My thesis focuses on informing tourists about warnings and rules at Yellowstone National Park and the reasons behind following them. To achieve this goal, I have created three animated videos, each 15-20 seconds long, to explain the rules and the “why” they are in place.

I went hiking one afternoon in Colorado, where I came across the sign, "Enjoy your hike but remember, life is tough for a tundra plant. Stay on the trail". This sign was sassy, straight to the point, and answered the question, "Why?" simply. This made me think, about what else can be told simply to engage the audience and make them understand why they are told to do something. This is where my thesis statement came from. I wanted to explain to tourists the reasoning behind the rules, and why to follow them. 

My audience, the tourists, were to be told these rules in a snippy and catchy way, to better help them understand why to not get close to wildlife, use bear spray, and stay on the thermal boardwalks. I wanted to create animated videos to encapsulate those ideas and consequences.

I used Adventure Time as a reference to look at how they worked with color as well as the movement of the characters. I also looked at the characters and how they worked together in a system.

In Teen Titans, I looked a lot at the camera work and the aesthetic. I like how it changed a bit between the scenes but still kept the same feeling throughout. I also appreciated the transitions and how they worked with the scene prior. 

I also looked inspired by the TV show, "Loki". The propaganda video in the first episode inspired me to make a type of PSA video. The goal was to keep it a lighthearted watch but with a serious message behind it.

I also was inspired by the WPA posters that were about the national parks. Those posters used alternate colors than reality to display emotion and time of day. 

I also drew inspiration from Redbull commercials. I liked the hand-drawn elements and movement that occurred. 

I then spoke with Alexa H., a co-worker of mine from the Western Michigan University Office for Sustainability who had worked at 2 different national parks. We discussed the rules that people follow the least. She had said that bear spray is a big misconception and how helpful it truly is, to not only the humans but to essentially "train" the bears into staying away from humans. 

I worked in After Effects and Procreate to create the animations. I wanted to hand-draw the outlines of the animations, and then go into Adobe After Effects to add blocks of color to the drawings. 

deciding what the "Call to Action" slide would look like took me the longest. I had a few different directions before deciding to split the text up in motion. Instead of using pictorial images, I used the animations from the video as assets. 

Overall, I am happy that I got the opportunity to focus on this project and work on learning animation and After Effects. Learning by jumping into the deep end of this project I feel was the best way to start working with After Effects. I think this project helped me learn and grow in motion graphics and gave me more skills to continue to strengthen. I learned how to find joy in a project when I start to dislike it after working on it for so long.