This project was like a full-time job but it was a great experience to learn animation more thoroughly through the use of vector graphics. One of the hardest parts was coming up with an idea of what I wanted to report on because it would determine all the animation assets that I would make! I naturally love the study of metallurgy and so it was inevitable that I would report on the new supersteel called CPM Magnacut. What I found so interesting about this steel is that it has lower amounts of chromium than other knife steels which means it should be less corrosion resistant but for several reasons, it turns out that it is super corrosion resistant, on par with the best of them. Chromium weakens a knife blade but it's needed to make it corrosion resistant so when you can keep those corrosion-resistant properties and have less chromium, you start to get a supersteel on your hands. This is what happened with CPM Magnacut, and is the reason why I went with this topic!

My main goal with this project was to create a fun cartoony news interview that focused on the animation of knife-related animations. I used a very minimalistic color scheme (red and black) to give it a more menacing and aggressive feel. The objective was to appeal to the demographic that would generally find this new innovation in knife steel interesting and create a knife and forge look to all the assets that portray a news-type environment. I do this in several ways - I have a world spinning with different parts rotating at the beginning ( a callback to the intro to a lot of news stations), sparks that fly out of some of the animations giving a forging look to the animations, A knife that flies across the text to change it to the next headline, a molten ball of lava turning hard like in a forge at the left end of the sources graphic, the knife graphics clash with each other like they compete, and the futuristic feel of the animation with the data visualization give the perfect feeling to the futuristic feeling that this knife steel should be viewed with. All of these elements contribute to the main objective - knives and metallurgy.

I based a lot of these sketches on typical news network graphics that I've seen throughout the years. I wanted to incorporate unique elements into the general flow of these graphics but went a little far on that idea. I ended up making every aspect of the animations and the graphics about knives and gave them animations that would fit the bill. Some of the animations I didn't go with at all like the credits/sources cited section, which I changed to be more like a lower third with animation. I did have a lot of similarities with the intro graphic, taking the concept from sketch 1. I had a lot of trouble thinking of the data visualization section and ended up going with a crazier concept than I initially drew. I animated a knife fight between the competing steels!

Some of these drafts are exactly like the animated counterpart in the video but some of them are very different! Making the rings spin perfectly around the globe in the intro was incredibly difficult due to importing issues that I ran into with After Effects. The world spinning was the easiest part of the whole animation to make. I lined up a lot of the land mass vector graphics right next to each other and had them move horizontally through the track matte of the earth outline.

Left: Before revisions                                                                       Right: After Revisions

Critique: The animation for the molten steel looks too dry, it needs more animation to show what it actually is.

Response: I took the spark assets from the lower third graphic and animated them completely differently to burst out of one spot instead of flying forward, indicating that hard steel has hit a hard surface and caused sparks.

My news story video meets all the requirements of the project and I spent a lot of time polishing the animation and the assets to the best of my ability. The objective was to create a news story video that has a title card, a lower third, data viz, credits/sources cited, and animate each of those elements in and out. I have all four of those elements in my video plus an end title card. I animated each of their ins and outs together smoothly so the video would look more polished. All the assets were made in Adobe Illustrator and the shapes that aren't I made and animated in After Effects. In class, another requirement was that the animations and assets needed to fit the video and every one of my assets fit the manly theme of knives. I worked very hard on this project to meet the requirements and go beyond them and I believe I did.