Have you ever gone on YouTube to watch an unboxing video of a tech product you will probably never purchase and about 2 hours later you're still there watching a Barnicle Gosling jump of a cliff on BBC Earth? Yeah… me neither. Ok fine, I just did. You’d be surprised, or maybe not, but those hours spent on YouTube are sometimes beneficial. I often find myself getting inspired.
As I am clicking from video to video, I am paying attention to the intros, music, colors, animated illustration/typography and even the ads in between. I sometimes find myself saying, “wait that was cool… how did they do that?” which then leads me to go and look for a tutorial or sometimes even solve it on my own.
YouTube, Google, music and other types of media inspire me to create videos/animations. Take this animation I did for our JSD alphabet challenge as an example.
The Letter M
I want to create a video for the letter, but what? First I thought of words that start with the letter M. Monster, milk, money, monkey, magic. I then chose milk. I figured I could probably create something cool with that. A milk carton was my first thought, so I went ahead and illustrated one.
Now I was stuck. How am I going to make an animation out of this that lets the viewer know this is for the letter M? I put the project on hold and moved on to other work. As I’m working on a different project (and listening to music) I get an idea! “Milk… milkshake… my milkshake brings all… I got it!” Jumped off the project I was working on and back to the letter M I went. BOOM! Now I have a song and a milk carton in my file, but I wasn’t satisfied with just that. Something was missing.
YouTube
The workday ended and I got on YouTube, like I do most days after work. As I’m watching music videos, I noticed that on some videos you could almost feel the music with what was on the screen. The video transitions followed the beat of the song. I wondered if I could make the viewer not only hear but also “see” the music that I put in my project. I searched for what I was thinking on YouTube and there it was!
Next Morning
The next day I added what I learned to the animation and laughed, “it looks like a party” I thought. That “party” thought pushed me to add the lights and the moo sounds to the animation and I finally felt like it was presentable.
If you guys are still reading this and want to watch a Barnicle Goslin jump off a cliff here is the link to the video, https://youtu.be/rxGuNJ-nEYg. Its ok to laugh, that’s what I tell myself… bye, bye now!