Life: Designed

It’s done! I’ve completed the final edit of my animated infographic! This week was all about getting my video to a point where I was proud of it and felt it was ready to launch on YouTube. 

If you’re new here, I’m working towards creating a comprehensive animated infographic centering around the topic of reproductive rights in the United States. I’m calling my project The Statistics of Autonomy: Reproductive Rights by the Numbers. This is week 6 of 7 of that journey!

It’s not out quite yet, but we are so close to the finish line. Next week, the video I’ve been working on goes live!

What I Accomplished

To reach my final product, I took the initial edit I made last week and made some adjustments. I tweaked timing, added colors, and moved some stuff around. Then I added textures to make it come to life. Last but not least, I added the finishing touch: the audio.

Making Fixes

I started my revision process by watching my first round all the way through. I noted down little bits I needed to fix and improve. 

Most of my notes were to allow more time for certain sections. My project is very content-heavy, so there must be enough time to read the blocks of text before it speeds on to the next section. Other adjustments I made included changing some text to pink to highlight certain points, fixing blurry vectors, and fixing some visual errors. 

In making these adjustments, I gave myself time to step away from the hours upon hours I spent staring at my animation this week. I came in with fresh eyes to see what needed to be resolved to produce a better final product. 

See my full revisions checklist below:

Adding Textures and Effects

The next step was adding textures and a slight wiggle effect on some elements to make the final product feel less flat. 

For the background, I layered two distressed grunge textures with lots of wear and scratches as well as a newspaper texture. Together, these created a strong foundation for the animation to sit on. 

On top of all the layers, I added a crumpled paper texture and a grain texture. These really brought the animation to life, making it feel less crisp and perfect, embracing the imperfect look I had been going for.

Audio Design

The final step was audio design. Now, typically you’d do this a little earlier in the process, but given I was making a pretty complex motion graphic on my 2020 MacBook Air, that wasn’t exactly possible. We had been struggling to move quickly in After Effects for a while, and the precision I needed with the audio was not going to happen. So, I exported and moved over to Premiere Pro. 

Here I added the music, a rock song to evoke a rebellious feeling in the viewer. Unfortunately, it was not 5 minutes and 45 seconds long, so I had to do some work looping it myself. 

Then I added sound effects like pencil/highlighter drawing, counter ticks, and wooshes so you could hear the motion, not just see it. I put in some audio clips from protests and interviews, and even some of myself saying quotes I really wanted to emphasize. 

Adding in the audio took my video to the next level. It added another, deeper layer to the final project, which I felt brought out the full message of my story.

What Came Up This Week

A lot of what came up this week is honestly what I expected. I had to do a lot of reworking and adjusting to make the timing adjustments fit. In some cases, I got lucky, and my adjustments didn’t run into the next animation. In others, I had to shift the whole thing back. 

In some cases, I did have to adjust individual keyframes. For most of the big movements, I was able to move the pre-composed layer back, saving me hours of tweaking keyframes. 

Other than that, I had to go back and make some corrections after the textures were added. A lot of the black text overtop of other colors used to disappear into the background black. With the textures added, while subtle, they were not invisible anymore. I went back in and adjusted the opacity so you no longer saw text lingering in the background long after that animation had finished.

Looking Forward

I’m just about done. Next week I’ll be preparing my final video for launch on YouTube by writing description copy, coming up with a title specifically tailored to the platform, and designing a thumbnail. 

I will also be synthesizing all my work over the past seven weeks into a case study page for my portfolio. 

Check back next week to see what this has all been leading up to!