First, I came up with the message I wanted to present. Ideas and inspiration came up from my life. Dopamine has been a big issue recently, and people are conscious of the material. I addressed the matter to the audience by asking them if they are an addict. Most people wouldn’t think of themself as an addict because they will picture someone that is drunk or miserable and addicted to drugs. Next, with the ideas I had, I wrote a script for the video, then drew out the storyboard to visually see how it would look.

It would have been a challenge to present the message about people’s mental states without developing characters to present the matter. I designed a guy and a girl to portray how people are living in the world of dopamine. The color palette of analogous color, purple, red, and yellow was used to portray both sides of dopamine. The first versions were designed simply giving a Playmobil look to them. I found limits on their facial expression and their motions so I had to make new versions. The final version was done to solve the limitation. It was designed to refer to current illustration trends.

With the rough storyboard and characters done, I worked on the illustrated storyboard. When I was illustrating, I would think out how I would be using the elements on After Effects, dividing the joints of the characters, and separating the elements on different layers.

I exported the illustrated artboards directly into After Effects. Making smooth transitions between each cut was the challenging part. I thought of the transitions at the storyboard stage, but practicing it was not a small deal. Even with the challenge, it was enjoyable.