Wing Pang

Shapes and Sounds is a collection of short motion graphic exercises made to convey stories through only basic shapes accompanied by audio. The first animation (with the narration) uses a snippet of Denice Frohman's self-narrated poem: Lady Jordan.

The squares animation and tangram flower animation has audio that I've mixed myself, using sounds from royalty-free archives such as FreeSound and FreeSFX. Some of the audio were self-recorded as well.

For each of the animations, a process of ideation and storyboarding was necessary to reach the final result.

With the narrated piece featuring Frohman's Lady Jordan, the short stanza of the poem was analysed and annotated on to come up with visuals that can convey the tone and meaning of the poem. Since some parts of the snippet were in Spanish, I also had to use a translation tool to understand the jist of its meaning. After that, a styleframe storyboard was created to be animated in After Effects.

The squares animation and tangram flower animation had a less directed brief, so I started off with storyboarding the beats of the narratives. While I was animating the two videos, some parts of the storyboard were cut out. For the squares animation, the retaliation of the larger square was removed to suggest a more filial relationship between the two shapes. Meanwhile, the flower animation originally featured a square sun in the background of the storyboard, but was removed since it made the scene feel too cluttered.

While I was creating the animations for these videos, there were times where I had to search online for solutions to problems that I haven't faced before.

In the squares animation, I had to research how I can create a smear frame without manually adjusting the curve. From FLOWTUTS's Youtube video, I learnt to use the echo effect to simulate a traditional smear.

For both the squares and flower animation, a lot of research went into sound design. This involved finding resources for public domain sounds and learning to use Premiere Pro instead of After Effects for faster live audio playback (honestly a lifesaver since my workflow became heaps faster!).

The audio for the squares animation was mostly inspired by old Looney Tunes and Popeye the Sailor Man animations. Particularly, the whistling exhale sound after a snore. On the other hand, I wanted the flower animation to have more of an elegant feeling. Thus, I used classical music as non-diegetic sound (the climax of Grieg - Peer Gynt Suite No 1: Morning Mood), and subtle sound effects for the movement of the camera and tangram pieces.