The Only Man in the World

The Only Man in the World | Senior Project

In December 2019, I graduated from Kent State University with a Digital Media Production degree. We were assigned a project that we had total creative freedom over, to show off our skills that we had acquired over the last 4 years. Originally, I was going to use a project I was working on for a client as my Senior Project, but that fell through about 4 weeks before the deadline (because, of course). Essentially, from ideation to completion this project took me about 3 and a half weeks to complete. I have always been a huge C.S. Lewis fan and I found these amazing authentic radio clips of him reading his book Mere Christianity. The recording and words painted such a vivid picture that I felt had to be animated.

Sketch and Storyboard

O.K. confession time. The “sketches” for these could be called sketches or chicken scratch. Whichever you prefer, these rough scratches laid the groundwork for the design phase. During this, I was able to work through the visualizations of how I wanted to show what Lewis was talking about. From the more literal representations (ie, book, door) to the more abstracted “walk,” doing this allowed me to get my ideas onto paper in a physical way, giving me something to work from going into the design phase.

Moving into the design section, I knew a couple things going in. I wanted to give this an old timey, rough feel that matched the tone of the recording. That led to a couple of decisions right off the bat:

1. The piece would be in black and white, a total reduction of color.

2. Simple, light illustration frames.

3. Papery and grain textures that go over the whole thing.

I definitely pushed my animation abilities with these designs, and I knew that going into it. It’s always fun (I think that’s the word) when you design a set of frames and then when you get into after effects you have no idea how to animate it. Regardless, I feel like these boards were a good challenge for me as a designer/animator, in addition to being good visualizations for the voice over, both in style and tone.

Animation

The animation on this piece was really fun, with a lot of elements that lent themselves to really smooth movement. Two scenes really standout in hindsight that I think are worth highlighting and talking about.

First, right off the bat, the book opening. Due to my ongoing struggle to make my life harder by jumping through a million hoops to do fake 3D in after effects, this scene is was unnecessarily complex. Basically, I had null object on the spine of the book. As it rotated opening the book, I duplicated the cover and offset it by a small amount a bunch of times, creating the illusion of thickness on the front cover. (Thanks Greg Stewart)

Second, the scene with the “walk”. This fun ball is animated with position keyframes and some good ol’ speed editor headaches. The trail is a Trapcode Particular emitter parented to the ball. Once the final ball movement was done, I added in the elements that went around it, along with the inverting backgrounds. Definitely the most time went into just massaging those animation curves for the ball. Making those quicks quicker and eases easier, ya know?

Final Thoughts

This project did everything that I wanted it to do. I kept going back and fourth in the beginning, thinking that I could always just submit a client project to get a grade, or really push myself with a personal passion project. I was forced into making this passion project and I couldn’t be happier that I was. I learned so much throughout this process, and turned out a piece I’m actually proud of, instead of one just for a grade. Locking yourself in a room for 3 weeks is definitely not my preferred way of turning out work I’m excited about, but sometimes that’s just the way it goes, right?