Commissioned by Glasgow Women's Library for the 'Open the Door' festival.
Quote by Scottish author, Jessie Kesson.
Motion Design Jessie Kesson
Client: Glasgow Women's Library / February 2020
THE PROJECT
Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen, Dundee. How small Scotland sounded, summed up by its four main cities, but what a width of world its little villages stravaiged.
-Jessie Kesson
To design a short motion graphic piece inspired by a quote by a forgotten female author to celebrate and shed light on this inspirational woman.
I focused on the novelist, playwright and radio producer, Jessie Kesson to highlight her inspiring story of rising to success after her impoverished start in life in the Elgin slums. To shed light on her work and relate to a more modern audience I drew on my personal experience of Scotland, viewing the towns and cities from a train window. Relating to the sentiment of this quote from her novel "Glitter of Mica" and how it celebrates Scotland, I integrated the text into the background which can be read as the train moves along the scene.
STORYBOARD
Initially I struggled with integrating the text into the landscape while maintaining good pace for the viewer. After exploring displaying the text on signs, in clouds and on the side of the train, I decided that using a bold, capitalised, sans serif typeface along the silhouette of the mountains allowed the quote to be the immediate focus. This was important, despite not appearing naturalistic, as ultimately I wanted Jessie Kesson’s eloquent words to speak for themselves while displaying them in an engaging yet clear way.
ARTWORK DEVELOPMENTS
Experimenting with traditional and digital media allowed me to explore composition, light, and colour in depth. Ultimately, I combined both concepts; darkening the foreground and allowing the window to be the main focus. Bringing the table into the window frame allowed me to silhouette the foreground while maintaining the detail and clarity of the initial painted scene.
PAPER LAYERING
Initially, composing the window scene was challenging. I admired CAUBOYZ’s use of coloured paper to create a moving scene in the music video they designed for Kid Francescoli’s song, ‘Moon’. I decided I also wanted to explore this simple yet powerful aesthetic. I created paper cut outs using references of the Scottish Highlands then manipulated the layered scans on Illustrator and After Effects making the layers move at different speeds to create a three dimensional effect.
COLOUR SCHEME
I decided on a slightly muted, naturalistic colour scheme, inspired by the array of colours found on the heathered and grassy hills of the Scottish Highlands.
