Harry Potter Defeats the Book Monster

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Seven year old Lexi has just read the first Harry Potter book.

Here, she tells us what she wants to happen next...

This piece started life as an audio interview with Lexi. We got talking about Harry Potter, what she liked about the books and what she didn't like. Then I asked her what she wanted to happen next.

I knew I wanted to use a combination of the real world and animation for the final film since this mix seemed like a perfect fit for the audio. I worked on nailing the animation style first. The characters were created in Illustrator, based on Lexi's own drawings. Then, with various texture layers and blending modes, I landed on a design for the animation that had a 'hand-made' feel while retaining the convenience of After Effects animation.

I storyboarded the entire film carefully. Primarily, this process helped me art direct the bookshelf backgrounds. All these backgrounds are simple photographs although I have added some basic 3D effects to them in post, in order to make the characters occupy the space more naturally.

Created in After Effects, Illustrator and Photoshop

MUSI
'Our Story Begins' Kevin MacLeod
'The Show Must Go' Kevin MacLeod
'Clenched Teeth' Kevin MacLeod
'Sad and Emotional Music' No Winners
'Epic' Bensound
'Adventurel' Bensound
'A Really Dark Alley' Loyalty Freak Music