As I said in my blog post, the aim of my project is to represent the fears I have surrounding graduation. I switched my tactic for the animation to hand-drawn partway through the project and I probably shouldn't have done this because it ended up taking a lot longer than animation through After Effects or Animate. Yet three-allnighters and a lot of coffee later I was able to animate my feelings about graduation. The video is highly interpretive (and borderline just weird) so an explanation of each section has been provided below.
The Intro
The introduction is a real-life video of me doing homework (or virtual school based on interpretation) and becoming frustrated and lying down. I experienced a lot of academic fatigue over this past semester and I wanted to visualize this through the intro.
Eyes and Cries
The first part of the animation signals SOS with a radar beeping in the background, a sound I often heard from the severe weather alerts in Minnesota. It's meant to show distress and despite the viewer possibly not understanding Morse code, hopefully, it invokes a feeling of distress.
Graduation
As the scene moves to graduation I am seen in the front spotlight, along with my family to the right of me and my friends to the left. As I receive my graduation cap, my friends and family disappear, representing the loss of connections that I fear as I graduate. Then, as the graduation scene gets put into a ball and let go of, I'm trying to symbolize how out of control my life feels, and like there is something bigger making decisions for me against my will.
Office
Finally, as the office scene develops, we see stacks and stacks of papers being added to the desk. The viewer then sighs before blinking and closes their eyes. This draws back to the theme of academic or work-related fatigue.
Outro:
When the viewer is brought back into the real world, I continue my studies as if nothing happened because despite these feelings I must continue to work.
