Kinetic typography

Heebok Lee Sky Words typography

Context

I used Heebok Lee as my inspiration for the creation of kinetic typography. Heebok Lee has practice as a motion graphics and art designer. He has created work for major films like, Transformers, x-men and I am number four. As well as working with major companies on their advertisements like HTC and Sony.

This is a video which shows the words of a poem and is presented in a way that shows and expresses emotion. I wanted to analyse Heebok Lee because I am able to pause his clips and make my own version, a freeze frame, based on the words used in the video clip. This is so I can see the type of effect and movement in his clip and will be creating a version in illustrator.

Meaning

Lee created this piece in order to create drama and emotion by just using words. He uses certain effects like blur and fading the colour on the words to resemble the emotion that he is trying to get across. For example when he uses the word screamed he repeats it continuously like someone is screaming.

The title of the piece is sky words; the word part of the title does prepare you for what is to come but the sky bit sort of resembles the piece because the words are floating and random there isn’t any structure, like it was written on lined paper, to the way it is laid out. The poem is also about the sky so this also resembles the title as well. The title doesn't change my view towards the work.

The piece does tell a story because it is a poem. The poem is called renaissance by Vincent Millay and is about a person looking up at the sky and feeling that the sky must stop at some point and believing that the sky is not so big and grand as the person in the poem puts it. The person in the poem sounds like he is challenging the sky.  

Aesthetic

To create this piece Heebok Lee probably thought first about the words in the poem and the effects that he could match with them to create the emotion and drama. He then may have gone on to use Adobe after effects.

Only the colours black and white are used in this piece and even then the white is only used on a black background on a small part of the video. I feel that Lee has done this in order the piece to look bold and stand out, to grab the attention of the person who is watching it. I think that Heebok Lee doesn't need colour in his piece because the way the words are presented shows the emotion and this is also what colour does anyway.

As Lee fades the words it gives the words used tone and shape. He changes the sizes of the words as he repeats them when it’s close to the screen it’s enlarged, when further away from the screen the word is shrunk which also gives the piece a point of view making it 3D.

Personal Response

I chose to look at this piece because Heebok Lee’s work is seen a lot whether it is on television or at the cinema so this piece of his work is to be of a rather high standard and would be a good piece to use as my inspiration.

My first reaction to this work was it was very dramatic and really conveyed the emotion intended. I wasn't so keen on my first look of this video but it grew on me when I watched it again. Another reason I think was because no colour was used it seemed like when it came to the viewing of the colour this part was lacking.    

     

Heebok Lee inspired me to experiment with colour seeing as he did not use this on his piece. I also experimented with different types of effects on illustrator.  

My version of Heebok Lee's animation stills made in illustrator

Heebok Lee inspired me to experiment with colour seeing as he did not use this on his piece. I also experimented with different types of effects on illustrator. 

My main aim of this experimentation was to experiment with colours, effects and font. For colour I experimented with two primary colours blue and red. I feel that it proved my point of Heebok Lee not needing to use colour because I think it does look better in black and white using the effects.   

I used a range of different fonts most of them bold like Dual sans and distorted them with the effects like a radial blur, Gaussian blur and bulge.  On the red word big this was an experiment that went slightly wrong but I think it still gives a really good effect, however I don’t think it conveys the right meaning like the other version of the word big. Boom and blur were just words I thought of myself that seemed to match with the effects in illustrator so I decided to use them. I used a radial blur for the word boom as it slightly bulges in the middle which gives the effect of music coming from a speaker.

I think that I could go on and on with experimentation on illustrator with all the effects but one of the animation stills I would like to try next would have to be the repetition of the word screamed. To improve on my piece I would just stick to theme of black and white.