TITLE: SYFY ID
YOUR ROLE: Director, Animator
MEDIA: 2D Animation
SOFTWARE: Adobe After Effects
DURATION: 0:22
CLASS: Animation Techniques
SEMESTER / TERM: SP 21
INSTITUTION: Ringling College of Art And Design
DESCRIPTION: Many of the motion design courses at Ringling College were centered around preparing us for entering the animation industry from a commercial standpoint, with one of the bigger assignments being us creating a mock buffer animation that plays between commercial breaks on the channel ‘SYFY’. While normally done in stop motion, the COVID Pandemic caused physical classes to be moved online and, similarly, caused the project to move to a digital format. I decided to take advantage of being able to use After Effects, however, to create the punchline at the end of the animation wherein the SYFY logo appears by falling on the ‘dragon’. Prior to that idea, my main concept was to have a sort of gladiatorial showdown against the alien and the dragon, although that idea was steadily trimmed away into the two simply fighting for no apparent reason. Animating the pair digitally compared to stop motion was rather difficult as their rigs meant that I had to move each segment individually at time, and from a select point on each, that being the dragon’s head and the alien’s hover device.