CoMotion 2024
Into The Nature System
OVERVIEW
Motion Media Design students at the Savannah College of Art and Design participate in a two-day event to engage and learn from top industry professionals. CoMotion is the world's largest student-led motion design conference, in which the branding team that consists of the animation team, design team, graphic design team, experiential team and website team come together to create a seamless and cohesive branding throughout all deliverables such as the main title sequence, website, student showcase, posters, merch, etc.
YEAR
2024
ROLE
LEAD DESIGNER
DESIGNER
ANIMATOR
SERVICES
DESIGN DIRECTION
PROJECT MANAGEMENT
DESIGN
ANIMATION
WORKFLOW DEVELOPMENT
About the project
[VIEW FULL CASE STUDY ON DESKTOP ONLY]
In my role as the Design Lead for CoMotion 2024, I led a team of 7 designers in the creation of Title Sequence styleframes, designs for Instagram and panel events, as well as the associated animations. The production timeline for the Title Sequence styleframes extended from mid-November 2023 to early January 2024, followed by the completion of other deliverables throughout January-March 2024, leading up to the CoMotion event.
The collaborative creation of the style frames occurred entirely in a virtual environment, utilizing communication platforms such as Slack, Notion, FigJam, and Zoom. We established end-of-week deadlines, conducted whole team meetings, and implemented mid-week checkpoints via Zoom. On the other hand, the production of other deliverables involved in-person collaboration with weekly meetings.
The Design Team's deliverables include:
• Title Sequence Styleframes Designs
• Instagram Grid Design & Animation
• Instagram Story Design Template
• Panel Discussion Background Design & Looping Animation.
Branding Team Credits
Creative Directors: Kyle Switzer & Muskaan Sethi
Producers: Punasa (Bee) Sihsobhon & Sophia D.Alleva
Lead Animator: Isabelle K Winarto
Animators: Jiaru Yang, Lauren Neu, Linxuan Wang, Sean Shelton, Tzu Kai Lin, Valentina Gil Duque, Xinyue Gu
3D Animators: Davis Hardy, J.C. Petrofsky, Phirada Kanjanangkulpunt, QiQi
Lead Designer: Tiffany Tedy
Designers: Xinxun Liao, Phyllis Zhao, Haze Nguyen, Danna Macias, Cynthia Soe, Chaoran Xu, Sarah Wellman
Lead Graphic Designer: Reem Hinedi
Graphic Designers: Aatreyi Singh, Alessia Piccoliori, Charlotte Beck, Claire Lin, Emily Strycharz, Gauthier Bossuyt
Copywriter: Bri Shufford
UX Designers: Amadeus Cameron & Chi Quach
Experiential: Eliezer Garcia Gazaui, Jinkyu Kang, Gabriel Medina, Hannah Ford
Sound Designer: Seth Marques
Photographer: Abigail Wornock
Table of Content
CONCEPTUALIZING
Working with the Creative Directors and Animation Lead to help strengthen the concept and storyboard creation.
PROJECT MANAGEMENT + LEADING
2 [i] Notion
2 [ii] Line Treatment Style Guide / Tutorial
2 [iii] FigJam Design Work Station
2 [iv] Slack
2 [v] File Organization
DESIGN + ANIMATION
3 [i] Styleframes (as a Designer)
3 [ii] Google Slides WIP Workflow
3 [iii] Master Compositing
3 [iv] Final Styleframes (by the whole Design Team)
3 [v] Design and Animation for Stop Motion
3 [vi] Title Sequence Animation Refinements
3 [vii] Instagram Design & Animation
LAST WORDS!
Things I learned & Advice for myself (and future Design Leads)
CONCEPTUALIZING
Collaborating with Creative Directors Kyle and Muskaan, as well as Animation Lead Isabelle, we worked together to fortify the concept and refine the storyboard.
The initial storyboard presented by the directors was still in the beginning stages of conceptualization, necessitating a collective effort to develop a more robust storyline. This collaborative approach, a departure from previous CoMotion practices, not only enhanced my personal understanding of the concept but also facilitated clearer communication with the designers regarding our vision for each styleframe in the title sequence.
Initial Pitch + Styleframes by Creative Directors, Kyle & Muskaan
Screen Grabs from the Miro Board: Conceptualizing the final storyboard, alongside
Kyle, Muskaan and Isabelle
PROJECT MANAGEMENT + LEADING
Despite being adept at managing my own time effectively, overseeing the time management of seven other designers posed a unique challenge, given our diverse approaches to organizing tasks. To address this, I established a robust organizational foundation that the designers could depend on. My approach focused on avoiding micro-management, instead opting to inspire and encourage them while ensuring adherence to strict deadlines for optimal efficiency.
With only approximately seven weeks before the final deadline, taking into account the Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year holidays spanning two of those weeks, I emphasized the urgency of expeditiously advancing our frames. This strategy aimed to minimize the need for extensive fixes during the busy holiday season, enabling the animation team to commence their work promptly after our contribution.
Considering the varied time zones—ranging from GMT, EST to PST—among the team members, I worked to strike a balance. It was essential and a challenge to create an environment where everyone felt supported without expecting constant availability around the clock.
2 [i] NOTION
2 [ii] LINE TREATMENT STYLE GUIDE TUTORIAL
Within the entire branding team, we've allocated distinct tabs within our CoMotion 2024 workspace for various teams, including design, animation, graphic design, website, and more. I designed my team's workspace to be uncomplicated, direct, and user-friendly for seamless navigation, using hyper links to easily direct them to the required files.
I incorporated a calendar and the schedules of my team members as a point of reference for both myself and the team. This helped us track when someone was on a flight or traveling, allowing us to establish boundaries effectively. Regarding the earlier meeting notes, I ensured to compile comprehensive notes for each weekly meeting. These notes encompass not only the meeting discussions but also my pre-meeting tasks, as well as feedback and critiques provided by the creative directors and myself. The intention is to provide designers with a valuable resource for looking back on previous meetings, ensuring they address feedback and make necessary improvements. While it's expected for designers to jot down their own feedback, having it consolidated in the meeting notes serves as a helpful reference in subsequent meetings. However, a challenge for me was to keep doing this every bi-weekly and weekly meetings for 5 months.
During the beginning stages of the production, I established a foundational style guide outlining the steps to create the line design style. Given that this style was a new territory for the designers, including myself, I developed a guide to assist them in navigating the process.
While the creative directors designed their pitch styleframes on After Effects, utilizing effects exclusive to that software, I had the task of finding an alternative method to replicate the style in Illustrator and Photoshop for our 4K styleframes.
Ensuring alignment with the production timeline for the design team (charted on section 2 [iii] FigJam), I allocated time for myself to explore this unfamiliar style. It was crucial to confirm the guide with the directors and have it ready for distribution to both the designers and the graphic design team for reference. This guide is to be a good starter to still push the designers to explore on their own.
2 [iii] FIGJAM DESIGN WORK STATION
Having experienced being one of the designers in last year's CoMotion 2023 Design Team, I observed the significant slowdown and lag experienced in the use of Miro when multiple work-in-progress frames, particularly heavy 4K PNG exports, were uploaded.
In response to this challenge, I opted to establish our workstation on FigJam. This involved creating distinct sections:
OVERALL FIGJAM BOARD
PRODUCTION TIMELINE
DELIVERABLES
STYLE GUIDE EXAMPLE
MOODBOARD
STYLEFRAME WIPS
STYLEFRAME WIPS
INSTAGRAM DELIVERABLES
2 [iv] SLACK
We utilized Slack as our primary communication platform, maintaining a designated design channel for both directors and the design team.
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In this channel, I predominantly record notes on deadlines, to-do lists, and other pertinent information.
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Sub-groups were encouraged as well, allowing better and prompt communication amongst each designer with me, and the creative directors.
2 [v] FILE ORGANIZATION
We utilized Google Drive to upload and share all working files, exports, and assets for each shot, ensuring convenient access.
Ensuring timely file uploads posed a slight challenge, requiring multiple reminders. Additionally, I had to oversee adherence to correct naming conventions and ensure meticulous organization, maintaining consistent subfolders within each folder.
Each shot folder has consistent subfolders:
01_ ASSETS
02_WORKING FILES
03_EXPORTS
Thank you to my Design Team for being very organized!
DESIGN + ANIMATION
3 [i] STYLEFRAMES (as a designer)
In my role as a Design Lead overseeing the project and guiding the designers, along with ensuring effective communication between the directors and the team, I also undertook the responsibility of handling three shots in the styleframe design process.
I focused on the intro sequence frames, a concept which I developed in collaboration with the directors and the animation lead during the conceptualizing and storyboarding process.
We aimed for a powerful yet delicate introduction featuring lines converging to create concentric circles, resembling water ripples. This, coupled with subtle bloom-like glows, became a significant element of our design language.
Luckily, I managed to finish my frames way ahead of schedule, providing a valuable visual reference for all the other frames done by the other designers.
3 [ii] GOOGLE SLIDES WIP WORKFLOW
While we utilized the WIP workstation on FigJam for viewing everyone's styleframes, complete with feedback stickies, arranged in a table format with slots for mid-week checkpoints and weekly deadlines – a successful approach from CoMotion 2023 – I sought to implement a similar technique.
Once the majority of frames were nearing completion, I transferred them to Google Slides. This allowed us to scroll through the frames seamlessly, resembling a boardomatic, and identify any inconsistencies. I introduced key colors to signify different stages of completion and updated them after each meeting. This system helped designers identify frames that needed expedited attention, creating a sense of urgency in the workflow.
3 [iii] MASTER COMPOSITING
As we approached the final deadline, I took on the task of compositing 3 frames created by one of our designers, Haze Nguyen into 1 big master comp.
Individual Initial Frames designed by Haze Nguyen
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This was necessary for the animation direction, involving a camera panning around a substantial composition. I worked on three of her frames, making necessary adjustments and designing additional supporting elements.
The goal was to create a seamless transition between the shots, giving the impression of additional surrounding elements as the camera panned from the first frame to the next.
3 [iv] FINAL STYLEFRAMES
(by the Design Team)
These are the amazing styleframes done by the amazing design team!!!
Design by: Sarah
Design by: Chao
Design by: Tiffany (me)
Design by: Danna
Design by: Danna
Design by: Sarah
Design by: Chao
Design by: Chao
Design by: Phyllis
Design by: Evian
Design by: Tiffany (me)
Design by: Tiffany (me)
Design by: Danna
Design by: Sarah
Design by: Sarah
Design by: Chao
Design by: Phyllis
Design by: Phyllis
Design by: Evian
Design by: Evian
Design by: Sarah
.png)
Design by: Haze (+Tiffany)
Design by: Cynthia
Design by: Haze
.png)
Design by: Haze
Design by: Cynthia
3 [v] DESIGN FOR STOP MOTION
While crafting the title sequence animation, the directors identified an opportunity to enhance a particular scene in one of the observational chapters by incorporating a brief stop-motion sequence depicting cell division.
I utilized the existing master composition derived from designer Haze's initial frames and crafted detailed close-ups with these new design frames that weren't part of the initial styleframes. Additionally, I created a preliminary animation mockup to assess the effectiveness of the designs. This step allowed for confirmation of the shots with the directors and ensured the files were ready for handover to the animator.
Design & Mockup Stop Motion Animation Test by Tiffany (me)
3 [vi] TITLE SEQUENCE ANIMATION REFINEMENTS
In the two weeks leading up to the CoMotion events on March 1st and 2nd, the Creative Directors, Animation Lead, and I came together once again to enhance all final deliverables, aiming for consistency and cohesiveness.
My contributions included compositing the Observational shots in the title sequence, ensuring cohesive treatments and camera movements, adding textures and gobos, and addressing minor details from the individual shots for refinement.
In the final stretch leading up to CoMotion, our focus was on perfecting the title sequence to ensure it was error-free. This included verifying company names, panelist names, moderator names, and other minor details that may have been overlooked during production. Our collaborative effort also extended to refining individual aspects of the sequence. The result was a title sequence that exceeded our expectations and made us all incredibly proud.
3D DNA + 3D Fern Animation by J.C. (3D Anim Team)
Individual Animated Shots by Kai and Lauren (2D Anim Team)
3D Crystals by Phirada (3D Anim Team)
Mitosis Splitting Animation by Kai (2D Anim Team)
3 [vii] INSTAGRAM DESIGN & ANIMATION
While the primary focus of the design team is typically on design tasks, we also took on the responsibility of conceptualizing and animating the design for our Instagram Feed.
I tasked all the designers with proposing a design concept for a 3 by 3 Instagram Feed. After selecting the ultimate design (Evian's design), four designers—Sarah, Phyllis, Evian, and Danna—collaborated to bring these concepts to life through animation.
A departure from previous approaches, the creative directors, Muskaan and Kyle wanted this year's creative process to grant the designers the freedom to explore diverse animation directions for each Instagram post. I take immense pride in my team, not only for their exceptional design proficiency but also for their adeptness in the realm of animation.
Included here are some of the design proposals submitted by the team, alongside the comprehensive animations that constitute the final Instagram feed.
LAST WORDS!!!
Strike a balance between avoiding micromanagement and being strict on everyone's deadlines.
Assign individual deadlines and specific to-do lists tailored to each person's needs. For instance, if time management skills require more support, provide clearer directives to ensure urgent shots are prioritized.
Plan ahead for busy periods like Christmas and New Years, ensuring most of the direction work is completed beforehand. Confirming shot directions well in advance allows the last few weeks before the final deadline to focus on refining minor details, ensuring high-quality frames and providing extra buffer time.
Advice for future Design Leads based on what worked and what could've been done better!~
Prioritize understanding each team member individually to comprehend their working style, preferred communication methods, and ways to provide encouragement. Due to my inability to attend the first branding team meeting physically, it was a challenge to build a deeper connection between the designers and I through Zoom.
As a design lead managing the project while handling my own shots, I found it beneficial to personally create Work in Progress (WIP) updates daily. This allowed my shots to receive feedback from the directors promptly, serving as a valuable reference for other designers and freeing up time for other responsibilities. This advice also applies to designers, especially considering holidays when everyone may be busy.
Express sincere gratitude for everyone's hard work and non-stop time commitment during the November-December break all the way during the Winter quarter. Recognize everyone's ability to adapt to the new style quickly, implement feedback efficiently, and the overall positive collaboration.
THANK YOU MY KIWIs~
🥝🥝🥝
This leadership experience wouldn’t have been the same without every single one of you lovely souls,
Danna, Haze, Evian, Cynthia, Chao, Phyllis and Sarah!
