Yellow Jacket Overview

The Yellow Jacket is a fictional Character that I have constructed for my Capstone Project. For this term, our Capstone was a project of our choosing; that had us as the designer utilize our acquired skills throughout the Graphic Design program.

Capstone projects are an important part of a graphic design curriculum and the range of projects, from theoretical and experimental to more pragmatic, give students an opportunity to find deeper personal connections with subject matter. The self-driven project gives students confidence in their abilities as they move from academia to the workforce, and the opportunity for a unique project in their portfolio. 

We Began the assignment by coming up with proposals for what we were going to do. I decided to go with a 1-2 minute animated comic book trailer on a fictional character I had originally had planned (The Yellow Jacket). 

Yellow Jacket Storyboard Sketches

Rubric

In order to continue to stay on track, I made a rubric that had the major components of the assignment as grading material. So the sketches, Adobe Illustrator artwork, the music and sound effects, the Poster, the Parallax Animation, and additional Augmented Reality play.  I wanted to make sure that the work was divided equally among the weeks so that I had enough time to complete the other assets required for the project.

Objectives: I will begin by sketching concepts, actions, and ideas I want to start to tell the story in.  

Sketching and animation

I then began taking those sketches and drawing them on adobe illustrator. Those Illustrations would be the basis of the animation and I had to include a specific File to put them all in so that I could get them all in the After Effects document. For the backgrounds and extra detailed items, I mostly used images online and applied an effect on Adobe Illustrator called image trace. Which applied an animated effect to them making them blend into the background as they should.  

Then take those illustrations into Photoshop where I can cut them up so that it can make the parallax effect noticeable. Then when that was done; I started animating them.   

In order for the Parallax effect to take shape, I had to make sure that each shot had a camera or 2, and the lighting effects were present to help give off the shadow and or glow effect. 

Once all the Parallaxing was finished and double checked; it was time to  create the poster. I used a spare animation from Illustrator to use as the main fill for the comic page. I had to finish the AR before I could finish the poster. Mainly because of the fact that the AR had the QR code in which was going to be placed onto both the Poster and then the Animation. A part of making the poster was to also make the QR code so my viewers can scan it, and it could take them to a “My Web AR” artboard and they can see more of the previous work.

  Once the QR Code was made, I placed it on the Poster and was able to place it into the animation. Before I rendered the assignment, a fellow designer shared a tip about the video’s quality that was very helpful in the long run. By using the technique, all of my images that I made in Adobe Illustrator would be in much better quality. Then after improving the frame rate for the animation, I was able to finally render the project. It took at least an hour for the video to fully render, but it was Undeniably worth it to see the finished product.