Information Design - Project 2: Animated Infographic

28/2/2024 - 8/3/2024 / Week 4 - Week 5
Adriena Tan Yan Zi / 0351236
Information Design / Bachelor of Design (Hons) in Creative Media
Project 2: Animated Infographic

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Instructions

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Project 2: : Animated Infographic 

Arranging and illustration

Firstly, I'm transferring the first scene elements into another Illustration file. I'm transferring the background and the title into another artboard with 1280 x 720px to get ready for the animation.  

Creating the second artboard, I started inserting all the necessary ingredients for the recipe into the same size of artboard. As I am working i found out that the title doesn't really stand out so i added like a box behind each names to make it pop more. 

While preparing the utensils scene, i found out that i missed on one more element, a knife. So with the pen and gradient tool, i made the knife to add it in with the rest of utensils. 

Here I'm just compiling the bowl and the bread crumbs together. The process of adding ingredients and mixing the bread mixture was really closely related to each other. I also drew the bread mixture as an extra asset to make sure the process is clear. 

Moving on, I'm just adding more layers and artboard. Then move on to align the existing elements from the last infographic whilst adding more graphics as i go. 

For the next scene, I realised I didn't include any fire element in the infographic poster so i decided to make the fire just for the animation. So i made the fire with the pencil tool, also added the melted butter with the brush tool for smoother animation. 

I proceed to add in the rest of the ingredients and started naming all of the layers all at once. Moving on to the next scenes one by one with the repeated process. 

For the next dough needing scene, i just repeated the aligning process and had an idea came to mind. Since i needed a pair of hands to show the kneading dough motion, i should make the pair of hands a doll pair to keep with the doll and vintage aesthetic. 

Toward the end, I used similar alignment with the rest of the previous scene and making sure that i separated all of them as I go. Eventually, it got to 123 layers which is where i started to concerned whether this many later would be able to import into after effects. From my past experiences with After effects, it tends to crash a lot and was lagging most of the time even if it's a small compilation. But, I initially didn't have memory space to create a new illustrator files for each and every scenes so i just kept my hopes high trying to import my file. Eventually, as expected, it crashed. Again, again, again anddddd again. I was on the verge of breaking down so i had to send my laptop for troubleshooting and repair. Alas, I reformatted my whole laptop to withstand 15 more illustrator flies and import them one by one into After effects. 

Animation 

I'm just doing some basic position animation for the first scene. Make it sure the snow falling down motion would look like a snowy day. 

Eventually, I also added the opacity animation feature to make the multiple ingredients fade in and out naturally. As well as adjusting the timeline as I do so as all of them are in a different after effects composition file so they have different timeline. 

While animation the cooking steps, i made sure to animate the motion accordingly, like you can see her the salt will move up and down twice to imitate the motion of shaking the salt bottle or seasoning with salt. Same goes with the bread dumping it in and water pouring as well. 

Here i animated the spatula mixing motion to point out that the we are suppose to mix the ingredients with the spatula. 

Then repeating the similar animating style to keep the whole cooking instruction video consistent. Other than that, I also added the rotation animation style to have the elements react more realistically instead of having the animation being to rough and hard. 

Here, I applied rotation to the fire element to make sure that the fire imitate the real fire throughout this scene. then applied similar animation technique to the rest of them. 

Moving forward, I was just animating with the same technique to keep to style consistency as you can see from the screengrab, it is quite straightforward. 

Editing in Premiere Pro 

Moving on, I'm compiling all the animated clips in Premiere Pro. After putting them all in the sequence, I found out that the video exceeds the time limit so i had to speed up the animation in premiere pro. 

After adjusting the sequence and speed, I had to choose a music that suited the aesthetics and animation style. I found this on youtube with no copyright problems so i simply downloaded the sound and included it in my edit in premiere pro i found suit so well with my animation. Shortening the music and blending the music to make it sound smooth. 

To elevate the viewing experience, I sought out sound effects on Freesound to enhance the auditory aspect. After downloading several options, I curated them for the primary cooking actions, arranging and occasionally duplicating them to achieve the desired effect.

Animation before revised

Click here to view.

Final animation 

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Feedback 

Week 4
General feedback: Will post the after effects tutorial video in google classroom. 

Week 5 
General feedback: Will ask each of the group out one by one so we can show him progress of the final project.
Specific feedback: Make the steps title pop more. Put a little pause in between the scenes so that it’s not so rushed.

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Reflection

For this project, the task was to create an animated infographic using assets from a previous project. Initially, I assumed the process would be straightforward – arranging the assets into layers and importing them into After Effects for animation. However, I encountered difficulties when my asset file couldn't be imported into After Effects as expected. It seemed that the sheer number of layers (123 in total) might have been overwhelming. Attempting to alleviate this, I split the assets into multiple Illustrator files by scene. Yet, I faced further challenges as my laptop struggled with memory issues and eventually broke down. After resolving these issues and expanding memory capacity, I created an additional 13 Illustrator files to import into After Effects. The animation process itself took around 24 hours, but I managed to complete it on time, if not slightly earlier than planned. Overall, this experience was incredibly demanding, teaching me not to underestimate the potential for Adobe software to encounter issues unexpectedly. It emphasized the importance of careful work organization and distribution. Additionally, after receiving feedback, I had to make adjustments in Illustrator, transfer them to After Effects, export to Premiere Pro, and then integrate the clips while aligning sound effects and music – further underscoring the iterative nature and complexity of the multimedia production process.