For my final major project, I produced an animated music video for the song "Cologne" by Beabadoobee. I chose illustrative storytelling as my theme, After exploring various options, I discovered that digital work is a strong suit of mine. This led me to the idea of creating a music video aligned perfectly with my theme. I found that animation was the medium I wanted to work with because it naturally allows for visual storytelling. Considering the factors, animation is something I've always been intruiged by and something I wanted to improve my skills on it in general. But due to my lack of experience and knowledge on the expertise, I selected three artists/animators; Fernanda Dias, Ian Zhang, and Crymelt, as part of my reasearch to help me explore different techniques that resonate with me. These artists have inspired me with their powerful and imaginative storytelling through their animations. I studied their work and crafted three artist responses based on the techniques and aspects I admire in their work. I found this task turned out beneficial for me as in turn the research has allowed me to gain new techniques into what makes effective storytelling, as well as adopt a few traits that give my creative imagery more of an impact. My creative responses gave me the opputunity to get a better undurating and experience with animation as it gave me the opputunity to explore the softwares I would be utilising for my project. As a result, I acquired techniques such as using color to convey mood, lighting to evoke emotion, and utilizing readable body language and expressions to narrate a story through my research. 

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I chose to base my story around a rock band concert, fitting the genre of the song. To enhance my project, I aimed to tell a compelling story through my music video. This led me to brainstorm various concepts and storylines that would complement the selected song. Among these ideas, one that stood out was a tender love story between a deaf male and the band's lead singer, where the deaf character discovers a newfound appreciation for music through the singer, sparking a small crush. Once I finalized this concept, I delved into creating short animated storyboards to flesh out my original characters and refine the narrative for my music video. These developmental pieces were then showcased in a group critique session, where I received valuable feedback

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With the newfound knowledge, I honed in on the concept I wanted to convey. I began to develop characters for my music video, understanding that while the final product may not delve too deeply into their backgrounds, giving the characters more depth would enhance the impact of their personalities. I aimed to create five characters: two main characters as the love interests in the story, and three additional characters to serve as the band members at the concert. An element that inspired me was infusing personal aspects into my project, such as drawing inspiration from puppies I encountered during a trip to the Philippines to shape the bandmate characters. This added a personal touch to the project for me. Before starting the refference sheets, I conducted a small photoshoot to provide me with  reference images that I could revisit as primary source refferences. 

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Some strong points that were evident throughout my creative journey were developing the character designs. I find that creating characters is one of my strengths, making it easy for me to develop suitable characters to fit a storyline. Another aspect I am pleased with is the environmental backgrounds and still frames I illustrated for assets in my animated music video. I found that using Procreate to experiment with blending modes really helped me give more impact to the environment being set in.  

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A few struggles I encountered during my project were the inconvenience of programs I utilized. Procreate Dreams was the main software I used to compose my animation; however, some crucial tools and features were not available in their program yet. This led me to resort to other available apps that provided me with the necessary tools to make my workload more convenient, causing me to use multiple platforms to switch between, such as importing the rough animations from FlipaClip onto Procreate Dreams for cleanup.

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Some weaknesses I found evident in my work after reviewing it. I was quite unsatisfied that the animation was not as fluid as I would have liked it to be. Due to my beginner-level experience with animation, I do not have the skill level developed enough to create something as fluid and dynamic as I had hoped. This factor may also be due to the tight schedule I imposed on myself, considering the estimated length of the animation I had planned. As a result, I had to cut out a few unnecessary clips and replace some animated scenes with still frames to lessen the workload due to the limited time schedule and provide me with work convenience.

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I feel that the concepts I was trying to convey in my story were understandable and creatively developed. However, I feel the message is not obvious enough to fully grasp unless looking at the development and concept pieces prior to gaining insight. This may be due to the pacing of the song and my struggles with animating and depicting the narrative.

In the future, if I were to work on a project like this again, I would focus on my time management and set realistic goals to ensure that I can produce something of quality to my standard. I would also like to explore animation research techniques to increase my skill level in animation.

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