Supernatural Portraits & After Effects Puppetry

This short animation project for Imagery in Graphic Design was a lesson in analog painting methods, as well as After Effects animation and object puppetry.

This short film depicts a person turning into a ‘monster’. She runs from this idea until she meets another person who also appears monstrous, only for them both to realise that neither of them are actually monsters - they are just people after all. It’s about perception of self, self-blame and the nature of being human.

For this project, I created all the watercolour assets myself using traditional methods. I also cleaned and edited them digitally before bringing them into After Effects for compositing. The sound design was also created by me, utilising borrowed and created sounds to create the immersive soundscape.

Of note: two of the watercolour assets used in the final video are from an in-class exercise studying the colours and brushstrokes of American artist and illustrator Maira Kalman. Her original work can be found here.