Today in class we worked on our after effects project and trying to get more of the scene incorporated. As it turns out, it was one of the biggest pivotal moments thus far in the course. Originally we didn’t think our idea was that ambitious, but as we worked on it in class, we soon realised we bit off more than we could chew, and the idea in our heads likely wasn’t going to come to fruition in the time span we’ve got. 

After realising that, we said to each other: what are the most important parts of our story? How can we simplify the motion graphic while retaining the important parts of our narritave? Ultimately we decided to select the big main stages in life - childhood, teenage years, adulthood and old age, and what it means to be in that stage of life. We leant into the idea of the tree being more personified, and decided the narritave with the boy and the tree – while definitely emotional – didn’t add a whole lot to the underlying message, and would’ve slowed us down quite substantially. Our animation was also looking like it was going to be quite long, in the ballpark of a minute, which we decided was too long for Instagram, and even potentially too long for a clip on the website. We also thought our current scene was too static, there was really no movement and it looked very much like student work. We wanted to shorten it, make it more refined, and spend more time on the details. 

So with those things in mind, we had some goals:

– Create a storyline that shows growing up through the 4 stages of life and what they represent at each stage

– Animation should be short, visually interesting and work as an ad online

–  Animation should work well as a poster and on the web

We ended up brainstorming and story boarding for a while after class and we elaborated on the 4 stages of life. Both of us still really liked the tree metaphor, so we stuck with that idea.

You’re young – you’re free flowing, nimble, go in any direction, loose – flowers start blossoming comes into it

You’re a teen – you rebel, branch shoots out, you take a different direction and try new things, you gain new perspectives

You’re mature – you’re more stable, people rely on you, (bird makes nest, swing?)

You old – you’re grounded now (roots), you appreciate the little things (like the beauty of nature, butterfly lands, camera pans to show the tree in context for the first time, as if the person is no longer thinking about themselves and has time to reflect) 

Our current idea is to show the tree growing in a close up, the camera follows the tree growing from a seed