Information Graphics: 20 Hours

Second Year Graphic Design
Project- Information Graphics: 20 Hours
Greenside Design Center

2023

This project is a focus on infographics, requiring us to create an infographic on skill set that we need to research on and learn that skill, then portray the data we learned and experienced throughout the process. The constraints to this are that the skill, at the very basics, needs to be learned within +- 20 hours, and through that we share our knowledge and data.

This project is heavily document focused, throughout you will see information I have documented and how long it took to do each step throughout the learning experience.

What are infographics?

According to Hanna, infographics serve to visualize data through a graphic format where information can easily be understood. Infographics are useful and important as they convey information much easier than when one reads text do to the simplification of data.

There are many different types of infographics, here are some popular types:
- Statistical
- Process
- Geographic
- Resume
- Timeline

In my infographic I measure the process and a timeline, so I incorporated both of these types to make a clear step-by-step visual guide on how to use mixed media to create an animation, even if you know nothing about animation or how to do it.

Digital animation

Specifically digital animation that follows experimental techniques, I’ve found that I’d really like to learn digital animation that makes use of mixed media.

This would involve printing pictures, frame by frame and then painting over the pictures with paint or pens or any other technique to create an interesting texture, then scanning it back in to compile the frames to create a whole new experimental animation.

Because this type of digital animation has many different ways to approach it, the ways to make it work are endless.

After going through the lessons on a paid course done by Danaé Gosset on Domestika, titled Digital Animation with Experimental Techniques, I was able to understand how it works.

The basic idea is that you would take a video of a specific action being done, for example it could be someone walking from left to right on a landscape.

From there you would take the footage and extract the frames that you would need, possibly 15 frames a second, and place the images in a grid, print them and begin to apply the effects you want to it by hand using paint, pens, cutting out images with a crafting knife etc.

Then you would scan those images in and compile the frames in After Effects and add extra effects and colour corrections you want.

As this process may take too long, I have decided to stick to a simple 3D animated shape as she does so in her course.

This, by far, was the strongest test of patience in the art field for me. Although it doesn’t seem like it, and maybe I just did it slower than the next person would, but doing a stippling gradient for 40 frames was agony. I had many hand cramps, had to take many breaks due to hand pain and mental drain, this required so much patience and it was hard to not rush through the stippling.

I had to go back and refine many of the frames to make them as consistent as possible. This was by far the longest step which took me hours.

I used a 0.5 Micron fineliner to achieve this, imagining that there is a light source from about the pyramid and slightly towards the viewer.