Triumph

This was an entry into the first Ravie Co. animation challenge with the prompt Triumph. I was nervous after signing up, as I’d never done an animation challenge, and still very new to motion design in general. I also had never quite had such a tight deadline for a motion project from start to finish. But, I felt all of that could help my skills.

I am so attracted to stories and characters, and so a character animation came naturally, despite the Ravie crowd’s tendency toward the more abstract. I had a few sort of half-baked ideas floating around when the prompt was announced, and sat down knowing with the tight deadline in about a dozen days I had to just start something. I hadn’t really consciously chosen a direction when I started sketching out the red car. After that, the storyline came piece by piece. The main character was next, and I chose to add a dog to give it some interesting perspective and someone for the main character’s personality to  bounce off of. 

I created a very rough animatic at the beginning because I was worried I had too many scenes in my head and things wouldn’t work or fit. The car swerve scene near the end is actually still parented to the animatic’s layer.

Once I had the blocking down, I worked on getting the main pieces and characters working, starting with the scenes of the boy and the dog in the garage. I had things nearly finished when I realized the challenge called for a vertical video, so I had to redo every scene to fit.

After everything was mapped out and the main animations worked, I kept adding details to each scene like more objects in the garage. On the final day I actually redid the style of trees to fit with the animation more.