A Celebration of Natural Hair
The Brief
Harriet Yea and I were both tasked to create a motion graphic as a response to a chosen piece of text based on a chosen topic. From the outset we chose the topic “Equality & Justice”.
We then chose the TED Talk “A Celebration of Natural Hair” by Cheyenne Cochrane to as our core text. We really liked her speech and found it moving, as two white women this was a topic, we wanted to bring light to and felt it was very important to bring light to. Cheyenne is the ambassador for the natural hair movement, so we created our motion graphics to be used on social media platforms as part of this movement.
Text Analysis
Before creating out illustrations for our motion graphic we chose the key ideas from the TED Talk to shorten it down for analysis. We created a 1 minute 30 second transcript with these key points to create an audio. We then chose key phrases and words that we thought were essential for us to illustrate in our motion graphics.
Story Board
I drew this initial story board based on the first ideas me and Harriet came up with based on our initial audio transcript. These drawings helped us put the initial ideas we had in our heads down on paper and begin creating a voice and narrative for our motion graphic.
Colour and Imagery
After researching into the history of the natural hair movement and black liberation, me and Harriet both agreed we wanted our colour pallet to symbolise trends in the 60s, this was the decade the civil rights movement was at its peak and the afro hair style was a symbol of rebellion, pride and empowerment. I created funky 60s inspired patterns using our fun orange colour pallet to be used in our animations and have a 60s pastiche about them.
Character Development
When it came to creating our character me and Harriet both agreed on creating 3 different ages for the same character as our motion graphics symbolised her journey into adult hood and loving her hair. We also wanted to show how even the youngest girls get discriminated against and create an emotional response from our viewers. Harriet created the initial drawings for our character using Procreate. I then developed these drawings on Abobe Illustrator. I added more depth and texture onto the illustrations and got rid of the harsh dark outlines to make them seem more real.
Audio Troubles
When we chose our text, we knew we wanted to use Cheyenne Cochrane’s audio from her speech as our audio. We created our story board to this audio as seen below. We contacted TED Talk however they told us we can’t use their audio on any social media platforms, by this point we had already created most of our animations, as TED took a while to get back to us. So we decided to create a new transcript with a similar tone of voice and we paid a voice actor to read this out for us. We ended up being very happy with the new audio and it worked well with our animations.
Background Design
In our motion graphics a key set design was the hair salon. I created these backgrounds for our animation, and they added great detail to the motion graphic. This was a very important illustration as this was a key part in the animation and we were both very please how they looked and worked.
Font Choice
The font “Keep on trucking” was a clear choice for us when it came to choosing a font that had 60s references to it. This font was great at creating the retro feeling we wanted but as was modern and funky enough it didn’t outdate the motion graphics. I created these two animations using the font to show bold spots and burns. We initially struggled to illustrate these harsh phrases as we didn’t want our animation to become too gruesome or morbid, so showing these on the text worked very well.
Inspiration
While working on this collaborative project me and Harriet wanted our work we created individually to work well together and not look like two different projects. We created a Pinterest board and gathered inspiration that we both agreed would work well and we would follow. It also helped having a colour pallet and font set out. This help our work look much more cohesive.
Critical Evaluation
To begin with, this project felt the most daunting to me in comparison to any other topic so far this year. Using a new software and creating something in such a short amount of time was very much out of my comfort zone. However, once we began the project I soon began to enjoy it.
I was paired up with Harriet Yea, we worked very well together so communication and collaboration were never a problem. We both found a topic we were very passionate in to base our motion graphic off. Finding a topic that we both were interested in was key to us creating the best designs as possible could. The importance of the topic we chose pushed us as designers to create meaningful and impactful work. Although the topic we chose doesn’t apply to us personally, I have no regrets in choosing it as we both learnt so much about the natural hair movement, which is a topic others may disregard but we now know the importance of.
Having no previous experience on After Effects I was very hesitant to begin with, however attending the tutorials and workshops I began to feel a lot more confident using the software. These tutorials and my own research and learning led me to being very confident with After Effects and I enjoyed the process of learning a new design software. I have now begun to use it in other projects, which I usually wouldn’t.
Using Adobe Illustrator is something I was very happy to do during this project. Illustrating and drawing is something I really enjoy, so creating the images for this motion graphics was very enjoyable for me personally. Seeing my illustrations come to life on After Effects was great and I’m very pleased with the work Harriet and myself created. Overall, Harriet and I have created something we are both very proud of, while learning new skills along the way.
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