Introduction
Since the start of my time at Freestyle, I’ve heavily anticipated the “Zenith” project—the culmination of all our creative efforts. For the Zenith, students can create anything they choose, whether it be a film, animation, article, or song. Since I’m in animation, I decided to animate.
At the beginning of the quarantine I started working on a video game (titled “Jaded” on Steam) with my friend and it has quickly become my biggest passion project outside of school. One of the reasons I was so excited to learn animation at Freestyle was to create more fluid game animations. So I chose to create a cutscene—six animations to be played over the credits of the game—for my Zenith project.
I hold myself to a high standard when it comes to art for my game, and it was a huge risk for me to attempt to draw more realistically proportioned people for this project. I’ve always felt that I lack fundamental skills when it comes to drawing, and I wanted to push myself to try and draw people and backgrounds in perspective despite never having tried much before.
After Effects Effect
This is an unrelated project that we happened to be working on at the same time as the Zenith. We were meant to research how to create our own “effect” in After Effects, so I chose to make a snail breathing fire.
Process
To help me prepare for this project, I looked at the animated cutscenes in games such as Hyper Light Drifter and Hollow Knight, drawing heavy inspiration from the former for the artstyle. Both of these games have hand-drawn 2D cutscene sequences, but Hyper Light Drifter uses pixel art like my game. Their cutscenes are not extremely detailed—with only one or two color bands per hue—but are still incredibly gorgeous and fluid.
Completed Project
Here is the final credits sequence. I wanted the credits (which haven’t been written yet) to be next to postcards on a table. Later when we finish the game, we’re going to add creases and folds on the postcards/white borders, probably draw a graphic for the table below them and add shadows, add the credits, and add music and sound.
Zenith Reflection
Here’s an audio recording of me reflecting on my process throughout this entire project. I’m grateful that I’ve been able to utilize the Freestyle resources to further my own personal passion project.