Project3 Video
Practice drawing
Before preparing for the video, I practiced a bit basic drawing skill.
I think within all the stuff I practiced, curve and circle are definitely the hardest. It is really hard to control my hand for a smooth curve, and the circle is even harder. I can draw it better if it’s not consistent, but a whole consistent circle is really hard.
Reflection from reading
- McCloud argues iconic/abstracted images invite greater viewer identification. How might this apply to representing people in your video?
As McCloud mentioned in his book, when people look at a more realistic drawing of a face, they see this face as other people. But if its a cartoon style, people tend to see themselves in this character.
So we can make use of this role to better immerse audiences into the story.
- Create character in a more cartoon way so that audiences can feel more engaged.
- Use some contract. E.g.
At certain part of the story, make other characters more realistic but keep the main character simple. So that audience will see themselves in the main character but also able to see other characters as seperate people.
- Which of McCloud’s six panel transitions feels most useful for a 45–60 second video, and why?
I think it’s 2 and 5. Transition2 action to action transition allow us to show the story without wasting too much time on details. And since we are making a video, transition2 natually include transition1, moment to moment transition, in its process.
At the same time, transition5 aspect to aspect transition allows us to show a more holistic view of the problem(or the story) very quickly. We are able to show different aspect of the issue.
- Where could your storyboard rely on “closure” instead of showing everything explicitly — what does that gain you?
I think this is especially useful for me since my issue is gender equality. Making full use of closure enables me to tell a story without using too much time. For example, if I wanna tell a story about how a housewife needs to take care of her kid and tidy the house and cook dinner at the same time, instead of showing all her whole day, I can just make a scene of her house being messy and kids running around, and another scene of the housewife lying tiredly on sofa with clean house, dinner, and a sleeping kid on the side(of course this is not so helpful if the main goal of the story is just to show her life.) In this way the audience understand my point and understand my story, but I still have enough time to make other claims or tell mroe stories.
Scripts
1. Girls who code
Issue: most people in stem area are male, and gender ratio is really unbalanced. It is harder for girls to pursue a career in high tech area and make a difference for our gender.
who’s affected? what causes it? what’s being done?
- Girls and all software engineers are affected
- Old stereotype about tech is a “male area” hold girls back when trying to pursue a tech career path. And the male dominant area also makes it harder for girls to join the industry.
- Girls who code support girls around the world to study coding and support their career. And try to support 5million girls , women and nonbinary people by 2030.
The angle/hook (a specific human story or moment) the world of coding is made of many same shapes and same color. But more different shapes join and changed the boring format and color, makes it lively and colorful
Anchor organization: Girls who code
Target audience young girls and their parents
Initial tone/voice instinct (e.g., urgent and stark, hopeful and warm, matter-of-fact) hopeful and warm
A specific call to action Join girls who code, write ur own future.
A draft script (rough draft considering what’s said and how it builds to the call to action)
Nowadays, only 20% of employees in tech companies are women.
This male dominant area makes it hard for girls to get into big companies, then less girls dare to study coding, so less girls will join this industry, and it becomes a vicious circle.
This male only world results in less inclusive environment
Girls need to study coding and try to get a spot in this area, to build the world for ourselves
And it can all begin now — join girls who code, write ur own future.
2. Mona foundation
Issue: girls in less developed areas has less chance to go to school and study
who’s affected? what causes it? what’s being done?
- Girls in these areas and their future kids
- Poverty, and old mindset about girls don’t need to study
- Mona foundation provide education opportunity for girls all over the world, and these girls will then teach the next generation, and form a healthy loop that enables more women to be educated and have a brighter future.
The angle/hook (a specific human story or moment) its about girls in many places. But the common part about all them is that they all take care of the family and can’t go to school. But then someone build a school for them, and they learn knowledge, and then they teach more girls in their village, and it become a healthy loop
Anchor organization: Mona foundation
Target audience young girls and their parents
Initial tone/voice instinct (e.g., urgent and stark, hopeful and warm, matter-of-fact) hopeful and warm
A specific call to action support Mona Foundation, breathing life into dreams.
A draft script (rough draft considering what’s said and how it builds to the call to action)
Many students are studying
One girl is watching outside the window, and then we see all different girls are doing the same thing, wanting to go into school
A hand hold them and put them on a big book, words from the book fly and build their future
In the end a woman tells another girl, this is how I changed my life with study, and soon it will be u.
In the end call for action
You don’t need to have that much knowledge, we don’t have enough money to support your school, only your brothers can go study… these are what girls in underdeveloped areas always hear.
But they don’t have to suffer.
Mona foundation provide education opportunities to girls in poverty
Once they graduate, they can go teach the next generation of girls, and get more girls out of the dilemma.
All of them, can be so close to their future and better life
support Mona Foundation, breathing life into dreams.
3. Women in AI
Issue: due to the male-dominance in ai area, some algorithms are gender-bias and not inclusive enough for women
who’s affected? what causes it? what’s being done?
- Females and everyone who use AI
- Male dominant the AI area
- Women in AI provide class for female to learn about AI and join the industry, and also conduct research about biased AI
The angle/hook (a specific human story or moment) women can change the ai algorithm, and thus influence more areas and society’s bias towards women
Anchor organization: women in ai
Target audience women
Initial tone/voice instinct (e.g., urgent and stark, hopeful and warm, matter-of-fact) hopeful and warm
A specific call to action join women in ai, we can shape our world
A draft script (rough draft considering what’s said and how it builds to the call to action)
Starts with an example of a biased AI
Show a lot of small pieces of scene of biased AI, and tgt they form a AI brain that connects all different parts in society
One women stand out, grab the connection line and transform it into more inclusive
And then everyone stand out
In the end
Do you know when u talk to Ai about a doctor, it will assume the doctor is a male. AI nowadays are biased due to lack of women in this industry.
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Nowadays, people from all different areas use AI for many purposes. A biased AI will only strengthen stereotype and make our society less inclusive.
It is time for us women to stand out and join this area. Become part of it, change it, and build a more inclusive environment for everyone
But these scripts all doesn’t fit so well with the SDG goals, and doesn’t represent global issues. So this time I decided to focus on gender equality — value unpaid care and promote shared domestic responsibilities.
And this is the first script.
1 Mr. Williams woke up at 7 am.
2 He ate the breakfast which is already placed on the table. (a plate of food was send to the table with a invisible hand)
3 Then he went to work, with a neat tie. (the invisible hand tidied his tie)
4 When he came home at 7 pm
Kids have eaten dinner already, and they cuddle together happily (invisible hand sweeping the floor)
However, Mr. Williams’ house was not the one that took care of his family,
5 His wife was.
6 Everyday, women all over the world takes care of the family, without being recognized for their credit. (show women in the previous scene, and then many pictures of many different women taking care of the family)
7 Some of them still need to go work, and return home with more work to do without a single rest day.
It is time for us, to take on domestic responsibility and truly see the women we love.
8 Split family chores, take care of the child, or just start with saying thank you everyday.
Ending:
It takes two to form a family.
Storyboard
Now I came to the storyboard. This is the first script I drew.
There’s a few issue with this story.
- It focus too much on this one story
- Mr. Williams, the husband in the family was being stressed instead of the wife.
- Doesn’t show the global issue enough.
- Need to focus more on the policy and give more stat.
So on the second script, I decide to do one purely focus on statistics and call for policy changes.
This one I decided to use a circle through out the whole animation, and showcase right now women’s house work and how chould we make changes. But this was a ten minute draft and was really sketch.
I got some feedbacks on this storyboard.
- For the policy part, the visual doesn’t convey the message so well, especially the refine elderly and child care, the sign for “refine” was not clear.
- At the beginning, the small human figures are so far away from audience that wedon’t resinate with it so well.
- Maybe can combine two versionis together.
So that’s what I’m going to try to do next
Put a small story at the beginning so that people feel empathy towards these women, and then tell more about facts or policy in the later part.
Final Script
Now this is the new refined script and storyboard:
Through out this weekend, I made moodboard, found some suitable background music and made 6 frames.
First of all, the moodboard.
At the beginning I think the middle one was a good choice, because the third one was not serious enough. But the vitality of women in the third moodboard was really appealing and good for this topic. In the end, I decide to based on the third moodboard style and made some changes so it fits more with my topic.
Then its the back ground music. I found two music from Youtube and Youtube Studio.
Second one:https://youtu.be/WonBu1RJuzA?si=3TpVlSpJAHlS09DK
I decided to use the first music. It was very quiet but allows people to focus on my story and main topic.
In the end, I drew 6 frames.
Feedbacks
Feedback from moodboard and music from class. *There’s a small issue that my moodboard and my actual drawing vibe is not so matching.
People mostly agree that my music feels calm, and this is what I want to achieve with my music. I want people to be able to feel the story, focus on the data and women situation and don’t become too dramatic.
And many people mentioned that my image feels energetic and active that leads to a mismatch with the music.
Also, there was feedbacks that my woman figure looks too similar with male’s figure and made it hard to distinguish the two.
Combining all the feedbacks, I made a new storyboard and a animatic.
Animatic
The animatic also receive several feedbacks.
First of all, people have different opinions about my first story part. The layout makes it looks like the squares may move and they layout won’t make much sense if it is not moving.
Also, the three actions at the end looks too different from all the other part of the video and looks like a badge with the strike. Another problem is that there are too many information in this part that is hard for people to focus and understand.
At the end, the heart shape with the house also seems a bit confusing since the topic of the video is not about love in the house.
Now this is the changes I made on my frames.
The next step is to start animation. There are several problems that troubles me:
- How to make smooth transitions between scenes. I have trouble coming up with ideal transitions. All I have in mind is just the most basic transition, like moving from left to right or directly switch to the next scene.
- How can I change the woman’s posture from standing to squating.
I plan to work on these problems by myself first and maybe search for more inspirations online.
Rough cut
There are few problems with my rough cut.
- The red at the end is too sudden and out of nowhere. Also, the call to action’s animation is too simple and does not stress the call to action. So I add the earth and house at the end of the video to stress the topic. I also used the red house as a way to lead to the red background, and put more bright right before the end of the video.
- The four rows of people at the beginning looks like zombie. So instead of human shadow, I used woman figure but in darker color.
Final Animation
This is the final animation I made at the beginning. I then shared this with 8 people, 5 from our major and 3 of my other friends for suggestions.
Here are the main feedbacks I got:
- The way the box disappear. The boxes disappear from left side to right side and then at the back, and this looks a bit weird and not natural.
- At the beginning, the message of the curtain open scene was not clear. We can’t tell it is morning.
- The tear of the woman feels a bit too much.
- The mom talking part looks a bit weird with the lines and commas.
- The time at the beginning was a bit distracting.
So I made some adjustments.
I let the box disappear from the top, and add a animation for the scene behind the curtain to make it gradually become brighter so it feels like morning and sunrise. I then changed the tear into a sweat, adjust the way mom talk, and changed the color and size of the clock so it is not so obvious.
Now here is my final animation
