After having completed the workshop with Matt, I chose to create my animation using Adobe After Effects. I felt it was the most suitable option for the task and I wanted to develop my knowledge in the programme for future use.
My first step was to create the iMessage style dialogue for the first composition. To achieve this, I screenshotted my iMessage app on my phone to create a background, which I put as the bottom layer of the composition. I then used Adobe Illustrator to create the iMessage style bubbles for the messages. I used the font Helvetica Nue, as this is the font that Apple use. I feel that this gives the piece a more digitalised theme.
The message appears from the left side of the screen. As it’s moving, there’s a faint sound of typing. When it stops, there’s a notification sound.
The next step was to create the software update notifications popping up on the home screen of the phone. To create the home screen, I again screenshotted my own phone, and put it as the bottom layer to make sure every other aspect appears on top of the home screen. I then made different software update notifications on Adobe Illustrator, which included a variety of reasons why people are afraid of the updates. I again used the font Helvetica Nue.
Each notification goes from a scale of 0% to 100%. I created this effect using the Time-Vary stopwatch tool in the Scale section of each source.
When these notifications finally fill the whole screen, an explosion star (which I created using Illustrator) appears and expands along with an explosion sound. This is meant to symbolise the overwhelm of notifications and stress of the phone user.
Again, I used the same Time-Vary Stopwatch tool to create the expansion of the explosion star image. This expands until the whole screen is full with the yellow colour. When the yellow colour appears, there’s a pause in order to give the viewer time to take in the overwhelming last scene.
Next, I reintroduced the iMessage dialogue. I repeated the same process as in the first scene, but replying to the first message with ‘YES!’. This is a very quick and simple scene, which I think is necessary to confirm that the phone user is afraid of the updates.
For the next composition, I originally had a traditional STOP sign to show that the animation wants people to stop updating their phones in order to prevent Apple from ‘taking out money’. I also had a Policeman’s whistle sound in the background to show the ‘STOP!’ gesture.
However, after having discussed my animation to date with Wendy, I realised that it was a bit out of context to place a road sign in the middle of an animation which was totally based around a phone screen! I decided to replace the STOP sign with a STOP app icon. This used the same process of expanding, put still kept the digital theme of the phone screen.
For the final composition, I originally had a plain, black and white ‘#RefuseTheUpdates’ text, followed by an ‘Antiupdateism’ piece of text, both of which had a glitch effect which worked in different ways.
However, after discussing this with Wendy, I decided that this was also out of context from my phone screen animation.
As a result, I places both of these pieces of text onto the same iMessage screen background. However, I’m not entirely happy with this outcome yet, I still think it looks a bit too out of context. Maybe I could alter the colours and fonts to fit the iPhone screen style?
Ellie Williams 