Illustration & Visual Narrative - Task 4: Final Project
27.11.2025 - 4.1.2026 (Week 10 - Week 14)
Cheyenne Liew Khye Yean / 0378330
Illustration & Visual Narrative / Bachelor of Design (Hons) Creative Media
Task 4: Final Project
LECTURES
Week 10
Mr. Hafiz briefed us on our final assignment.
Mr. Hafiz briefed us on our final assignment.
INSTRUCTIONS
Task 4: Animatic Illustrations
- Create a poetic, life-lesson animated video with captions based on one of the given scripts.
- The video must be between 15-20 seconds and must have a minimum of 3 sequences of illustrations.
- The video must include sound, audio narrative, and captions from the script.
PROCESS WORK
Week 11
I first picked my quote of choice from the slides, which is:
“Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.” – Buddha
Then, I started doing my visual research on Pinterest. I came across an artist named Con McHugh, who made some minimalistic and simple, hand-drawn looking animations. I went to his website using the link in his Pinterest to look at more of his works.
Figure 1.1 Con McHugh's Website
(Source: Google), Week 11 (3/12/2025)
Figure 1.2 Moodboard, Week 11 (3/12/2025)
Figure 1.3 Storyboard, Week 11 (5/12/2025)
I then drew out my scenes and made a storyboard for my video. I wanted to keep it simple, so all of the visuals consist of the same few candles. I sent this in to Mr. Hafiz for feedback.
Week 12
Figure 1.4 Digitsation Process, Week 12 (8/12/2025)
Upon getting approval for my storyboard, I started the digitising the scenes.
Figure 1.5 Final Scenes, Week 12 (8/12/2025)
These were the outcomes of my first attempt at digitising, the candles are made simply with just a rectangle and a line, both with a roughen effect applied to give it that hand-drawn look from my inspiration pictures.
Figure 1.6 Frames for each Moving Scene, Week 12 (10/12/2025)
I wanted my animation to be like a looping GIF or stop-motion looking, so I duplicated each artboard 4 times and used the warp tool to change the direction of the fire in every frame to give it some movement.
Figure 1.7 Individual Scenes Animation Process, Week 12 (10/12/2025)
After that was done, I imported my frames into CapCut and edited each scene individually. The duration of each frame ranges from 0.5-0.7 seconds for different scenes, and most scenes were repeated about 3 or more times.
Figure 1.8 Scene 2 Outcome, Week 12 (10/12/2025)
Figure 1.9 Scene 3 Outcome, Week 12 (10/12/2025)
Figure 1.10 Scene 4 Outcome, Week 12 (10/12/2025)
Week 13
Figure 1.11 Editing Process, Week 12 (10/12/2025)
Figure 1.12 Video Outcome, Week 13 (17/12/2025)
Figure 1.13 Shadow Grain Process, Week 13 (17/12/2025)
After that, I went back to Illustrator and added more detailing to my candles by lightly changing the design and adding shadows where it makes sense. All the flames remained unchanged from my last illustration.
Figure 1.15 Failed Text Attempts, Week 13 (18/12/2025)
Figure 1.16 Captioning Process, Week 13 (18/12/2025)
I repeated the process of looping the scenes and replaced the old scenes with the new ones. I struggled quite a bit with the text this time, the tutorials and examples in the Google Classroom couldn't quite apply to most of my scenes since I made it in a way where there was a specific spot for captions, but I eventually figured it out. I emphasised some of the words using a different font named Doodle and added a glow effect. I also changed the colour of the text after the first candle was lighted to yellow to match it with the glow of the candle light.
FINAL OUTCOME
Video
Figure 2.1 Final Animated Video, Week 14 (31/12/2025)
Documentation Slides
Figure 2.2 Documentation Slides, Week 14 (31/12/2025)
RATIONALE
Besides that, I decided to make the animation slightly choppy on purpose to add on to the handmade effect. I felt that a perfectly smooth look would make it feel a bit too stiff, whereas my goal was to achieve the feel of a looping gif or stop-motion film. Overall, I just wanted the video to feel friendly and easy to take in.
For this project, I wanted to move away from the complex look of my previous two works and try out a much simpler style. I used rough lineart to try and replicate the nature of realistic hand-drawn art, and used a more colourful rainbow theme to give it a more lighthearted feel. I wanted to have the text stand out as much as the candles, so I also used a dark background against the colorful candles to achieve that with minimal distractions.
Besides that, I decided to make the animation slightly choppy on purpose to add on to the handmade effect. I felt that a perfectly smooth look would make it feel a bit too stiff, whereas my goal was to achieve the feel of a looping gif or stop-motion film. Overall, I just wanted the video to feel friendly and easy to take in.
TECHNIQUES APPLIED
For my video, I kept all the candles static, but used the warp tool in Illustrator to distort the flames frame by frame, which gave the flames an almost analog, choppy feel without drawing too much attention. I used fonts that have a handwritten or hand-drawn look to keep the style consistent. Besides that, I applied illustrated text techniques by treating the text as part of the glow of the flame, making it feel integrated into the composition rather than just a caption. I also used repetition for the word "thousands", animating it to reflect the actual meaning of the word. Lastly, I applied fade in and fade out transitions for each scene and added sound effects to enhance the atmosphere.
FEEDBACK
Week 12: Illustration looks incomplete, text should be more illustrated instead of just caption-like. Treat the text as part of the composition.
Week 13: Mr. Hafiz said the updated video works better than the previous.
REFLECTION
Throughout this project, I faced a fair share of ups and downs. One of them being when I had to redo the illustrations after getting feedback, but it was definitely for the better, as I think my final outcome turned out a lot better than my first attempt. I was still able to save a lot more time to work on the video due to the simple illustration style I chose, which let me feel more calm and less rushed. All in all, I'm quite happy with the outcome of my video.
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