Animated Typography / Motion Type

Basically, here's a throwback to 2009 when we were first starting IDP. Well, it wasn't that long ago really.

After doing short animations and grueling pixelations, the class of nine had an opportunity to create "word clouds" after being inspired by Internet tag clouds and Wordle.net. Personally, I liked the whole idea of animating text and bring personality to each word and letter and sentence. We used LiveType and it was tedious keyframing. I also liked the idea of making a art piece (video installation) from poems created from our English course.

I was actually very excited to create words clouds because they reflected an earlier passion of mine: animated typography. I saw this upcoming clip on YouTube before IDP even started and it left me questioning how they were created and looked so awesome! Basically, animated typography or motion type is a form of animation where speech is translated and shown visually with sound effects, type effects, imagery and unity. It does have a certain flow to it thus creating appeal. I found some famous speech from Kill Bill, Family Guy and also the Dark Knight. These lines from the films/TV shows were then interpreted through imagery and animation. Some times, the users would draw some pictures or simply gave the words personality through the use of effects. While many of these were created using Adobe After Effects, I still found it interesting that we had to use Apple LiveType and learn the harder way. Below is a Kill Bill line interpreted into animated typography and also the word cloud in which I made.

"Sleeping Sonnet" is basically my dislike towards the act of sleeping. It is a short typographic animation attempting to outline a world without slumber. While sleeping does provide necessary benefits, it averages out 9 hours a night multiplied by 7 days a week results in 63 hours. To put this into perspective, if we did units for 63 hours straight, we could get at least 10 of them done (which is almost half of the course!). Ironically, this is a reality for some of us with that procrastinating nature.

Sleeping Sonnet is sad and comic relief allowing us to laugh at one person's feeble and naive desire to overcome sleep!

YouTube: Kill Bill Animated Typography / Motion Type Example



Sleeping Sonnet - Word Cloud from Michael on Vimeo.
I wrote a piece of poetry and turned it into a work of primitive art. Kaboom.

In the nine or ten hours that we spend slumbering, what if we didn't have to? Perhaps, then we could get more done. If we could just remain conscious 24/7 without consequence (such as eye bags, tiredness, etc), that would be my utopia. Maybe then, I could get all my work done.

Done with LiveType and finished in Final Cut Express. Accompanying music created in GarageBand.

A project based on the phenomenon of "tag clouds" found on the Internet.