Short Story Animation: Be the Change

Be the Change is the story of a homeless man who lives alone in the woods. He sleeps in a hammock high in the trees. First you see him walk up and climb down from his bed. Then, he walks to the train tracks down the road to catch he train into town. Once he gets to town, he sees all the stores with clothes and food which he knows he can't buy because he has no money. He asks a supermarket owner named Jim if he can spare some food. Jim is blindsided by the homeless man's raggy clothes and refuses to give him food. The homeless man is defeated and begins to walk home sadly. On the way back he stumbles across a homeless child who asks him for help. The homeless man is about to refuse, probably thinking, "If no one helped me then why should I help him?" He instantly regrets feeling this way, shedding a little tear because he understands the boy's struggle. The man holds out his hand to the boy to help him up and take him home. The story ends with the words "It will be alright". This is to show that even if it seems everyone is mean to you and that no one understands there is always someone out there who knows what you are going through and that someday the hurting will end. Someone will come along to help you up.

For this animation we were supposed to showcase everything we have learned in 2-D animation this semester. In the shot where he is sleeping in the hammock, his breathing was animated using the puppet pin tool. The first shot that is zooming in on his hammock I used multi-plane animation to make the hammock seem like it was closer to you than the trees in the back of the scene. I used arcs with the leaves in the train tracks scene and also with the homeless man's walking. I also incorporated skills I learned from the walking cycle animation to move his arms and legs. For future animations I have learned not to spend too much time on storyboarding and drawing. I spent a lot of time drawing all the scenes out which ended up with me having to cut out some scenes from the animation. I also struggled with the size of canvases in Photoshop moving to After Effects. I needed to remember to make the scenes be 1920 x 1080p in order too fit correctly on the final product. You can tell that I had to stretch some scenes to fit in After Effects, especially in the scene where the homeless man visits Jim's Supermarket. Overall this project was a lot of fun and I think I will be coming back to it later in the year to make some revisions and additions because I feel that it has a lot of potential.