Be the Ice Sculptor
The brief was to animate 21 storyboards, designed by Ordinary Folk, to a provided 34-second voiceover for School of Motion’s Animation Bootcamp course.
• Role – Animation
• Tools – After Effects
Frames 7 through 9 carry the story’s central idea: the master’s belief in a higher purpose behind the craft. The three boxes, stacked largest to smallest, already implied vertical movement, so that suggestion became the basis for the master’s upward motion. A slight backward lean at the top was added to convey her confidence in what she stands for.
Small rectangular shapes recurring across the three frames pointed to horizontal movement, so they were animated as flying elements that stop abruptly, landing the emphasis on frame nine’s message: “To Craft.”
Frame 15 left the animator entirely open to invent a story from a single still illustration. Giving the character personality, the T-Rex moves like a baby, choppy and slow, reaching with both arms toward a block ahead of him the way a baby reaches for a toy.
The sequence resolves in playful disappointment, his body language shifting as a falling block strikes his head. Rather than starting with all four blocks in place, only the target block appears at first. The falling triangle lands next, then two more blocks are knocked loose from the T-Rex’s own body, settling into the positions shown in the original storyboard frame.
Shapes in Frame 12 don’t match exactly to the robot’s body parts in Frame 13. Each piece was thoughtfully planned and morphed into its final place, working out the path, rotation, scale and timing needed to get there.
Credits
Storyboard – Ordinary Folk
VO – School of Motion
