I've had the pleasure of working with NuMinds Enrichment to create the first animated episode of There's Magic in the Air. It is based on a book by David Visser of the same name. The video provides a fun and educational insight into airplane mechanics. I was in charge of creating the majority of the visual assets, animating all visual assets, and editing together the final product.
Pre-Production
The pre-production for this video was done by the creative minds at NuMinds Enrichment. The idea was to take what is essentially a children's aviation textbook and create it into a story about a father and son taking their first flight together. The writers create a captivating story while also providing educational commentary on how airplanes work. All of the story-boarding and look development was done by NuMinds Enrichment.
Production
I was brought onto the team as the person in charge of breathing life into what was drafted on the storyboards. I figured that the best way to execute the video both quickly and economically is to rig and animate the characters in Aftereffects. As a one person team working with a team that had a limited budget, that animation technique was essential.
The characters are first drawn in Photoshop, their body is broken-up into several layers such as "arms", "head", "neck," etc. The separate layers are then imported into Aftereffects and animated.
After the individual characters are animated, they are layered on top of an illustrated background to produce a finished sequence.
Post-Production
In order to save time on delivering the final product, I edited the video as I went along. I submitted the first half of the video for notes before proceeding with the second half.
