How reading changes your mind

Do Nothing Snake Sideways album cover redesign

How reading changes your mind

explainer video | motion design case study

As digital media becomes more and more compelling and the speed at which we consume it becomes faster and faster, reading books has become something of a lost art. How can we display evidence of the benefits of reading for the human brain in a way that fosters a love for books?

I created a 3 minute explainer video that uses a cohesive visual language to demonstrate the benefits that reading has on the brain.

Timeframe:

12 weeks

Tools:

Adobe After Effects, Premiere Pro, Media Encoder

see my process...

Process

Storyboards

I would be absolutely lost without storyboards. I like to plan my animations as thoroughly as possible before going into After Effects so that I'm not improvising beats of the story when I should be focusing on motion. For me, this is the most difficult task in animation. This project had more detailed storyboards than any other motion project I'd worked on; however, throughout the process of animating this video, I kept finding gaps where the storyboards didn't quite cover the script. I've since learned to draw my storyboards after I have the voice-over.

storyboard p.1

storyboard p.2

storyboard p.3

storyboard p.4

storyboard p.5

storyboard p.6

storyboard p.7

storyboard p.8

Layer styles

the reading fairy

Layer styles give this animation a project look. A gradient overlay combined with inner glow gives elements a subtle dimensionality and imply lighting without being too CPU intensive. Since layer styles reference the size of the comp or the layer on which they're applied, they will not be affected by the rotation of a layer; this heightens the illusion of lighting.

Reactive glow

To give the illusion that the reading fairy was speaking the voice over, I wanted to make the intensity of the  glow effect react to the amplitude of the voice over layer. I used an interpolative expression that looks at the minimum and maximum values of the audio layer and outputs a range of values between 1.1 and 1.7 for the glow intensity.

//reference the value stored in the audio amplitude layer

t = thisComp.layer("Audio Amplitude").effect("Both Channels")("Slider");

//use an interpolative method to set minimum and maximum output values
// ease(inputValue,minInput,maxInput,minOutput,maxOutput)

ease(t,0.01,15,1.1,1.7);

//this method looks at t, the number value assigned to the audio amplitued at any given frame
//then we tell it to ignore all input values outside of the range 0.01-15
//then we tell it to output a range of values from 1.1-1.7, which becomes the glow intensity

Creating readable kinetic typography

I struggled a lot to find a way to animate the text in this video. Given the subject matter, the text needed to be very easy to read. But, since it was a motion design project, I wanted the text to move beautifully. How could I animate the text in a way that was both lovely to watch and easily legible?

I found that by subtly animating the position of the word and the line simultaneously, I could lead the eye to the next line in a way that felt natural . The opacity of the individual words is animated with their position.

I am indebted to Erik Fadiman and Ben Goldsmith for their feedback and guidance on this project.