topic was really interesting, but the practice of AI art was still so new that it was really difficult to find any quantitative data on the open internet. I got frustrated, because the topic was one I was passionate about, but I'd sunk days into the topic and couldn't find enough numbers for an infographic to make sense; I'd taken an 'essay' issue and tried to simplify it into a series of impossible graphics. After a defeated meeting with my professor, we agreed I had to switch gears.
PROCESS (PART 2)
RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT
Ah, now HERE was some quantifiable data! For take two, I decided to go down the comparative path instead of educational (although clearly, game stats are still highly educational). I decided to take two games that are commonly lumped into the same 'cozy game' category, Animal Crossing: New Horizons and Stardew Valley, and compare/contrast the two games to showcase the differences (and similarities) between the two.
All of the in-game items and my avatars were hand-drawn in Adobe Fresco and using Procreate's pixel art capabilities! At first, I wanted the dual avatars illustration to be the central focal point of my infographic, but I soon realized that the space real estate was too valuable to use on one illustration, and delegated this portion of the infographic to a corner. Don't worry, I think it still steals the show!
PROCESS
FIRST DRAFTS
Here you can see the progression from my first draft to my second draft (and then my second draft after being marked up for critique).
All of the in-game items and my avatars were hand-drawn in Adobe Fresco and using Procreate's pixel art capabilities! At first, I wanted the dual avatars illustration to be the central focal point of my infographic, but I soon realized that the space real estate was too valuable to use on one illustration, and delegated this portion of the infographic to a corner. Don't worry, I think it still steals the show!
PART TWO
ANIMATED INFOGRAPHIC
PROCESS
KEYFRAMING
This process makes more sense for a more chronological video, but I planned on having all of my cells loop. I still used the storyboarding process to decide what movements I wanted for various parts of my infographic and how they would time against each other!
This was my first time using After Effects, and I hadn't started Part One of this project understanding how I needed to organize my assets in order to import them into AE, so a lot of my early process was getting my vector assets set up on Illustrator and then transferring them over to After Effects to get my animation rolling.
Despite how scared I was of the program, I loved working in After Effects! After the very initial learning curve, the software was super user friendly (if you use other Adobe programs, anyways, I'm not sure going in cold-turkey would be much fun).
FINAL ANIMATED EXECUTION
