Motion Graphics and Compositing | Final Project

|| Tee Zi Tong, 0366165

|| Motion Graphics and Compositing | Task 2 - Compositing AE Exercises

|| Week 9 - Week 15

INSTRUCTION

FINAL PROJECT

MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO – 30-SECOND MOTION GRAPHIC INTRO

For the final project, I was required to create a theme-based motion graphic video between 15 and 30 seconds. The project needed to demonstrate the knowledge and technical skills learned throughout the semester, including visual development, animation principles, compositing, transitions, audio, and experimentation with 2D or 3D elements.

I decided to create a 30-second introduction sequence inspired by My Neighbor Totoro. The animation focuses on nature, childhood curiosity, magical creatures, and friendship. Instead of recreating scenes directly from the film, I developed a simplified visual sequence using flat vector illustrations, layered forest environments, character animation, and smooth camera movements.

Working Title: My Neighbor Totoro – 30-Second Intro Sequence
Software: Adobe Illustrator and Adobe After Effects
Duration: Approximately 30 seconds
Format: Landscape, 16:9
Main Style: Simplified flat illustration with soft natural colors

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Proposal and Conceptualization

Initial Idea

I chose My Neighbor Totoro because of its peaceful atmosphere, memorable characters, and strong relationship with nature. The original film creates a sense of childhood wonder through forests, plants, spirits, and gentle character interactions. These qualities made it suitable for a motion graphic sequence containing organic movement and smooth transitions.

The main idea was to begin with a small grass sprout and gradually reveal a larger magical forest world. The sequence moves from nature to fantasy by introducing Soot Sprites, the girl character, a magnifying glass, and finally Totoro.

Rationale

I selected this theme because it allowed me to explore slow and smooth animation rather than fast, energetic motion. The project combines simple vector shapes with organic movements inspired by wind, growing plants, floating particles, and character reactions.

The calm visual direction also allowed me to focus on timing, composition, camera movement, and seamless transitions. I wanted the audience to experience happiness, comfort, curiosity, and nostalgia while watching the sequence.

Target Audience

The target audience includes:

• Children and young audiences
• Fans of animated and fantasy films
• Viewers who enjoy peaceful and nostalgic storytelling
• People who appreciate nature and imaginative worlds

Communication Purpose

The communication purposes of the motion graphic are:

• To create a calm, magical, and nostalgic atmosphere
• To remind the audience to appreciate imagination and simple joys
• To communicate friendship and connection with nature
• To introduce the world of Totoro through visual storytelling

Keywords and Mind Map

The main keywords selected were:

Magical, Nature, Childhood, Adventure, Friendship, and Peaceful

I developed a mind map to expand each keyword. For example, “Magical” included spirits, Soot Sprites, imagination, and dreamlike environments. “Nature” included forests, trees, grass, flowers, and seasonal colours. This helped me identify suitable visual elements for the animation.

Link to Final Proposal - https://canva.link/mi7beqy785k2nd0

Moodboard and Color Palette

The mood board focused on soft forest lighting, organic plant shapes, warm cream backgrounds, muted green colors, and small golden light particles. I avoided overly bright colors because I wanted the sequence to feel gentle and harmonious.

The main color palette consisted of:

• Muted sage green
• Deep forest green
• Blue,green
• Warm cream
• Natural brown
• Soft golden yellow
• Dusty coral red

These colors were applied consistently to the background, characters, plants, tree, Soot Sprites, and Totoro.

Motion Graphic References

I collected references that demonstrated slow camera movement, layered 2D environments, floating particles, organic transitions, and simple character loops.

The selected motion direction included:

• Slow and smooth animation
• Organic movement inspired by nature
• Floating and drifting elements
• Gentle camera movements
• Layered backgrounds
• Character animation loops
• Seamless transitions
• Parallax effects

Storyboard and Animatic

Storyboard Development

I created a storyboard to plan the sequence before beginning the final animation. The first scene begins with small grass growing from the ground. The grass gradually becomes larger and leads the audience towards a large tree.

The camera then moves through the tree and leaves, revealing Soot Sprites. The Soot Sprites appear from behind the plants and move around the scene. The sequence continues with a girl using a magnifying glass to observe the magical environment. Finally, Totoro is revealed and the camera zooms out to show the completed scene.

The storyboard helped me plan:

• Scene order
• Camera direction
• Character placement
• Transitions
• Approximate timing
• Foreground and background elements

Animatic

After completing the storyboard, I arranged the frames into an animatic. This allowed me to test whether the scene order was understandable within 30 seconds.

The animatic was especially useful for checking the duration of each shot. Some early scenes were too long, while the character reveal happened too quickly. I adjusted the timing so that the animation gradually moved from a peaceful natural environment into the magical character reveal.

Link to YouTube - https://youtu.be/2hvlUJymCgo?si=rcWg9mA350l4QqFR

Design Exploration and Asset Development

Visual Style Exploration

I experimented with several visual styles before selecting a simplified Adobe Illustrator approach. More detailed illustrations did not work well because they made the composition crowded and were difficult to animate.

The final style uses simple silhouettes, flat colors, minimal outlines, and subtle texture. This made it easier to separate the illustrations into individual layers and animate them in After Effects.

Grass Growth Animation

I created eight stages of grass growth, starting from a small sprout and gradually developing into a complete grass cluster. Each stage was exported separately with a transparent background.

The frames were imported into After Effects as a PNG sequence. I adjusted the timing to make the growth feel smooth and natural.

Tree and Plant Development

The tree was first designed with a simple trunk and branches. I later increased the number of leaves to create a fuller and more magical appearance.

For the foreground plants, I separated every leaf into an individual layer. This allowed me to animate each leaf using different rotation values and timing. I placed the anchor point at the base of each leaf so it could move naturally as if affected by wind.

Character Design

I prepared the girl character in several angles, including a front view and a 45-degree view. Keeping the hairstyle, clothing, colors, and body proportions consistent was important when creating the different poses.

The character wears a yellow shirt, red skirt, cream socks, and green rain boots. These colors were adjusted to match the forest palette.

Magnifying Glass Pose

I created another character pose in which the girl holds and looks through a magnifying glass. The first version was shown from a 45-degree angle. I later developed a front-facing pose to create a clearer transition into the close-up shot.

The magnifying glass was also separated as an individual transparent asset. This allowed me to animate its position and scale independently from the character.

Totoro and Soot Sprites

Totoro was redrawn to match the selected illustration style. I retained the recognizable body shape, ears, whiskers, facial expression, and belly markings while changing the colors and shading to match the forest.

Several Soot Sprite poses were created for jumping, running, looking around, and holding small star-shaped objects. Using different poses made the scene feel more active and playful.

Animation Process in After Effects

Composition Setup

I imported the Illustrator and transparent PNG assets into After Effects and organized them into separate folders. Each main scene was placed inside its own pre-composition before being arranged in the final 30-second composition.

This helped me manage the large number of layers and make revisions without affecting other scenes.

Grass and Plant Animation

The grass growth sequence was created using frame-by-frame images. Additional plant movements were produced using Scale, Rotation, and Position keyframes.

For the separated leaves, I moved the anchor points to the bottom of each leaf. I then animated small rotation changes to create a gentle wind effect. The leaves were given slightly different timing so that they did not move simultaneously.

Position and Scale Animation

During the first test, the movement paused slightly whenever it reached a middle keyframe. This happened because Easy Ease had been applied to every keyframe.

To solve this, I used:

• Easy Ease Out for the first keyframe
• Continuous Bezier for the middle keyframes
• Easy Ease In for the final keyframe

I also used the Speed Graph to ensure that the speed did not drop to zero at the middle keyframes. This produced a more continuous and natural movement.

3D Camera and Parallax

I experimented with a 3D Camera to create depth inside the forest. At first, changing the Camera Position did not affect the scene because the illustration layers were still set as 2D layers.

I solved the problem by activating the 3D Layer switch for the foreground, midground, character, and background layers. I then placed the elements at different Z positions.

The foreground leaves were positioned closer to the camera, while the forest background was placed further away. When the camera moved, the layers travelled at different speeds and produced a parallax effect.

Continuous Rasterization

Some Illustrator assets appeared blurry when they were enlarged in After Effects. Although the original illustrations were vector-based, After Effects initially displayed them as rasterized layers.

I activated the Continuously Rasterize switch, represented by the small sun icon, on each Illustrator layer. I also activated Collapse Transformations for the relevant pre-compositions. This maintained sharper edges when the camera zoomed towards the artwork.

Transitions and Compositing

The transitions were created using visual elements already present in the scene. Leaves moved across the frame to hide cuts, while the magnifying glass created a circular transition into a close-up view.

The main transitions included:

• Grass growing into the tree scene
• Camera movement through leaves
• Leaves opening to reveal Soot Sprites
• Magnifying glass lens transition
• Camera zoom into and out of the character
• Final zoom-out revealing Totoro

Motion Blur was activated for fast-moving layers to make the transitions smoother.

Audio

A gentle soundtrack inspired by the peaceful tone of My Neighbor Totoro was selected. The visual timing was adjusted to follow the important changes in the music.

Subtle sound effects were also considered for:

• Grass growing
• Leaves moving
• Soot Sprites jumping
• Magical particles
• Magnifying glass movement
• Totoro’s appearance

The audio helped connect the individual scenes and strengthened the magical atmosphere.

Testing and Revisions

Throughout the production process, I conducted repeated playback tests and made several revisions.

Style and Color Consistency

Some early assets had different color saturation and illustration styles. I revised them using the forest image as the main visual reference. The final assets use the same muted green, cream, brown, yellow, and coral-red palette.

Blurry Illustrator Assets

Some illustrations became blurry when scaled. I solved this by importing the original AI files instead of exported low-resolution images and activating Continuously Rasterize.

Camera Movement

The Camera initially did not affect the composition because the layers were not set as 3D. After enabling the 3D switches and adjusting the Z positions, the camera movement became visible.

Keyframe Pauses

The early Position and Scale animation paused at the middle keyframes. I changed the middle keyframes from Easy Ease to Continuous Bezier and adjusted the Speed Graph.

Preview Range

I received a “Cached Preview needs 2 or more frames to play back” warning because the Work Area was too short. I reset the Work Area using the B and N shortcuts so that the preview contained enough frames.

FINAL OUTCOME

The final outcome is a 30-second motion graphic introduction inspired by My Neighbor Totoro. The completed animation moves from a small natural element into a larger magical forest environment.

The sequence includes grass growth, layered plants, a large tree, Soot Sprites, a girl using a magnifying glass, Totoro, floating particles, parallax movement, and smooth transitions.

The final design successfully maintains a consistent illustration style and colour palette. The gradual camera movement and organic animation support the peaceful and magical theme.

Final Video Link: 

https://youtu.be/q_vpgyN35jU?si=QANhbgNTZ9l097tR

REFLECTIONS

Experience

This project gave me the opportunity to combine the technical skills learned throughout the semester into one complete motion graphic sequence. The most time-consuming stage was preparing and organizing the visual assets because many objects needed to be separated into individual layers before they could be animated.

Creating the different character poses and keeping the visual style consistent was also challenging. However, the asset preparation made the animation process more flexible because I could control each character, plant, leaf, and prop separately.

Observation

I observed that successful motion graphics depend not only on attractive illustrations but also on timing, movement, transitions, and layer organization. Even when the individual scenes looked good, inappropriate keyframe interpolation could make the animation feel unnatural.

I also learned that technical settings such as Continuous Rasterization, 3D Layer switches, anchor-point placement, Work Area duration, and Graph Editor curves can significantly affect the final quality.

Another important observation was that small environmental movements made the scene feel more alive. Leaves, particles, grass, and characters did not require large movements. Slight variations in timing and direction were more effective for maintaining the peaceful mood.

Findings

Through this project, I improved my understanding of:

• Vector asset preparation in Adobe Illustrator
• Character and environment consistency
• Layer organization and pre-compositions
• Position, Scale, Rotation, and Opacity animation
• Easy Ease and Continuous Bezier interpolation
• Speed Graph adjustment
• 3D Camera and parallax movement
• Continuous Rasterization
• Transparent asset preparation
• Visual transitions and audiovisual timing

If I continued developing this project, I would create more detailed character rigs and use additional secondary animation, such as blinking, breathing, hair movement, and hand gestures. I would also improve the audio design by recording or creating more customized environmental sound effects.

Overall, the project strengthened both my technical skills and visual decision-making. It taught me to test the animation continuously, identify technical problems, and revise the work based on the final viewing experience.