Created for my GBDA 202 course, this animation acts as a public service announcement for the effects of the fast fashion industry. This assignment tasked me with creating a 30-second motion graphic with a call to action. To achieve this I learned how to use rhetoric along with research and clever animation to convince the viewer of what they were presented with. This was my first experience using Adobe After Effects. New animation skills, a refined graphic style, and an important topic resulted in one of my best projects ever.
I chose to cover a topic I care about, fast fashion and its environmental impact. I found some facts like how the fashion industry creates 8% of the world's carbon emissions and also found the best solutions for individuals. I use these facts, visuals of overwhelming amounts of clothing, visuals of potential solutions, the pacing of the animation, and audio design to achieve a convincing and beautiful final result.
Once I had decided my topic, I researched this issue and found some shocking statistics along with some good solutions. I found some facts like 3 out of 5 fast fashion items end up in landfills. Once I had these facts I wrote the script of my motion graphic and took advantage of pathos and ethos to persuade viewers. From this, I created my storyboards and sketched out a basic mockup of my motion graphic. I decided to visually emphasize the size of this problem by having the screen fill with new and discarded clothes. I also wanted to use illustration and animation to communicate some of the solutions to this problem like stitching clothes and buying used clothes.
In this process, I also had to learn how to animate using Adobe After Effects. I had never used this software before and had never animated anything. I went through online tutorials and from this, learned the basics of the software and became comfortable using it for this assignment.
Once I was finished with pre-production and my treatment and storyboards I got to start illustration and animation for my rough cut. At this point, I had also gotten feedback with suggestions to improve my work and was reassured that I was on the right track. I started by illustrating a bunch of clothing on hangers using Adobe Illustrator. This is something that I already knew how to do. I was experienced with designing using this software and it was a great opportunity to expand my design skills and explore a new design look and style. I also worked on my stitch and thread graphics and decided on my font and finalized my typography.
After this, it was on to animating, and applying my newly learned After Effects skills. I started by animating a rack of clothing with clothing sliding onto it. I used position keyframes and played with anchor points and rotation to make the clothes sliding on the rack look natural.
At this point, I laid out my typography and got to see how long everything should be shown on the screen so that everything could be read properly. Now I animated the stitches and chose to try to animate all the individual threads so I researched how to animate several similar lines in the same way at the same time. At this point, I also designed and animated a basic place filler for a pile of clothing that rose from the bottom of the screen and then was scattered off-screen. I used this to finish my rough cut so I could submit it for feedback.
From my feedback, I was reassured that I was on the right track and that my final steps were to add music and finish my last animation. I started this by designing the pile of discarded clothing. For this, I designed about 50 to 60 basically blobs of clothing that were all unique with different colours, patterns, and elements like pockets or buttons so it was obvious that they were clothes. To animate this, I had the entire pile rise from the bottom of the screen and then each individual object of clothing flew off the screen in a different direction to symbolize the rejection of fast fashion.
Once this was done I decided on my audio. I wanted the audio to be the background noise in a clothing store with background ambiance and the sound of clothes hangers being moved on a rack. Once I found and added this audio, my motion graphic was finished and ready to be exported and uploaded to YouTube.
