Telling Stories With Animation and Motion
FOOD
When Alex learned the Procreate app could generate animation the creative juices started flowing. He began with animated graphics about food because everyone loves food.
Stories of his favorite foods had to be represented - dessert, donuts, coffee, pizza. He made expressive line art with ink and a ruling pen on watercolor paper. He imported the photos of his line art into Procreate. To remove random pixels and dots he used an Apple Pencil. He kept imperfections in the line art then I added color. He duplicated the art then modified the duplications. Finally he compiled the art and rendered the file. Boom! Animated art. The commitment needed to make the animation was worth the payoff.
HOLIDAYS
For Christmas Alex looked around his house and city for objects he could use as inspiration for animated graphics. Any holiday can be the good time to flex creative muscles. So many great sources of inspiration are waiting to be translated into motion graphics.
PROCESS
One of Alex’s favorite reality competition shows was the Great Pottery Throwdown. It’s a British show that aired on HBO (let’s hope it returns). Every week the artists were presented with a project to challenge their skills and imagination. Every week an artist was eliminated for not meeting the challenge. Alex gave himself a few animation challenges based on the projects from the show. He learned how to distill his storytelling into distinct moments.
EXERCISE AND PHYSICAL FITNESS
Alex was a personal trainer and group exercise instructor. He wore an Apple Watch while he led classes and exercised on my personal time. In his watch are activity apps which track different types of exercise. The design of these apps were based on his activity apps. His apps tracked exercise from daily tasks like lifting groceries and standing up from a chair. Other exercises to explore are pushing a lawnmower, carrying a full laundry basket and raking leaves.
