Project 2: Long Story Short
"Jake Explains Some Junk About Dating" | o:54 seconds
16:9, 1920x1080p, 30fps, h.264. https://vimeo.com/263507744
Summary
I used a short clip that had a lot of personality from the show "Adventure Time", featuring Finn the human and his mentor/dog Jake, because of the fun imagery the cartoon has. I wanted to try to animate something close to what I enjoy for my last project, as far away from corporate design as I could make it. In the clip, the steps to dating, as according to Jake, are outlined using cartoonish metaphors.
Approach
I played around with the steps and thought about how I could show them. Since the show itself uses a lot of mountain and nature imagery, I used that and other ideas of being "head in the clouds", outdoor markers, planes, being airborne, an upward road. I initially saw a kind of curtain/theatrical progression, like acts of a play but decided on airplane messages in the sky instead. This was a helpful way for me to separate the stages in the audio/dialogue.
Visual Elements
My approach in terms of the visual direction was to bring a bright and quirky realization to the dialogue. In the video I use a lot of abrupt motions and suggestive movements following the characters voices. The progression of the conversation made it easy for me to imagine the type using the show's illustration and animation style, along with visual devices to show a progression. I drew original vector art of cartoonish airplane banners, flags, a mountain inspired by one that appears in the actual show, clouds, and other temporal elements. To bring it together, I used similar organic shapes and colours, and animated the text and images in the same way using slight expressions like wiggle and inertial bounce matched to the voices of the two main characters to enhance those quirks.
Animation style, inspiration for images.
Type Choices
The two fonts I used: For Jake, or the one giving the advice, I chose a curly and assertive display face called Swistblnk Banthers by Swistblnk, in black most of the clip to ground the advice. For Finn, the green, the sloppy green type, I used Ludicrous by Missy Meyers to bring out the childishness of that character.
