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This project was an assignment for my motion graphics course at Clark College.
November of 2025.
The scope of the project was to create a custom logo in a vector art format and then animate it using after effects. The finished animation was meant to be 5-10 seconds long and illustrate multiple principles of animation.
Brainstorming
The first step to completing this project was to work on the logo design. I started with brainstorming a few different ideas. Here you can see that I was trying out 4 different "companies" to design for.
Thumbnail Sketches
After some thumbnail sketching and thinking about what would look good as an animation, I landed on a logo involving a paint brush and some cursive text with a play on picasso's signature. Then it was just about how to layout the pieces.
I highlighted in red my top three choices. Simple and clean.
Storyboard
A storyboard is like a roadmap to how and when all your motion will happen!
A storyboard is essential in most animation projects. It helps to know what is moving ahead of time. Animating without a plan is very difficult and can cause trouble down the line!
Asset design
Once the storyboard and thumbnail sketch was complete, I knew exactly what the finished logo would look like. It was time to jump into Adobe Illustrator and start designing the final logo.
I started out by creating the paint brush, then used it as a reference for the size of the paint swipe.
I drew the cursive signature font for the word Picatso and then shaped a paint blob to fit perfectly on top of the signature font.
I added the whiskers to the "o" at the end.
Animation
Finally, I was ready to start animating!
My original plan was to animate each object independently one at a time. However, because the objects were interacting, it made the most sense to animate them from start to finish at the same time.
After I had the base animations done, I worked on implementing some of the animation principles. Adding squash and stretch, some anticipation, some follow through, and some echo to emphasize the motion.
At the very end, I animated the whiskers drawing onto the "o"
Sound effects
The last step was to add the sound effects. I created all the sound effects myself. I made the splat and swipe sounds with my mouth, the bouncing sound with my electronic keyboard, and the cat purring sound was my real cat purring! (she is loud!)
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