National Rollercoaster Day

The Brief

The brief for this project was to create weekly posts for the Instagram page of Aligned Media, where I interned. We wanted to build the studio’s following over the course of the summer by creating fun motion graphics pieces weekly, each Friday. Friday, August 16th, 2019 happened to be National Rollercoaster Day, so we worked in advance to get the video out on time.

Design & Animation

Marco Cheatham was in charge of the creative direction for the piece. I was tasked with designing and animating this wide shot (pictured below). The idea was to keep it flat and animate the rollercoaster riding through it, like a side-scroller video game. Because this scene is from such a distance, I had to make sure I was simplifying details from the character and the carts so that it did not look scaled down. In real life, the human eye would lose details like his pockets, eyes, etc.

I also animated the “anticipation scene”, which is right before the wide shot. This includes the character about to hit the big drop, but the coaster stalls. I had a lot of fun creating the tension and build-up with the pauses and the shocked face zoom. Because the character is quite stationary within the cart, I used a forward kinematics rig to animate him. We wanted to convey that this rollercoaster was a bit janky, so I made it rickety when it comes to a halt.

Another detail that I added was the character’s hat flying off. To create the movement in a quick, efficient way, I moved the anchor point higher than the hat artwork, animated the position movement downward, and used a Duik Swing automation on the overall rotation. The anchor point’s position and the overall downward motion helped make the hat fall convincing. There are two separate hats in the scene: one attached to the character, and another for the hat falling. This simplified it, and also helped me reveal his large head of hair under the initial hat. I had the idea that the hat could fly off in this scene, and then return in the final shot over the title card. This wrapped up the piece nicely, and helped give scale to the coaster. I also added the celebratory fireworks.

Editing

One thing I am most proud of on this piece is the editing. I was tasked with editing the scenes together and picking the music. I knew in my heart that the best song we could possibly use was the Red Hot Chili Peppers cover of “Love Rollercoaster” from the Beavis and Butthead Do America Soundtrack. Something about Flea’s funky slap bass and the upbeat, goofy drums + lyrics + rhythm section fit perfectly with our style and tone. There are many cues in the song that correlate with the visuals. Please watch with sound :)

Our team was super excited with how it did on Instagram. It gained over 7,000 impressions on my personal account, and was also featured on #BuckuBack, Buck Design’s series where they feature artists’ work.

Credits

Lead Designer: Marco Cheatham

Design: Marco Cheatham, Nicole Pappas

Animation: Nicole Pappas, James Ortwerth