AM I DREAMING

In the 3rd semester of my media informatics studies, I learned how to use Adobe After Effects to create 2D animations in the post-production course.

As an assignment for this course, I created a music video for the song “Am I Dreaming” by Lil Nas X, with a special focus on the lyrics. As you can see in the images below, I created a fictional character in this video through which a personal story is told.

The story is about this character's childhood and his self-reflection about it.

screenshot of the animation

storyboard & script

seperate layers of the scenes

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During the semester, I had already spent time drafting a script and a storyboard.

The animation itself with Adobe After Effects took 2 weeks. It was particularly interesting to create sequences with many different image layers that move over each other to create a depth effect. However, this also turned out to be a challenge as I had planned many different scenes. I took an iterative approach by creating 1-2 complete scenes every day. I drew all the assets in Clip Studio Paint and then animated them with After Effects.

I usually incorporated the lyrics into the scenes themselves to create a stronger connection between the song and the visuals. I am very happy with the result.

The finished product can be seen on YouTube: