THE DARING FEW- VIDEO ESSAY
After Effects Animation
For this project, the goal was to practice conveying the narrative and themes of a piece of audio through abstract imagery. In this animation, I also utilized Adobe After Effects tools I have not previously made use of, like the puppet tool and the graph editor
Animation was done in After Effects. Real images were sourced from Adobe istock and the Library of Congress and edited in Adobe Photoshop. Graphic Assets were made in Adobe After Effects. Audio is from the Hidden Brain podcast episode called “Cultivating Courage.”
FINAL
CONCEPT DEVELOPMENT
AUDIO SELECTION
This piece of audio is an excerpt of a Hidden Brain episode called “Cultivating Courage,” featuring an interview with a neuroscientist who studies fear.
In this excerpt, the speaker playfully jokes that our ancestors must have been cowards, because the typical human reaction to danger is to run or freeze. He goes on, however, to note that human advancement only occurs when individuals defy that impulse and take risk for the betterment of our species. It is the bold actions of these “daring few” from which we all benefit.
I found the message to be compelling, and felt that the narrative structure and emotional arc in this excerpt would lend itself well to storytelling and visual interpretation.
VISUAL THINKING
The text begins by presenting humanity as a collective, a monolith, using pronouns like “we” and “our.”
As the speaker moves from discussing cowardice to bravery, it starts to pick out individuals from our species, the Wright brothers, Madam Curie, MLK, etc.
This dichotomy of humanity as a collective vs. the individuals became the foundation for my visual essay
I explored different metaphors (trees vs. leaves, rocks in a river, marbles), but I settled on the visual metaphor of a body of water vs. water droplets
ANIMATIC
MOOD BOARD
In terms of visual style, I wanted to challenge myself and expand beyond the minimalistic, vectorized look that I’ve usually gone for
I settled on a collage style, mixing cutouts of stylized images with more graphic elements
MATERIAL
FINAL ASSETS
