Nostril Corks
The brief was to animate 14 storyboards, designed by Ariel Costa, to a provided 30-second voiceover for School of Motion’s After Effects Kickstart course.
• Role – Animation
• Tools – After Effects
The same collage face carries two different emotional stories through the same features, animated differently. In the sneeze (Left), the mouth drives the sequence, opening wide as the eyes and surrounding features shrink in response, then both return to rest together once the sneeze passes. A slight rotation and vibration in the nose adds texture without competing for attention.
In the second version (Right), the eyes take over, slanting and tracking the virus’s movement to read as alertness, while the nose wiggles far more violently than the first version, the difference in speed alone shifting the tone from a passing reflex to visible nervousness.
Frames 6 to 7 needed a way to bridge two very different scenes, a container surrounded by pointing hands, then a factory floor coming to life. Rather than cut between them, the transition uses a small screen already built into the shot.
The machine’s material logic works in two directions. Getting sucked in reads choppy, timed to feel like it’s being pulled apart in chunks. Coming out the other side, the corks emerge unevenly instead of all at once, the top lagging slightly behind the bottom, so the material reads soft rather than rigid.
The cork’s bottom bulges outward, a simple shape change used to communicate that it’s filling up, without any additional graphics or text needed to explain what’s happening. The transition into frame 13 uses a circular zoom, closing in like an iris to pull focus onto the cork itself.
Credits
Storyboard – Ariel Costa
VO – School of Motion
