Professional Practice – College Logo Animation

Professional Practice – College Logo Animation

This projects brief was fairly simple. We had to produce an animation transforming the old Sussex Coast College Hastings logo in to the new East Sussex College logo.

To create the animation for this my biggest consideration was what program I would use to create it. The main possibilities were Cinema 4D, After Effects, or Photoshop, Cinema 4D and After Effects both could have created some interesting effects but I decided to create it in Photoshop. One of the reasons I chose to do this was as a hand-drawn answer to the brief was something few other people seemed to be considering and was something that I expected to get the most unique animation out of. I also preferred the idea of creating something less clean and computer generated than is common with other programs like After Effects, Cinema 4D, or even other 2D vector animation programs like Adobe Animate.

Once I had decided that I was going to animate the transition in Photoshop I began to consider methods of producing an appealing effect. After some consideration I decided I was going to create a distorting effect where each shape within the original logo would turn in to one of the birds from the new one. I began to animate using a straight ahead process for this animation and found that the best way for the circles to transform in to the birds would be through the beak, as if the bird is absorbing this ethereal essence from the original logo which ends up forming it.
After finishing the first bird and moving on to the smaller ones I decided to vary the way the colour built up inside them as well so each bird had its own unique way of forming. I felt this increased the aesthetic appeal as well as further defining the point that each bird represents its own establishment.

Once all of the birds have formed I keep them a solid colour for a brief moment before fading them in to the original logo design. Overall I think this worked out quite well. It answers the brief somewhat effectively.
There are quite a few things that could have worked out better but coming up to the deadline I’ve had to accept there isn’t ample time to experiment and fix the animation in some of the more complicated areas.
One of the primary issues I’ve found is that all of the simultaneous movement creates a bit of a cluster of information that makes a focal point hard to distinguish as each bird seems to be fighting for importance. I tried to remedy this by staggering the birds forming slightly but it still resulted in an overly busy image that I would have had to experiment with more to find an appropriate fix, probably requiring some removal and recreation of some aspects of the animation.
I put some thought in to the audio but still found myself somewhat unhappy with how the integration of sound worked with the animation. I think this was a similar issue to the visual one in that all of the information in such a short space of time creates a problem as the audience tries to understand what they’re supposed to be listening to and which bit of imagery it connects to in such a short space of time. I think the audio chosen could have been improved but primarily believe that a re-evaluation of the timing would have been the most beneficial factor to improve the animation.