SintLucas Project ~ Typographical Animation

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After having finished my Naturally Project, I was surprised seeing I got a average grade for my work, asking for feedback I was told my end product was completely different than the entire project. And I apparently really didn't ask for much feedback. While it was a bit upsetting to hear I ultimately understood and decided to continue on with the next project: Making a typographical animation.

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Before we were even able to begin the Typographical Animation we had to choose about 3 songs of which one would be eventually chosen for the final product. While that sounded easy initially we were quikly told afterwards that not only the song HAD to include lyrics, for otherwise it wouldn't have been a Typographical Animation but the song had to ALSO be 2-3 minutes. These two conditions made searching for a song quite difficult for most of my favorite songs were above that timeframe...

So, after spending some time looking through the Internet I had found about 4 songs that fit this kind of timeframe...well 3/4 of the songs were 2-3 minutes...but we were thankfully allowed to cut songs to fit the timeframe so it wasn't that bad thankfully!

1. Good Kid - Nomu

- Nomu is a song which I genuinely really like due to the upbeat nature and idea that it kind of reminds me of the “olden times”, like the summer of 98, or just vibes that have to deal with that you know. I also want to add the “good times”. But I think that may be due to the beat and not the lyrics.

- From what I personally found out and listened, Nomu is about a relationship falling apart and people growing distant from one another because they simply can’t communicate. In a nutshell, it’s a high upbeat-song with very depressing lyrics.

- The Song expresses a upbeat and rhythmic feel.

2. Two Trucks

- Two trucks is a song which I find incredibly interesting due to the variety and sometimes, beauty that the lyrics reflects next to the rhythm and beats. The lyrics may be quite silly at times or downright absurd but that doesn’t mean the song sucks. Believe me when I say that its absolutely worth it to give this song a try. You can’t judge a book by it’s cover and at least attempting to do something with it is a great way to try and experiment in a assignment that sounds really plain and simple.

- Two trucks gives me ironically a feeling of both creativity and passion. A song which sounds so silly and absurd having not only a beat but text as well that are genuinely just amazing to my ears is something I really want to work with. Like, wouldn’t it be amazing if I were to fully let out some of my creativity with a song which has no deeper meaning than simply just two trucks? Like, wouldn’t that be a interesting thing for me to attempt?

- Now, I have to be completely honest. Two trucks doesn’t have much of a meaning in the lyrics and the text kind of has a LOT of repetition. But what I’d like to do with that is experiment and see what I genuinely like about that.

3. Lament of Orpheus

- The Lament of Orpheus is a song which represents the pain and suffering Orpheus is going through due to the loss of his muse, Eurydice. He laments of the pain he felt when looking back and the anguish he currently feels because of it. It’s somber, yet beautifully sang reflecting on how Orpheus’ curiosity led to his muse being taken from him. Curiosity killed the cat.

- Like I said, the song gives off both depressing and somber feelings. I personally think that more darker blueish colors would perfectly represent the song + perhaps the sun and the moon as some sort of dynamic, y’know cause it really fits their characters.

- To me personally the Lament of Orpheus expresses sadness, sadness about love, regret and many more emotions relating to that. I’m sure that the song would probably go way deeper than that considering how it delves into the story of Orpheus and Eurydice, a famous story in Greek Mythology but due to unfortunately not knowing too much about it (yet) I’ll have to simplify this beautiful story a bit. For my Greek Mythology enjoyers, I wholeheartedly apologize.

4. Soft Fuzzy Man

-Soft fuzzy man is a song that I chose due to the uniqueness of not only the beats but the cheery nature of it as well. The lyrics, while mysterious and sometimes downright seductive kind of strengthen the song in a way.

-The song just gives off a very cheerful and joyous tone and and I absolutely enjoy the beat, like oh my god Neil knows his bangers. The song is a bit...weird in a way considering how the song is about a cloud man who basically thinks he's hot, poking fun at guys who think being mysterious is attractive but considering Neil's works I'm not surprised.

-Soft Fuzzy man has a upbeat and joyous feel with very questionable lyrics. Thank you Neil Cicierega, very epic.

Now, judging from all of the songs I had stated, I was still a bit iffy on which one I would choose because the ones I DID really like didn't have the most meaningful lyrics which would possibly make it a bit difficult to make the animation really work. So I asked for feedback because I quite literally should've done that. And to my surprise my best bet would've been Nomu according to my teacher, but I was told as well that it didn't really matter which one I'd choose as long as it just had lyrics and hit the timeframe.

So I ended up choosing Soft Fuzzy Man--

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Once I had chosen a song I decided that I wanted to go for a feel, so for that I listened a lot to the song and found out a more 80s Aesthetic really worked out with it.

You can find it under this text:

And once that was done I wanted to implement a style as well, which you can find...

under this text:

I mainly took inspiration from more Arcade-like visuals because the song itself sounded incredibly crunchy, which are things usually associated with Arcades! I also looked at a animator named: "Aimkid" because I really love her work and I felt like I could take a bit of inspiration since she also made a animation about the Soft Fuzzy Man.

Feel free to check her out some time! She really makes super good works!

Here is a link to her Channel!
(https://www.youtube.com/@aimkid/featured)

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So, we ended up having to create a sort of schedule because our teachers find it important for us to be flexible with time and know how to work on deadlines. I suck with making them because I don't need them but regardless I ended up making this:

Note - Next time, make sure to properly make a schedule instead of using word, it apparently hates getting screenshotted--

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Not much is to say about this phase...phases...idk, we had to make a moving storyboard beforehand and I well, did that because if I have to be completely honest, the schedule I had to make was useless--

As you may have noticed, a few sequences of the storyboard included a "look at traditional storyboard". I made a separate storyboard for the sequences I wanted to include images which, albeit not ending up making the final cut were still quite nice to have been implemented!

You can view them under this text:

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I hope you all had a wonderful holiday, I didn't! In fact, I quite literally had one of the worst holidays ever! I don't want to talk about it, but I learned a very important lesson during this phase:

"Had it not been for me communicating with my teacher, telling him that I needed more time to work on this project due to my genuine awful holiday, I never would've been able to properly finish this. Sometimes, it takes a bit of courage to simply ask for more time, but oh my god was this the best thing I've ever done for a project."

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To strenghten my final product a bit, I made my own font! Cause remember the style board? Yes, it had colored paper on it. I wanted to use this to be able to quite literally add some more personality to a otherwise neat final product.

If you had properly noticed, a few words in the moving storyboard had a default font with a underline, those were the words I wanted to change with my own font!

Below you can see a collection of them:

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Looking back at this project I was genuinely really proud of myself of what I had achieved in this short time, I enjoyed making my typographical animation and I'm very proud of the end result!

Yes, I still struggle a bit with time but if I had to be completely honest, outside factors were moreso the cause of it in the first place.

For my next project I do really wanna work more with managing time since my school likes to give us a lot of projects. While I have struggled a lot these past few weeks I will continue striving forward to be proud of myself!

Especially since the next project sounds like fun! Please I wanna draw perspectives.

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SintLucas Project ~ Typographical Animation

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SintLucas Project ~ Typographical Animation

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