ABOUT
What Starts Here Changes the World
My project represents the teamwork, sportsmanship, and determination that the UT athletes exemplify. These ideals are embodied by the UT athletes, who represent all of us as Longhorns. To show this a basketball bounces around the UT campus visiting its most iconic landmarks under which Longhorns inhibit these ideals anonymously every day, symbolizing the shared spirit of students, alumni, and professors. Through the journey, the piece aims to capture the essence of UT pride and community.
Final Piece
KCA
The team behind it
About the Team
While we ended up separating the projects later on, we still all worked together to help each other and give each other ideas and feedback all the way up to the final products. We began the process of brainstorming and planning together on each project and only split the projects off when we were past the storyboarding phase. This team was great to work with and super easy to communicate with which I found was essential for a smooth production process throughout the semester.
Cash Terry
Cash worked on the Moody Center project for our group.
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Roles:
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Ideation and Planning
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Concept Art
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Asset Creation on Moody Center Project
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Animation on Moody Center project
Anna Cho
Anna worked on the Dell project for our group.
Roles:
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Ideation and Planning
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Concept Art
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Asset Creation on Dell Project
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Animation on Dell project
Process & Progress
While I had worked on logo designs and animations for clients before, this was something much more official and new to me. It taught me the steps that need to be taken, the communication that needs to be upheld, and the time and effort needed to ultimately make the client and yourself happy with the end result.
What did I do this semester?
Let's get started...
To get started, as a group, we talked about our ideas for all three projects for the Dell Wall we would create. Everyone was involved in the planning of each project and in showcasing each initial idea to the client in our reviews from the Proposal, Treatment, and Design Debrief.
UT Athletics Moodboard
From the beginning, we knew we wanted to showcase determination and sportsmanship as represented by the handshaking and pat on the shoulder from the moodboard. We also knew we wanted a simple style with flat colors and hard shadows as depicted by the image of the football and soccer ball. These images and the images of the track, the diver, and the tennis court also showcase how we were originally planning to incorporate all of the UT Athletics sports.
UT Athletics Concept Art
In the concept, we focused on basketball since we still knew we wanted that to be our main focus sport. We made sure to try and use that flat color hard shadow style we wanted to stick to as well.
UT Athletics Storyboard
In the original storyboard, I was already beginning to develop the idea of the sports balls traveling, though I did not know where yet, and incorporating the cheering crowd at the end. In this storyboard, I still have the idea of representing all the sports in UT Athletics, however, even with that it seems to lack some narrative.
Review 1 -
After the first review, our first instance showing the client our goal for the project, I can now reflect back and see how much the feedback I got starting on the first review impacted the outcome of my final project.
Feedback:
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What is the story?
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The focus should be mainly on basketball
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Like the idea of the basketball traveling
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Should add a celebratory end cap with the text "Hook Em"
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The concept needs to be simplified for the wall
Transformed Storyboard
Sample Animation
Review 2 -
After the second review, I felt much better about the concept and direction I was taking with the project. Now I had to focus more on the logistics of the wall and plan accordingly as I worked on my project to make it visually appealing on the wall.
Feedback:
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Work with the timing to make sure there is a clear start and end with the looping animation
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Keep in mind where the audience will be standing in relation to the wall
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​Liked the sample animation
Rough Draft
I used a blue basketball for the Rough Draft because, after some conversations with my professor and team, we decided that orange would likely not show up the best on the Dell Wall due to the wooden paneling. Keeping this in mind I decided to experiment with many colors and create greater contrast that I felt would show up best on the wall, especially considering the diffusion layer of the wall. I also added more distinct shapes and explored the scale of everything with greater details so I could test how it would look on the wall, knowing I could change whatever needed changing after this first display in the Moody Center.
At the Moody Center
After watching it in person on the actual Dell Wall, I was very happy with how it showed up. I wasn't sure if certain lines would show up like on the UT Tower in the beginning or with the canoe structure the basketball navigates through, but the scale experimentation seemed to pay off. Along with that, the colors showed up well and it became clear when watching the rest of my classmates' projects that UT's burnt orange would indeed show up. Overall it was a successful test run that gave me more confidence in my project and gave me many more ideas. After the display, the clients seemed happy with it as well, their main comments were to include more UT colors to make the project UT-themed and to work on timing on some parts to create an opportunity for selfie moments from the audience.
The work continues...
Color Palette
Now that I could see how the colors worked on the wall and that orange showed up with the wooden paneling, I defined my color palette. I used the Moody Center-approved color palettes from their brand book.
Moody Center's primary color palette:
Moody Center's secondary color palette:
Refining Assets
In order to improve my Rough Draft I also did a lot of redrawing and refining of my assets changing some completely while just cleaning up and fixing some problems with other ones. Here are the most notable changes for assets.
UT Tower
The fountain was changed a lot. I redrew every part of it focusing on making it look a little more realistic so it can be more recognizable as the Littlefield Fountain. Finally, I changed the colors to make them work better with the rest of the animation.
Fountain
I refined the UT Tower to have cleaner and less chaotic lines to give it a less sketchy look. I also made the shading on some part a little bit simpler to help it read better on the wall.
Guadalupe Street
I completely redrew Guadalupe Street making the buildings a bit bigger and the lines much cleaner. I also applied the color palette to keep it within the UT theme.
Canoe Structure
Football Stadium
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I changed the football field almost entirely. Originally I had the field with more greens as a replacement for the orange I didn't think would show up on the wall, but I was happy to be able to change it the the burnt orange and white. I also cleaned it up and added a lot more of an audience in the stadium's crowd.
The canoes look almost the same visually, however, they required some redrawing on different layers for certain areas for it to work well when the basketball would be bouncing on them.
Drawing Backgrounds
I also drew new backgrounds to add more depth to the animation.
UT Tower Background
Canoe Structure Background
Stadium Background
Reviews 4&5 -
At this point in the process, I felt very good about where I was with my project. Putting in the time to draw everything super clean and change the colors took a lot of effort and time but after putting everything together with motion I was really happy with the result and the way the project now gave UT.
Feedback:
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Use the official Longhorn logo
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Slow down movement for "Hook Em" in the end cap to add a better selfie moment for the audience
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Great transitions!
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It looks great!
Almost there!
GIFs
To finalize the project and give it an extra sense of reality and dynamicity, I animated some GIFs on Procreate to then input into After Effects to include into my end cap with the cheering crowd and throughout the length of the animation with the basketball. I also gave the basketball some squash and stretch when bouncing, worked on some easing, and gave the basketball a more curved, less straightforward path in the animation.
At the Moody Center
Done!
Note: The only video I was able to get at the final was cut at the end :( Hopefully later on I can get a full one or you can see it in person!
Tools
I used Procreate for the planning phases creating the concept art and the digitalized storyboard. I also mainly used Procreate for creating the assets in my project.
I used After Effects for all the motion of my assets and to get the final project polished and done.