I was really excited about this kinetic typography project when it was introduced. I have a friend who writes spoken word, and I asked him to record one of them for this project. I have more of an investment in this project because it is a friend’s work that I get to animate.
I had my friend print me out a copy of the script and we recorded the piece in a quiet room. So, I had my subject matter. Now what? Well, I started off making a storyboard. Prof Vee mentioned drawing up a storyboard, but we didn’t go into much detail about what that meant.
I used the printed script as a guide to come up with effects and transitions for words based on their meaning and where I needed emphasis. Storyboarding is really simple, and is a great way to record your ideas. I just used printer paper, divided into 8 sections, and drew a frame with some notes about the motion of the text in each one. You don’t need to be a good artist to storyboard, as long as you can get the gist of your idea, and with kinetic typography, there aren’t a lot of images anyway. The image to the right is an example of how simple it can be. Just something to get your vision across.
Having a storyboard has been really helpful. When I go to the lab to work on my project, I already have what I want to do, I just have to make it a reality in After Effects. To start, it took some time to just get a hang of the program, but once I knew how the basic effects worked, I started to work faster. Probably about the speed of a racing turtle, but faster than sitting in traffic. Some of the effects I wanted to get, like shadows, I had to look up tutorials for, but tutorials are fairly easy to find, especially when you know what you want to do.
I have been working on this project quite a bit, and it’s coming slowly, very slowly That is just the nature of the project, but I’m having a lot of fun too. I’m also being a bit of a perfectionist, because I want it to turn out nice for my friend, but I think in the end it will be worth it.
Leave a Reply