Case Study:
I’ll Always Be With You
I’ll Always Be With You is an animated video that tells a story of love and loss through my eyes. I wrote the story in response to the loss of my grandmother and animated the video soon after. The goal of this project was to show that love can live on even in times of loss. Here are the steps I took in order to convey that message.
The Animation Process
Storyboard
This is a panel from the storyboard. Each one represents a key scene from the video. The storyboard helped me figure out the positioning of the characters within the setting of the frame. I also used the storyboard to finalize the story and scene order.
Style Frame
With the story finalized, I researched various different art styles for inspiration to find a style that fits the message of my project. Since the story is about the relationship between generations ant told from the perspective of a child, I wanted the art style to convey that. This resulted in an art style that resembles a coloring book filled with water color paintings. The style frame shows my first draft of the video’s art style. As I got further into the animation process, the art style evolved beyond what’s in this frame, but putting together the frame provided a basis for what eventually became the video’s art style.
Animatic
The animatic takes the storyboard and animates it with the audio to help work out the video’s overall pacing and the timing of each individual scene. The animatic also acted as a template for the rest of the animation process.
Characters
I animated the video in steps starting with the characters. I went scene by scene and animated each character at 12 fps. I began by sketching out each keyframe to finalize each character’s movement followed by the in-between frames. Then, in separate layers, I drew the line art. I broke it up to make it easier to manage all of the different movements. Once all of the line art was finished and animated smoothly, I added the color layer.
Backgrounds
The most ambitious aspect of this project was the rotating backgrounds. As the story transitions between the world of the living and the world of the dead, everything in the frame rotates 180 degrees to show that they are two sides of the same coin. Color was the design element I relied on the most in order to convey the difference between the two worlds while the line work was the same with both to tie them together. I drew both halves on each version of the background to insure a smooth transition when animating. I also drew the backgrounds bigger then what all fit in the frame so even when everything rotated, the frame would always be full. Creating multiple versions of the backgrounds accommodates for different types of shots.
Putting It All Together
After illustrating and animating all of the pieces in Adobe Photoshop, it’s time to put it all together. Using the animatic as a template, I combined everything into one cohesive video in Adobe After Effects. Here’s the finished story, enjoy!