Title Sequence Animation – Hypnogogia
For Motion class, I thought it’d be perfect for a motion picture class to put my webcomic’s story into animation, as if it were the intro to a show. I chose the song “Alligator Teeth” by Mother Falcon to accompany the visuals, which use a combination of 2D drawings and 3D animation to create the look and depth of ominous glowing computer surveillance rooms, as were a major theme of the story.
2D Overlay Animation – VIRGIL
VIRGIL is a short animated sequence in which I practiced my ability to animate motion graphics and tracked designs using footage from the game Halo 3: ODST from Bungie software. The game is a very mystery-noire oriented aesthetic, with rain pouring down in an alien-invaded city. As such, treatment of my applied motion graphics mostly revolved around conveying the futuristic focus on keeping track of important data, all in the form of the game’s AI character, VIRGIL (the city’s Superintendent).
I decided to give the interface a personality as VIRGIL is an AI helping an Orbital Drop Shock Trooper (ODST) named Rookie find his teammates after a disaster separates them in the rainy, burning city.
Content Spot Concept – Riot Games
In Motion 2 class, we were required to create a broadcast content package. I decided to work out a set of hypothetical ads that could be played on something like a Twitch broadcast between segments of League of Legends E-Sports Tournaments. The music video footage used from the POP/STARS and VILLAIN music videos. Audio for BADDEST and VILLAIN by K/DA, Madison Beer and Kim Petras.
Using existing footage, I edited graphics over content from Riot Games. I do not own the music/music videos or game footage used, this piece was made purely for educational purposes. K/DA is a virtual music group starring Ahri, Evelynn, Akali, and Kai’Sa (characters from the video game League of Legends). Footage from the trailer DUELISTS by Riot Games, which promotes their recent video game, Valorant. All rights belong to Riot Games.
Video Game UX/UI – Sentinel HUD Animation
Sentinel HUD Prototype was a game demo I made for my Interactive Design class. We were supposed to create a user interface that would adapt to its wearer. Instead of going with the intended “health” bracelet the teacher proposed us to make, I wanted to prototype a video game set within my D&D setting of Khoursara (mentioned in my D&D design tab), in which you play an ancient drone flying through sandstone caverns and ruins of a technologically advanced society buried within a Sentinel’s spire. The UI ended up being attached to the drone itself, so when the player pauses, they have a holographic map in the drone’s first person perspective. Other than that, I wanted it to have a feeling of exploration rather than following quest markers on a compass that you could see, and instead train the player’s eyes to search in the dim light.
2D Animation – Worlds Logotype
Worlds Logotype is a short video I animated to represent emblem of my identity and online presence as colebotman. The music used is j^p^n’s Scarce, and through use of Adobe After Effects, I was able to time each vectored shape to the music itself.
App & Animation Development – Oblex
Another project was from my UX/UI Class, in which we could attempt to mockup and program an app that would solve a niche, particular problem. I wanted to create one that could bring the instant messaging of Discord (or other social media) alongside the tools Game Masters could use to run their tabletop games or board games live for their friends. My resulting project was “Oblex,” where I mainly focused on designing the interactions with every single button and page to allow for gameboard movement while typing commands to roll dice, much like a Discord automated bot would do. My other focus was to bring livestreaming even to mobile, to enable games recorded or streamed to an audience on the go from any device.
A link to the app mockup can be found here.
Public Service Announcement Animation – Systemic Racism PSA Codec Call
For my final in Motion Design 2, we were to create a set of motion graphics on a real world topic or problem with graphs and visuals to convey a point. My CODEC CALL PSA brings up the current state of affairs, and how systemic racism still exists, negatively impacting minority groups during the pandemic due to social inequality creating excess stress, red-lining housing communities, and more.
2D Character Rigging Animation Test – NOMAD
Another animation I set in Khoursara was to show off a character, NOMAD. It was for a demo required in our Motion Design class to try tweening 2D-illustrated segments of a puppet drawing. Nomad is a character my players met in my D&D game, being a mysterious traveling merchant who burns incense in censers to produce magical effects.
3D Animation – MIDRA
Another project within my D&D setting and in Khoursara, “MIDRA,” saw my first foray into 3D animation. Wanting to continue on my writing specifically into Khoursara further, I decided to recreate a setting with some fog, megalithic structures, and a bit of eldritch horror suspended in the ancient technology. I was inspired by Kid A by Radiohead, and more specifically the song from that album, Everything in Its Right Place. That song gave me the direction to tackle the vastness of the Sentinels surrounding the city of Khoursara, and what lie within their unfathomably huge spires.
Website – Pop Culture Con
In the Denver Pop Culture Con Website, I designed a website concept in HTML and CSS for the Denver Popular Culture Convention (formerly known as Denver Comic-Con). I learned much about the organization of websites, including adaptive and responsive interfacing, legibility of different menus, and how to design something that will be interacted with by presumably a large variety of people who may attend. Additionally, I created a poster design and animated gif that would play as an ad in an online space.
IB Art Project – Hiraeth, The World You Never Knew
Hiraeth, The World You Never Knew was my pretend documentary set in my world functioning as a warning and expositional piece. The villain in the story, Petrichor took all of the issues with humanity and silenced them by forcing everyone into a constant state of dreaming. If the populace sees exactly what they want to see, they do not complain of the censorship of our valuable historical lessons of our history. The voice acting done by myself, editing, work, and sources cut into the final piece, inspired by John Carpenter’s ‘They Live,’ and George Orwell’s ‘1984.’
For this project, I won the Scholastic Writing & Art Golden Key.
Music Video Animation – DARE
In Motion class, we were tasked with creating a short lyric music video. Using the song “DARE” by Gorillaz, I wanted to depict events in my ongoing D&D game with animated lyrics and some hand-drawn animation frames.
DARE is a Farseer, allowing her to see so far that she can see even hundreds of miles, and even further she can see strands of different possible futures.
C4D 3D Animation Demo – PLAYER
PLAYER was a video project demo made for my Cinema4D animation class, in which we were tasked with creating a section of a music video. I figured, what better time to work on something specific to my D&D setting once again, with some environments, character animation, and special effects.
Story Ad – ORC (Open RPG Creative License)
As the tabletop roleplaying game sphere opens up further and further, Hasbro’s D&D (Dungeons and Dragons) has had a ton of fan content. When the company walked back and removed the old open game license that allowed individuals to create and profit off of fan content for the game (which at this point has become the lifeblood of the game hobby), independent companies came together to create a new license separate from Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast. This license, called the Open RPG Creative License, or ORC for short, would allow indie publishers to work under a shared license that wasn’t owned by anyone, and one that would have legal protection. Read more about ORC here!
To commemorate the idea, I wanted to make a short “story ad,” as it fit in line with an assignment for Motion class. I did some voice work and tried my hand at simulating page flips to go with my drawings as well.