ST MUNGO'S: HELP THE HOMELESS
ST MUNGO'S
We chose to use St Mungo’s website as our chosen text. My team created a 3-part video campaign to raise awareness and encourage the public to help the charity. Each video was created with the aim to highlight the 3 separate ways in which you can help St Mungo’s. We chose to focus on Donate, Fundraise and Volunteer.
St Mungo’s share stories of homeless people they have helped to get off the streets. These stories are personal and emotional which was a factor that we wanted to carry through into our series of adverts.
STORYBOARD
My main focus for this project was the Fundraise animation. The storyline was developed based on my research into the life stories of homeless people St Mungo’s have helped. The narrative starts with a man getting evicted from his home. He then "sofa surfs" for a few months which was a common pattern found when studying the lives of homeless people that St Mungo’s have changed for the better. He then begins sleeping on a park bench where he is approached by carol singers who are singing to help raise money for St Mungo’s. Expressing the emotion of the homeless man was important to aid the storytelling of the advert. Also, this was done to make the viewers feel empathy towards the character to increase the likelihood of them donating to the charity.
ANIMATION EXPERIMENTATON
During this project, I taught myself the skills in Affect Effects, Premier pro and Illustrator to create a final animation. Here are some experiments I created whilst learning these new software’s. It was interesting to learn the principles of animation and understand the process of creating motion graphics.
To create my final animation, I drew each frame in Procreate and then uploaded and edited the files in After Effects. To put the stop motion section together, I used Adobe Premier Pro as it is a better software for loading a large group of photos.
COLOUR PALETTE
We chose bright happy colours to attract a wide audience range. Our main aim for this project was to show people how they can help raise money for St Mungo’s and encourage them to do so. We believed a bright colour palette would attract more attention from a younger audience. This was important as we wanted to encourage the younger generations to help out more as they are more able than older generations.
STOP MOTION
Whilst carrying out research on homeless adverts, my team came across a video that the charity, Shelter, had released using stop motion. This gave the advert a personal/homemade emotion, which we felt was important to show in the 3-part sequence so that the audience could connect with the stick figure character and hopefully want to help in some way after watching the advert. I enjoyed learning how to shoot stop motion, as it was interesting to think about the different frames and movements to capture. I also enjoyed the practical side of designing and am keen to explore the idea of mixing medias within my work more frequently.
DEVELOPMENT
After receiving feedback from my university peers, we discovered that there needed to be a stronger link between the animations. To link the 3 animations together, I was tasked with creating an introduction for each of the video’s to give the audience clarity from the start on the charity and what each animation is about. I used the handwritten style to create the introductions so they would match the end section of the video rounding off the advert.
EVALUATION
This project had a 2-week deadline, which I found stressful at first, however, I am proud of the work I achieved as it was a lot to learn in a short period of time. I really enjoyed learning about motion graphics on this project, as it was something completely new to me and I can now take the skills I have learnt into future projects.
It was a difficult experience working on a team project that was very hands on and practical, as we couldn’t meet up due to coronavirus. My team and I had frequent video calls to discuss ideas and to give and receive feedback which really helped me to refine and improve my work. I took pride in creating the start and end frames in the animations for my team project, subsequently ensuring the 3 adverts have the same design style to create a brand presence.
I found the After Effects tutorials extremely helpful as I could go at my own pace, pausing the video when I needed to catch up. The workshops were clear and informative which allowed me to gain the skills I needed to create my animation.
I have struggled to get my head around the principles of animation, particularly drawing different movements, such as squash and stretch. However, I am going to continue to refine and practice my animations skills I have learnt from this project, exploring different movements and transitions to create a smoother animation in the future.
If I was given more time for this project, I would have done further research into different sound effects and soundtracks to include in my animation as this is something that I think can be improved with my final outcome.