Animated Song:
Amnesia Was Her Name
This project was to create an animated sequence to pair with a song or poem, or recreate a credit sequence from a movie. I chose to animate a song, and the first thing I had to do was actually choose the song I wanted to animate. I had a large list and lots of ideas, but eventually I whittled it down to four choices: Red Moon by Will Wood, Oleander by Mother Mother, Amnesia Was Her Name by Lemon Demon, and Kiss Me, Son Of God by They Might Be Giants. I ruled out Red Moon because the sound of the song reminded me of watercolor, which is too intensive of an effect to achieve on After Effects in a short amount of time. I ruled out Oleander for similar reasons, and then Kiss Me, Son Of God because the idea seemed a little too dark. That left Amnesia Was Her Name as the winner!
The characters I chose are not actually mine, but human versions of Captain Ice Cookie and Squid Ink Cookie from Cookie Run: Ovenbreak. I chose these characters because Squid Ink has poor memory, and it often makes them cry. Despite being a sea monster, they’re implied to be a young kid. I thought Captain Ice would be a good foil because she’s a sea captain who often fights pirates on the sea. I didn’t think it’d be much of a stretch to make her fight a sea monster, too.
The design for Captain Ice isn’t much different from the cookie version. The biggest thing I changed was making her hair gray instead of blue, because her hair in the cookie version is meant to look like ice. I also made her actually wear her jacket, instead of it resting on her shoulders, mostly because it’s easier to draw. Squid ink was turned into a human, but they have an alternate sea monster form that resembles the original design, but with teeth! The human design was meant to make them seem child-like and innocent, to contrast with their true nature of a sea monster.
Animating an entire song is very hard, so I only animated a section from about 1:47 to 2:44, which was a sort of interlude verse in the song. With about a minute long animation to make, the storyboard turned out pretty short. It starts with Squid Ink on Captain Ice’s boat, and just when Captain Ice was about to help Squid, they fall into the ocean. While they sink down in the water, they come across a shiny pearl necklace with a big jewel. In the game, Squid Ink turns aggressive when they see shiny treasure, and this was meant to represent that. They turn into a sea monster, and the seemingly innocent kid that Captain Ice was trying to help out turns on her and attacks her boat. The animation ends with her realizing that this might be more than her boat can handle, considering she mostly fights pirates.
Once I made the storyboard, it was time to make the actual assets I’d need to import into After Effects. First, using the storyboard as a guide, I drew out the characters in the poses needed for each scene. All the assets were drawn in Photoshop. If any assets went off the edge of the screen, I’d add a little overflow as a buffer. For that drawing of squid, I drew the entire head and hair because I knew I’d be using a wave effect that’d expose the edge of the drawing if there was one. Any assets that overlap, like the necklace, needed to be in separate groups so they could be exported separately.
One scene had a speaking part, so I got to make a mouth a chart. I only ended up needing to draw four mouth shapes for the required sounds.
Once all the assets were done, I exported them into After Effects, then blocked out the basic animations. I didn’t need it to be perfect yet, I mostly needed to get the positions of the characters on the screen where I wanted them so I could base the background off of that. After I blocked out the animations, I took screenshots of each scene so I’d have a basis for the backgrounds.
The backgrounds themselves are bigger than the canvas size of the animation, so I’d have some extra room in case I wanted to add some movement. Here are a few of my favorites! Drawing the boat was probably the hardest part of the backgrounds, but I also got some practice drawing oceans, which was fun.
All these assets were then bundled together, and after I added the backgrounds, all I needed to do was tweak some additional effects and add motion blur for an extra pop factor.