Information Design Design - Final Project: Animated Infographic

4.3.2024 - 22.3.2024 (Week 4 - Week 7)
Vanessa Kei Kurniadi / 0360525
Bachelor of Design (Hons) in Creative Media
Information Design - Final Project: Animated Infographic

INSTRUCTION

In this task, we are tasked to make an animated infographic. We are allowed to choose between these 4 topics:

The History of Video Game
The Journey of a Product from Factory to Consumer
The Impact of Social Media on Society
The Journey of a Plastic Bottle

fig 1.1 Topic options and their brief explanation

My group consist of Adriena Tan, Chan Wan Qing, Joey Lok, Thanaphorn Daensaad (Han), and me.

We discussed about what topic would be good for our final project. And after much consideration we decided to work on Topic #3

Then we had to choose a more specific theme within the topic. So on our WhatsApp group we made a vote.

fig 1.2 Voting for our project theme

Task Delegation

Here is our task delegation:

Research on Topic: Joey and Wan Qing
Script: Han and Joey
Storyboard: Wan Qing
Animatic: Wan Qing, Han, and Joey
Assets: Adriena and Vanessa; Background: Joey
Animation: Han and Wan Qing
Background Music + SFX: Joey
Voice Over: Adriena

fig 1.3 task delegation

First off, Joey and Wan Qing worked together to do some research on cyberbullying and its relation to social media.

fig 1.4 data research result by Joey and Wan Qing

Storyline

We then tried to make a short storyline to serve as the animated infographic. This is how the storyline goes:

The story begins with a girl taking a selfie to share on social media. Pleased with the photo, she uploads it to her preferred platform. However, her joy is short-lived as she receives hurtful comments about her appearance. Obsessively, she repeatedly checks for new comments, even during breaks and before going to bed. These comments weigh heavily on her mind as she takes them personally, reflected in her changed behaviour of dressing in loose clothing to hide herself.

One day, she discovers a post mentioning her with more negative comments attached. This exacerbates her inner turmoil, leading to sleepless nights filled with tears and despair. In an attempt to find solace, she decides to disconnect from the online world entirely. With time and self-reflection, she begins to heal. Upon returning to the internet, she encounters the same hurtful comments, but now they no longer have power over her. Confident in herself, she realizes that others' opinions hold no sway over her, embracing her identity as a strong, resilient individual.

Script

From the gathered data and storyline we then made a script to as a guide for each scene, as well as dividing the story into phases.

fig 1.5 our initial animated video script and visual suggestions

We then recorded the voice over from the script to help time the video, but then realized that the voice over was more than 4 minutes, which far exceeds the video time limit which is 3 minutes. So we did a revision and shortened our script.

fig 1.6 our revised script and visual suggestions

To help access all the documents easier and to help with the work flow, we then compiled all the existing material into slides.

fig 1.7 slides with our current documents

Color Palette

We did some research on the color palettes that we wanna use, and apparently infographic posters on cyber bullying uses a lot of blue and orange. We also think it would be a nice idea since blue and orange are quite a contrasting color.

fig 1.8 moodboard and color palette

Upon further research we also learned that the chosen colors have their own little meaning on the topic.

Blue signifies trust, reliability, and responsibility. It elicits important emotions like calmness, peace, stability, and harmony. It’s one of the most liked colours, and is seen on a lot of websites and social networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn

Orange is also used to promote anti-bullying. It is a tangible representation of the supportive, universal message that our society wants to prevent bullying, and is united for kindness, acceptance, and inclusion.

Choosing Font

We did some experiment to see which font works best, and here's what we chose:

Main heading: Berlin Sans FB Demi (Bold)
Subheading: Arial (Bold)
Newspaper: Times New Roman (Bold, Normal)

fig 1.9 font experiment

Storyboard

Wan Qing had sketched out the storyboard based on the script information and visual suggestions. Initially, the storyboard focused heavily on the animation with a storyline. However, Mr. Shamsul encouraged us to include more statistics such as graphs or charts to convey the data more effectively.

fig 1.10 storyboard by Wan Qing

Animatics

We were tasked to create an animatic, which is a string of storyboard sketches edited together with sound to illustrate how a sequence will flow in motion.

Wan Qing and Han drew and animated the sketches for each scene. I combined both their parts together with the voice-over from Adriena and added some background music.

Mr. Shamsul suggested we make some changes and add more assets. After that, we can start animating our assets.

fig 2.1 our cyberbullying animatic

Assets

While the animatic was being developed, Adriena and me started making the characters, props, backgrounds and other necessary assets based on the storyboard and script. This was all done using Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop.

Character Design

Adriena is in charge of making all the characters to make them all consistent. In class she has made a character design on how the female character will look like along with all of her expressions.

fig 2.2 character design

The character is then traced using Adobe Illustrator. We used the color orange for the hair so it matches the color palette and go nicely with the blue background. The multiple face expressions are also traced and put on the side, so the animator can change the facial expression whenever needed.

fig 2.3 making the main character on illustrator

For the clothing we decided to give her a simple collared dress. We initially planned to give her a red dress, but since it clashed with her hair color we tried experimenting with some color until we decided that dark forest green works perfectly.

fig 2.4 making the dress

fig 2.5 dress color experiment: red, teal, and green

We also created a loose dress for her for the scene where she's losing her self esteem.

fig 2.6 loose dress for main character

We also made some different poses of the main character for the video content, such as meditating and exercise.

fig 2.7 main character other poses

Next is the influencer character. We made her to fit the stereotype of "popular". We gave her a revealing set of pink clothes, along with some lipstick and eyeliner as a little finishing touch on her. We also gave her a pair of brows that makes she seem more confident.

fig 2.8 Influencer character design

We also made the side characters to aid the story, which is the main character's parents, counselor, and extra figures.

fig 2.9 making the side characters and extra figures

Other Assets

fig 3.1 phones

fig 3.2 instagram posts using mockups and applying filters in photoshop

fig 3.3 placing posts in a phone

fig 3.4 hate comments and speech bubbles

fig 3.5 Instagram assets

fig 3.6 other assets

fig 3.7 backgrounds asset

Animating

Once the assets are done, they are put into the google drive for the animators to use. The Google drive itself contains our assets, voice overs, backgrounds, sound effects, and other things that is needed for the animating work.

fig 4.1 Our google drive

Han and Wan Qing organize the assets into individual layers so they could be animated individually.

fig 4.2 organizing the assets into separate layers

When the assets are organized, they started to create the scenes into artboards according to the script guide.

fig 4.3 creating the scenes

When the scenes and assets are ready, finally Han and Wan Qing started to animate them in After effects.

fig 4.4 animation progress

The scenes are done in 2 parts (probably to ensure it can be exported without crashing and to animate them easier with less layers piling up) and will be merged in Premiere Pro afterwards along with adding sound effects.

Here are the parts before they are merged into full animation (there are some extra parts added while the clips were edited in Premiere Pro, but these are the main ones):

fig 4.5 Animation part 1

fig 4.6 Animation part 2

After the animation are done, they are put into Premiere pro. This part was helped by Joey. She also reversed and sped up the first part as a rewind scene for the full video.

fig 4.7 making the rewind scene

She then edited the blue background for the title slide and some scenes. Apparently the earlier title slides has a more pale blue shade than the later parts.

fig 4.8 changing the background shade

She also added the rolling credits in the end.

fig 4.9 rolling credits

Sound Effects

We used Adriena's voice as the voice over for the video. The voice overs are already added during making the animations to help with the duration and to sync the parts with the narrative. This makes the work very easy for Joey. But to make sure the audio is consistent throughout the video, she removed the audio from the animation and put a full audio from the original recording.

fig 5.1 Voice over by Adriena

She said the original voice over still had some background noise/static, so she used noise suppression

fig 5.2 reducing background noise

Joey is also in charge of giving the video some sound effects. All the sounds were gathered from https://pixabay.com/ and https://freesound.org/. For sounds she couldn't find she just used similar sounds and use Premiere Pro to modify it a bit according to what she needs.

She either used audio that has repeating sounds or repeat the same cut of sound effects multiple times whenever needed. She also gave some crying sound effects and other sounds to make sure the audience gets the atmosphere of the scene.

fig 5.3 adding sound effects

Joey also gave the video a background music to fill the silence without overpowering the voice over. She wanted to use a music that is a bit mellow yet lively. She then decided to use "Last Day of Summer by last drm" as the background music. She also gave a fade in and fade out transition at the start and end of the music.

fig 5.4 adding the background music

fig 5.4 Premiere pro full timeline

Here is the result:

fig 5.5 Animation result 1

After it is done, in the next class we showed it to Mr. Shamsul. He then gave us some feedback on what we could change in the infographic to better display the information into the audience. So we made some revision following his feedbacks.