Project 3 – Self Reflection

STORYBOARD NOTES

1: Skull of biodegradable urn opens.
2: Zoom out. Roots grow out from the base of the urn. Tree vines grow out from the skull mouth. Cross fade.
3: Vines grow from bottom-left of screen; leaves produce from the vines; leaves show colours and images of background (flag of Shetland Isles, black leaves with different coloured edges)
4: Vines grow from bottom-right of screen; leaves produce from the vines; leaves show symbols of interest (heavy metal, gothic subculture, etc). Cross fade.
5: Vines grow from bottom-left of screen; leaves produce from the vines; leaves show flags of countries that have been visited.
6: Vines grow from bottom-left of screen; leaves produce from the vines; leaves show colours and patterns of lifestyle (polyamorous pansexual and Halloween-theme design)
7: Still shot of fully-grown tree. Sun shines behind tree. Image of deceased fades in and out.

Once a blank leaf template was drawn on Illustrator, it was used to design leaves within the template. Many of the leaves are black as it is John’s favourite colour, but some leaves show different coloured edges. i.e., black and red, black and blue, black and yellow, black and green, etc. This is to highlight John’s sense of style and colour coordination in his wardrobe. Another set of leaves show the flags of all the foreign countries that John had travelled (so far) in his life, even the flag of the Shetland Isles, where he was brought up.

This project was also a subtle method for John to come out as a polyamorous pansexual, but this is only shown as one leaf to illustrate the point that this aspect of his life is just one part of him rather than dominating “the tree of his life”

Rather than inflict any design copyright issues from stock images online, it became desirable to produce the flags from scratch on Illustrator. It took time to fit the necessary shapes into the leaf outline. Once the Eraser tool removed parts of the shapes outside of the outline, the red vertexes were manipulated to match the edges of the leaf.

For the polyamorous pansexual flag, two heart shapes were needed. So, three square shapes were made in blue, red and black and the edges were reshaped with the Pen Tool. The three hearts were cut with the Erase Tool to construct one heart. But before that, one of the hearts was copied and made smaller with a white edge.

As shown in the storyboard, there were more leaves planned to be created that would have highlighted more of John’s love for the gothic subculture and heavy metal, as well as other hobbies and interests. However, due to time constraint, this part of the project had to be left out of the final output. Although, it may be feasible to revisit this project at a future time where more parts of the tree could be shown, and more leaves cover more aspects of John’s life.

For the first shot where the roots and stem grow out of the urn, several unanimated Advanced Lightning effects were placed, one on top of another.

The sun in the last shot was a combination of Fractal Noise and Light Rays animated. The transparent selfie of John Irvine could have had softer edges to blend in more with the background. Despite this, the last shot with the tree (drawn on Illustrator) appears sentimental to John’s memory.