This is a series of Youtube videos that I have decided to create to tell for my stories. I create animation that explores the nuances of life.
Mission/Purpose
Storytime is a series of YouTube Story animation videos I created to revisit my passion for animation in the new age of YouTube animation. I created these animated videos to tell nuanced stories of my life the same way I would blog and vlog about my life in the past. I gained interest in YouTube animation back in 2007 with stick fight animation videos by Hyun and others. When I had my second hip surgery playing football at Hawaii, I decided to learn how to make animated videos. I didn’t release my first video until I got to Oregon State in 2013. I did not realize how labor intensive it was until I fully immersed myself into it. I was following popular animator like Egoraptor and Twistedgrim who did great work and I looked up to them. Since YouTube changed the algorithm, YouTube animation became unprofitable and many left the scene.
Storytime is a series of YouTube Story animation videos I created to revisit my passion for animation in the new age of YouTube animation. I created these animated videos to tell nuanced stories of my life the same way I would blog and vlog about my life in the past. I gained interest in YouTube animation back in 2007 with stick fight animation videos by Hyun and others. When I had my second hip surgery playing football at Hawaii, I decided to learn how to make animated videos. I didn’t release my first video until I got to Oregon State in 2013. I did not realize how labor intensive it was until I fully immersed myself into it. I was following popular animator like Egoraptor and Twistedgrim who did great work and I looked up to them. Since YouTube changed the algorithm, YouTube animation became unprofitable and many left the scene.
Egoraptor
In 2018, I noticed story telling YouTube animation becoming more popular. There weren’t as action heavy as what I was used to. Essentially, they were story glorified story boards with color. I found myself wanting to try them out because it wasn’t as labor intensive, and people seemed to really enjoy the story aspect more than the quality of the animation.
My animation process is very procedural to me. I draft out a script in Microsoft word and record the audio. After I record the audio, I make a series of sketches to storyboard the story in Adobe Photoshop. I import those sketches into Adobe Premiere Pro and combine the audio to figure out the timing of each scene. This gives me the opportunity to see how much time I have between each scene and where to add effects based on the audio. With animation, syncing audio, timing, and pacing are key to an effective video regardless of how good or bad the video looks. If the audio is off, then the video will not do well.
After the timing is set with the audio, I measure the frames of each scene and I set up the workstation in Adobe Animate. I try to match the timing in Animate with Premiere down to the frame, so audio isn’t off. Animate is horrible with managing audio files so I animate without the sound during this process.
After setting all the key frames up, I begin to fill in the before and after poses of each scene. I try not to add too many poses in because that will make my workload more than I need for the video. Usually there is a Key pose in – key pose main - key pose out. I will follow that structure with very sketchy lines until I like the motion. Afterwards, I clean up the linework, add color, and add the background.
The purpose of the project was to make a good animated video with the least amount of work. For animated video that is 2-5 minutes, that can take months to complete. My process for this project cut the time to mere days with hundreds of views watching it and enjoying it.
One of the highlights was having to work with YouTuber Caiden on my last video which tells the story of White people enamored with Black hair to the point that they begin to pet the Black kid like a dog. The simple animation adds to the story because of how whimsical way microaggressions are experienced by the victims.