Pursued
The best creative exercise is learning something new. The “Pursed” video project is a short-form promotional video trailer for the comic of that same name. Inspired by the 2021 webtoon campaign produced by Golden Wolf, I sought an opportunity to learn more about motion graphics and to exercise my marketing skills. It is a personal project. “Pursued” itself was the result of an opportunity given to me by my University (Parsons School of Design) to present my work at their table at the 2022 MoCCA Arts Festival. The video aims to function like a trailer, getting potential customers curious about the comic, which was available for purchase at the festival.
Movie trailer...but for a comic?
Despite drawing inspiration from the webtoon animation, I knew that vibrant, dynamic imagery and motion were not going to work for this project. “Pursued” is a horror comic, and any trailer or marketing material should reflect the suspenseful dread the comic conveys. This presented the challenge of inducing dread in a very short amount of time; I had a time limit of only 20 seconds of screentime that had to include a “logo” lock-up presenting the comic’s name and release date. So, to that end, I decided to kill two birds with one stone and use the art itself as the “flashy” imagery and retranslate the story into a new medium. I first created a rough storyboard of how the story was going to be animated, keeping in mind that my main process of animation was going to be splicing the comic art itself and animating the cut panels in After Effects. I also considered in the boards that I had to leave at least 3 seconds for the lock-up at the end.
Storyboards
“Cutting up” the chosen artwork and then animating said artwork was fairly straightforward, as much time was given to learning the program beforehand. It's how I learn best — by getting my hands “dirty” and iterating and revising until I achieve what I want. Especially important given how I had limited screentime and little control over my audio (since this was a personal project, I kept to free and open sources, which leaves little room for customization). Overall, the project was a success in that I was able to accomplish my goal of creating a successful, short trailer in a new medium and discover a love for animation.
