For the final project of one of my creative classes in my 4th year of university, I created a short animation. I grew up watching cartoons and Japanese anime and have always had an appreciation for the fun art and storytelling that they used. This is why for my last project in school, I wanted to challenge myself by combining my current illustration style with animation techniques.
I started by creating a mood board with inspiration, potential colour palettes, and character designs. I also looked at several short animations such as Puparia by Shingo Tamagawa to study movement and how it is used to convey tone.
My theme for this project was "uneasiness with growing up”. I started making sketches of the major scene keyframes that would each convey a part of the story.
I used Adobe Photoshop to draw each frame and used the timeline function to use layers as animation frames.
After, I used Adobe After Effects to add camera movements, background music, and make any additional edits.
And here is the final animation!
While I am very proud of being able to finish my video, however, there is also a lot that I can improve on. I believe I was able to convey the emotions of the theme and was able to create illustrations and characters that I am proud of and I will keep practicing to improve my animation capabilities!