Zenith

Introduction

“How do you ignite your passion and elevate your skills and experiences to create your ultimate and most successful Freestyle project?”

The Zenith project gives seniors the opportunity to choose and create their own final project. The word “zenith” means: the time at which something is the most powerful or successful, so given that our final project for Freestyle is called the Zenith, seniors are expected to put in their best effort to create something unique and passionate about.

I had a difficult time choosing what to focus on for my Zenith project since I could almost do whatever I wanted to. I eventually chose to do an animatic/animated music video to one of my favorite songs “ただ声一つ”, which translates to “Just One Voice.” This project was a challenge for me because I didn’t have much time to do 2d animation, since I would be drawing all the frames by hand. Additionally, I hadn’t been practicing 2d animation at all because seniors in Animation focus on 3d modeling and animation.

Process

I looked at the album art of the song for inspiration, and these are the two characters I came up with. Since the video would have frame-by-frame animation, I decided to draw two very simple characters to make my life a little bit easier.

Next, I drafted all the frames I wanted in the video using Clip Studio Paint. I imported all the storyboards into Adobe Premiere Pro, to make sure I understood the timing before I started animation. After that, I started outlining and coloring the frames one by one. As I finished them, I replaced the storyboard sketches with the fully colored artwork.

Final Product

Below you will find my final project, the first draft of my project, a process and explanation video, and the celebration video.

First Draft of my Zenith

Explanation and Celebration

Below is a short video on my exact process on how I made my Zenith. I included inspirations, some storyboard drafts, time-lapses, and more.

Process and Explanation
Zenith Presentation and Celebration