Typeface Video

October 4th

Before any drawings or sketches, I wanted to settle on a song first. This way the song itself could inspire what my video would look like and my storyboard would align with the beats of the song. Since Gill Sans was created in 1928, I knew I wanted a song that was jazzy, swing-y, with lots of energy. When thinking of a song for Gill Sans, the first song that came to mind was actually Cantina Band from Star Wars. I know it’d be too recognizable a song to use, but Vicki said a song along those lines was on the right track, so I kept looking at modern versions of jazz, mostly in the electro-swing genre. These songs tend to be very eclectic, both old and modern.

Initial list of song considerations — later narrowed it down to instrumental versions. Any songs with vocals (as much as I may have liked them, like “Suzy”) just made the song feel like it’d distract from the video.

Since I couldn’t think of much to write about the Cuphead OST songs, I decided to rule them out.

I started by looking at “real” songs in electro-swing, which I found from playlists on Youtube, then started to look at music from soundtracks I’m familiar with. The Cuphead OST songs are from the videogame Cuphead (2017), “Wild Side” is the theme song of Beastars, and “Dummy” is from Undertale (2015). I’m most fond of “Wild Side” and “Dummy,” but I know this is probably from my bias of loving the series those songs are from. First I listened to the songs I had narrowed down, then wrote down the direction I would take the video based on that song.

Drafted script.

Once I had narrowed it down to 4 songs, I read my script while listening to the song to see what I could envision for the animation.

Pretty consistent tempo, matches well.

Slow intro, then gets fast. Might drag in beginning.

Gets too repetitive in the middle; would have to chop the song up a bit to get the beats I want.

Good tempo at the start, towards end would have to do some editing to match an outro.

So, now I think I’ve narrowed it down to Cinnamon Girl and Dummy. At this point I let some peers have a listen to both songs to see which one they preferred.

Cinnamon Girl Votes: 5

Dummy Votes: 0!

Everyone agreed that Dummy sounds too American with a “ragtime” style, and sounds too modern. So it’s settled! Now to work on my storyboard-

I created my storyboard as I was listening to the song, waving my pointer finger like a conductor as I imagined how the text would move in time with the beats. Started to put storyboard in AE and gave up 3/4's through because I messed up.

October 8th

Being sick the last 2 days left me very exhausted, and behind in progress. Before that I had gotten about 8 seconds of animation done. Feedback from Yoshi last class: add in more graphics so that it’s not solely text.

My intro is still mainly text because I think there doesn’t have to be a graphic in every scene; trying to add personality to the text that is present.

Scale of Gill increased so you see the movement of his eyes better; might add a blink later.

Combined elements from storyboard to incorporate the graphics more.

After circle enters, I had it roll off to the left at first; didn’t feel natural so I changed it to move right.

Didn’t know how to continue from there; keep dark background or have a sudden transition? If I kept it dark too long it might become boring… but I liked the idea of the Gill Sans scene being the one to change the background. In the end I kept the light background here to keep things moving.

Left-aligned now, didn’t have text move in from off stage because it’s a quick scene. (Bg looks a lot darker here in Medium). It should be a light gray.

Initially had both words moving in the beginning of this scene, but the moment is too quick for so much movement; instead I decided to keep “rival” stationary while “Futura” gets big for a second to parallel how Gill Sans will come in and be even bigger.

Text is closer than normal for grid so that “Gill Sans” pushes against both lines. Text squishes as it launches off screen; I wonder if it’s too quick to appreciate but I find it funny.

October 9th

Animating this part… I realize it reminds me of Coca-Cola. I changed the color to blue. In my video I’m aiming to emphasize how popular it was in British design. Especially since no one likes it in America.

Blue from London Underground is too bright, toned it down a bit. I wonder whether I prefer the red because it’s just such a vibrant, “look at me!” color… and the blue reminds me of Gillette.

Went back to intro about Gill, added a zoom instead of a blink so you can see his eye movement; this also allows for some more movement of the graphic.

Current progress of first beat drop. Before crit; 18 seconds done.

Progress before crit.

October 11th

Unfortunately couldn’t find more time over the weekend to make further progress on my animation.

Raised text so it wouldn’t feel like it’s too low on the screen. (Might be too high now?)

Lowered slash bar so it dissects the “o.”

Created typewriter effect manually for alignment; reduced space between 1 and 9, and reduced space between the 2 words.

Text is now better aligned with each other and farther left so they don’t crowd Eric. *smaller

Changed “Johnston Sans” to JS and not Gill Sans, raised “was inspired by” to remove the tangent with the bar (though I think I preferred it sitting closer to the bar), and made the top text a little smaller so that it’d seem more even with “Johnston Sans.”

Background had exported a lot lighter than I actually have it. I might just darken the background more to adjust for this?

The only thing I haven’t changed yet from the crit I was given on Saturday is to make the alignments more consistent; I feel conflicted about this because as Yoshi had told me, having all my text centered might get boring for the viewer. I plan to talk about this more with Vicki today, and how get the eye to “anticipate where to look next.”

October 15th

Made a few different grids, changed some alignment. Trying to make scenes flow and make sense together. Crit with Yoshi tomorrow.

Grids for 4 lines/3 lines/2 lines of type.

Some changes between storyboards (section after big “Gill Sans” moment).

Color variations, had all black at first but it wasn’t very visible. Had letter scenes centered but then aligned them to grid.

Had red at first to match the previous scene but the amount of red seemed too strong. Also separated the highlights between “traditional” scene and “vertical terminals” scene. Added a “typewriter” effect to bring more attention to the type per Yoshi’s suggestion; it also matches the intro.

Getting started on next scene. I later take out the clouds, which I was going to include for some perspective and to show the speed of the train, but they look distracting. I like that the color adds to the train and makes it easier to interpret but I prefer the lineart so it matches the rest of the video. I then include a tunnel that leads us into the next scene with British Railways.

October 16th

Final video!

Overall I do feel pretty proud of my video, I think I was successful in keeping that fast tempo and making it feel fun. I’m proud of my logo transitions, especially since Jess and Vicki commented that those were good. I’m not satisfied with the outro but I might adjust that sometime in the future. It could be stronger, I kind of ran out of time/better ideas.