Project Overview

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The Universe to Fly to with My Wings

The Universe to Fly to with My Wings

A promotional video project for 826 Valencia, a non-profit organization in San Francisco, CA. The video illustrates a short story written by a student from the organization.

Project Overview

The Universe to Fly to with My Wings

A promotional video project for 826 Valencia, a non-profit organization in San Francisco, CA. The video illustrates a short story written by a student from the organization.

Project Overview

The Problem

Every year, BBDO, an advertising agency network, produces a series of video for 826 Valencia, a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting students ages 6 to 18 with their writing skills, and helping teachers get their students excited about writing. These series of videos visualize live-action readings of child authors sharing their work.

Featured Short Story

The Universe to Fly to with My Wings

By: Marlon Hernandez

Growing wings would be like I could touch anything. My wings would have beautiful rainbow colors. I would try to fly all around the universe.

In the universe, I would find an alien and take it back to 826. He would see 826 as an awesome place. He would think, “It’s so bright, like a diamond!” The alien would see kids reading, writing, doing their homework, and see how smart they are.

It would be a little strange for the alien, because we have hair and they don’t. They would look like squids and think we’re different. That would be awesome!

The Solution

Produce, design, and animate the short story, and contribute in a significant way to the campaign under the direction of BBDO.

My Responsibilities

Moodboards, styleframes, storyboarding, asset creation, scene animation

Team

Cecilia Chen, Chessey Kong, Emma Li, Katharine Wang, Kevin Dang, Lillian Guo, Paige Burington, Sammi Wang, Soya Qian, and Wei Huang

Pretty cool, right?

Learn more about me by seeing how I work.

Project Details

What's 826 Valencia?

826 Valencia is a non-profit organization that serves under-resourced youth, ages 6 to 18, with essential building blocks (reading and writing skills) that are fundamental to their future success. They partner with teachers and classrooms to create exciting workshops and lesson plans, ultimately producing professional-quality publications with young people, and inspiring students to write, both creatively and informatively. 826 Valencia communicates with a tone that is whimsical, whacky, fun and youthful.

Visiting 826 Valencia

The team visited 826 Valencia in order to illustrate the part in the story when the alien visits. The author was very specific about the place of visitation, so we wanted to portray it correctly.

826 Valencia - Outside

826 Valencia - Outside

826 Valencia - Inside

826 Valencia - Inside

Inspirations

We found inspiration from videos and images we felt are fun, colorful, simple, and young.

826 Valencia - Outside

Concept 1

Concept 1 is a figurative interpretation. The video will be expressive, nonrepresentational, and rely on typography and movement to illustrate Marlon’s story. The video will depict active words such as “fly”, “universe”, and “awesome”. Using animated geometric shapes, lines, and suggestive emotional movement within Marlon’s narrative, the video will evoke the feeling of awe and wonder. Stylistically, the aesthetic will be colorful, imaginative, textured, and simple.

Concept 2

Concept 2 is a literal interpretation of Marlon’s short story, straightforwardly portraying his narrative of exploring the universe, meeting an alien, and bringing it to 826. The video will begin in black and white and transform into color as the alien reaches 826 to show the magic of 826’s program. It will be bright, whimsical, and illustrate Marlon’s excitement for adventure and discovery through the introduction of various characters. Stylistically, the internal universe will be untextured, solid in color, flat in design, and ultimately, fun.

Brainstorming

We brainstormed by creating personas, word lists, mind maps, and matrices to find creative directions and concepts. This is a sample of the one of our matrix.

Storyboarding

This is a sample of one revision of our storyboards.

Color Palette

We originally brainstormed a pastel color palette, but later finalized it to a more vibrant palette. We wanted a color palette that had a wide range in contrast, yet still fun and whimsical.

Assets

This is a comparison of how our assets have changed over the course of the project. We revised the assets to aligned with the style frames, color palette, and environment.

Assets - Children

Characters - V1

Assets - Children

Characters - V2

Alien - V1

Alien - V2

Assets - Classroom

Classroom - V1

Assets - Classrom

Classroom - V2

Animatic

Creating animatics to test timing and frame sequences helped us pitch our ideas without investing too much time animating something that wouldn't work. There were many revisions made. This is one of our animatic.

Rough

We made improvements from group feedbacks. This is one of our rough edit.