2019 Chinese New Year
a motion graphics personal project
This is a personal project trying to communicate some ideas and traditions of the Chinese new Year.
It's main goal was to develop my skills in the field of motion graphics and animation, more specifically 2.5D, 2D animation and some illustration. It was mainly done with Adobe Illustrator, After Effects and Premiere Pro.
The concept comes entirely from the festivities and traditions present in the Chinese New Year, being this year the Year of the Pig. I wanted it to have a kind of documentary vibe, with a continuous and fluid animation between the presentation of the different activities that happen during the days of the festival. However, with no dialogue or text, I recognize that the message may not be fully perceived by the audience.
Before I get to the process, it's good to point out that the first idea was to do something much more extensive. The festival lasts for about 15 days, and in a certain way I wanted to have a short scene for every day or at least the most relevant ones without duplicating messages. Because the video would be about the different stages of the days, things like decorations, traditional dishes, superstitions and greetings would be introduced in pertinent stages of the video as this would go by. Although, due to being in a slow learning stage I noticed that the process would take a lot of time. Therefore, I reduced a lot of the content of the final video, being only two days introduced. But in the end, if the whole idea was placed in action the rest of the video would be done more or less with the same techniques I practiced in what I actually did, so, for the purpose of my goal it was enough.
Process
1. I started by getting to know about the festival. (The majority of what I learnt about it was taken from https://chinesenewyear.net/ and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_u-R-aIq3_E)
2. From what I learned I created a summary, by items, of what the festival was about, its quirks and traditions.
3. Script - With the information acquired, I thought about and decided the perspective and concept to adopt in the video, and then established the content to actually show. In the end, a simple script by items was made, each item describing roughly what would happen in the video sequences.
4. Storyboard - With the script, I proceeded to create a storyboard with basic drawings, which is shown below. For each scene I will explain my perspective in it according to what I learnt about the festival. (At this stage was where I realized I had to shorten the content.)
Scene 01 - the broom sweeping the floor refers to the day before new year's eve, where people clean the bad luck from their houses to give space to the new luck and fortune that comes with the new year.
Scene 02 - the scenery introduces the new year's eve and the arriving of the first new moon of the year.
Scene 03 - a family is displayed having dinner and celebrating with a wine toast, a very important traditional item to the celebrations.
Scene 04 - the family, which is personified by a boy figure, is threatened with the appearance of Nian (a mythical beast). The myth says that Nian have been terrorizing in new year's eve a town's villagers for years until the day they decided to confront him with loud noises, firecrackers and red things. (I've heard that were the villagers that confronted the Nian, as I've also heard that was a boy seeking shelter who did it as means of appreciation to the welcoming people).
Scene 05 - The Nian's body transforming into fireworks represents the people's celebration of the Nian's defeat as the new year arrival.
Scene 06 - The people transforming into a dog which gets out of frame and in the place of Nian's body appearing a Pig through another set of fireworks, represents the current year (year of the Dog) being replaced by the year of the Pig.
Scene 02 - the scenery introduces the new year's eve and the arriving of the first new moon of the year.
Scene 03 - a family is displayed having dinner and celebrating with a wine toast, a very important traditional item to the celebrations.
Scene 04 - the family, which is personified by a boy figure, is threatened with the appearance of Nian (a mythical beast). The myth says that Nian have been terrorizing in new year's eve a town's villagers for years until the day they decided to confront him with loud noises, firecrackers and red things. (I've heard that were the villagers that confronted the Nian, as I've also heard that was a boy seeking shelter who did it as means of appreciation to the welcoming people).
Scene 05 - The Nian's body transforming into fireworks represents the people's celebration of the Nian's defeat as the new year arrival.
Scene 06 - The people transforming into a dog which gets out of frame and in the place of Nian's body appearing a Pig through another set of fireworks, represents the current year (year of the Dog) being replaced by the year of the Pig.
5. Then, I gathered references for the visual mood and proceeded to create the illustrations necessary.
6. The time to assembly the illustrations in a video sequence came and the animations and visual effects necessary were also done.
7. Finally, at the sound design stage, a background music and sound effects were searched and placed in tune with the animated video.
