GIT-314 Final Project: Brief Narrative
This project is actually something I did two semesters ago, but I didn't finish my final edits until after the GIT awards were already over, but I spent countless hours on this project so I wanted to make sure I submit it this time. For my final 60-second animation project, I decided to make an illustrated ad for NASA. The purpose of this ad is just to be visually intriguing using illustrations and text effects to make it interesting and fun to watch. My goal for this project is to tackle some complex animation effects and methods that I have not yet attempted and try to implement them the best way that I can into this video. The frame rate and tv format I decided to go with is NTSC d1 wide format: 720x486p at 29.97Fps. I chose this format because I thought it would be a good one to use when outputting for an MP4 video with good quality. For my ten second animation project, the video quality when imported into After Effects wasn’t that good even though the quality in Illustrator was great, so this time I want to make sure I do a better job of outputting. Since this is NASA, there is no specific demographic that I’m trying to reach. Instead, I would rather make this ad for everyone being able to enjoy watching it and enjoy seeing a fun 2D animation version about space launches. For the design, I want everything to be done in Illustrator with a limited amount of colors, since I don’t need many for the objects I’m drawing. The entire setting is supposed to be at night, so most of the colors I’ll be using will be darker toned. The message of this ad is trying to get more people motivated and inspired to want to learn animation and illustration and seeing all of the different creative techniques you can use to make a fun, but challenging video. I will most likely use a font type that you would see on NASA’s website.
Sample frame
I spent a lot of time on this frame mostly because the first few scenes of the video are from this frame and I wanted to make the rocket look very clean for my scenes with the launch and takeoff.
This scene was a very intersting one to make and I ended up learning more about the blend tool, which is what I used for the puddle. This scene shows the reflection of the rocket as it is taking off mid air and entering space. I thought this would make for an interesting perspective of what it would look like seeing a rocket take off from that far away.
This is the illustration I made for my scenes with the rocket as it has left earth's atmosphere and is now in space and continues to climb more altitude and gain speed.
Final scene frame
Countdown scene
Throughout this project I really experimented around with a lot of different techniques that would help make this video exciting. I never used Adobe After effects and had little experience with Premiere pro, so I had to look up pretty much everything, but I was able to pick up a lot of useful tricks and gained even more of a passion for animation because of it. This scene was pretty simple to say the least, but it is one of my favorites in this project because I personally have always enjoyed the way the countdowns looked on tv in the 70s and 80s.
Altitude/Speed scene
Here is another scene that I really enjoyed making. It took me a very long time to figure out how to make the animation for the numbers of the altitude and speed gradually increase as the rocket continues flying up, but with the help of many youtube videos, I finally figured it out.
Worldview scene
I tried to find more ways to be creative and add some flair into each scene I did. For this scene, I basically just wanted to portray the feeling of being inside the rocket looking out a window and seeing the earth from space with all of the brights stars in the background.
Final video
