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2025 COMOTION
Title Sequences | Event | 2D & 3D Animation
ROLE
Design Art Director, Animator
Art Direction, Design, Animation, Composition
SERVICES
Title Sequence Motion
TOOLKIT
Cinema 4D | Redshift
After Effects | Illustrators
YEAR
2025
Overview
SCAD CoMotion is the world’s largest student-led motion graphics conference, bringing together top industry professionals and Motion Media Design students from the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) each year to explore industry trends and exchange creative ideas.
My role in this team is Design art director & Animator, and I collaborated with Tris(Haiqian) Zhou, focused on 3 moth 2D design and Shot 26 Design & Animation.
Responsibilities
As a design art director and animator, My work focused on creating style frames, adjusting color correction and animating the frames for the title sequence.
For the part of design, I worked on the style frame of Shot 17( 1:20s - 1:27s), and I designed the three moth with Rivai and Yao (director) in 2D for the title sequence.
For the part of animation, I worked on Shot 26 ( 2:02s - 2:16s), The design and animation for this shot were collaboratively completed by 3D animator (Tris) and me.
CREDITS SCENE
Moth &01
Moth &02
Moth &03
Shot 17(Design)
Shot 26 ( Design)
Shot 26 ( Animation)
2D MOTH CHARACTER
DESIGN PROCESS
I explored several different design approaches to depict the transformation of the moth from Chapter 1 to Chapter 3.
Moth 01
(Chapter 1)
Moth 02
(Chapter 2)
These are several versions of the moth that I illustrated. In addition to ensuring that the design language matches the first moth, the second moth needed to convey a sense of transformation and evolution. I attempted to add an extra pair of wings to create the feeling of emerging from a cocoon, akin to a butterfly.
Moth 03
(Chapter 3)
I was primarily responsible for modeling the desert environment and its corresponding abstract forms, as well as creating animations. Additionally, I needed to match cut the desert scene with the preceding wetlands scene.
We initially focused on the basic shape of the butterfly because we wanted to incorporate multiple gradient transitions. However, having just two wings felt too simplistic and didn’t fully capture the butterfly’s transformation. So, we made it more abstract by adding two more wings, which enhanced the overall effect.
Motion Test
We simulated the growth process of the butterfly wings in C4D, mainly using Taper to control the growth speed, and Jiggle and Displacer to adjust the slight wobble of the wings during growth. we also animated the rotation to make the wings sway up and down.
After this, we rendered the wings and composited them in After Effects. To maintain consistency with the 2D gradient colors, we drew different mask shapes for each wing in AE, applied different gradient colors to them, and began iterating through multiple versions.
Styleframe Development
Gradient Animation Test
SHOT 17
DESIGN PROCESS
I was responsible for the design of Chapter 02, ensuring that its design language matched Chapter 01 and Chapter 03. To maintain overall stylistic consistency, we placed the three chapter cards together for comparison. We experimented with different layouts using circles, subtly conveying the meanings of "face, choose, become", representing overlap, individual arrangement, and convergence.
STYLE FRAME PROGRESS
V01
V04
V02
V05
V03
V06
SHOT 26
DESIGN PROCESS
This shot needs to depict the evolution of Moth #02 into "Become Big Moth." The challenge lies in capturing Moth #02's progressive journey of exploration through camera movement. I initially sketched a rough storyboard to illustrate its transformation, and later, we experimented with various camera movements in C4D.
Early Styleframe Progress
Final Style Frame
Motion Test
For the moth's material, we experimented with glass and Fresnel shaders, rendered it in multi-layer files within Cinema 4D, and imported it into After Effects. We applied various gradient effects to layers such as Beauty and Emission, then integrated them into the 2D scene to match the overall art style.
Texture Test
Modelling and Rigging by Tris Zhou
FINAL OUTCOME
FINAL REVEAL SHOWCASE
