What counterculture is
Counterculture is a type of subculture where the values, morals and common behaviour of the people within it are noticeably different from the average, everyday society. This consists of various types of world issues, most of which is considered political and/or controversial by mainstream society. Among these issues are climate change/global warming, gun control, free speech, equality for all genders, sexuality and races etc.
The subject I chose to focus my work on for this project is climate change. I chose this topic because unlike most of the other counterculture related issues, this is something that will danger more than a specific group of people, this will affect all human life on earth along with all other forms of living species including animals and plants.
Idea generation
Based off the research I did on counterculture and climate change, I created some concept art before starting on a story board or animation. Most of these depict a ruined city with cloudy skies and no plant life. In my opinion, I believe memes and video games are a good expression of counterculture, so I decided to include those kinds of concepts in my initial ideas for the animation.
GIF Animation
As my final piece, I created a 12 second GIF animation using adobe illustrator, after effects and media encoder. The animation consists of four main scenes, the first half is a dark world destroyed by climate change, the later half is the bright world restored by a light that someone discovered. For my narrative, I wanted to have a happy ending so I could give people hope that the earth can be saved.
Final outcome
During this project, I learned a lot about transferring hand drawn illustrations into digital designs with photoshop and, telling a narrative to an audience through animation and design without the use of any words or text. I believe my strengths for this project were being able to create and combine illustration drawings and after effects animations, it’s the process of creating the final outcome that I most enjoyed and felt as though I was getting the highest amount of productivity out of.
