Brief
To create a short sonic animation suitable for sharing on social media.
Deliverables
One 15 second sonic animation of a cow chewing based off this post by instagram user laciemevans and her aptly named cow, Snow. Animation to include sound effects to sell the immersive nature of the piece. The piece in full can be watched here.
Tools and programs
I used Adobe Illustrator (AI) to create the elements for the main animation, Adobe Photoshop to remove to clear up the background, only to transfer it back into AI to image trace it and make it more cohesive with the rest of the animation. Finally After Effects was used to assemble and animate all of the parts.
Design process
Numerous screenshots of the post in question, resulted in some rough sketches for the purpose of drawing in Illustrator. Photoshop was used to remove certain elements from the background, including [creator]. I did initially try drawing a background in Ps, however landscapes is not something I’m particularly good or interested in, and the result was too distracting, so I imported the now relatively clear background back into Illustrator, and image traced it so that it fit with the style of the prominent animation.
Once this was completed, everything was brought into After Effects, where the chewing animation was first animated and looped using expressions, then and a subtle leaf shadow was added using this image. The final animation added was a make the main head wiggle ever so slightly, as I observed that cows do not stay completely motionless while eating. Sound effects were sourced from the BBC sound archive and carefully layered so as to complete the immersive sound experience.
Completed project
The final project can be viewed here.
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