Communication Design Studio — Project 2

Making Abstract Concrete

The Assignment: Identify a challenging topic/question and write a short narrative that, when accompanied by visuals and motion, is easy to grasp

Week 3–9.15.15

My Question: How does a helmet protect a person?

First a little background research:

Helmets: How they Work and What Standards Do

1. “Helmets: How They Work and What Standards Do.” Helmets.org. Bicycle Helmet Safety Institute, 1989–2015, 7 Mar. 2015. Web. 14 Sept. 2015. <http://www.helmets.org/general.htm>.

Bicycle airbag beats competition by miles in safety test - INDEX: Design to Improve Life®

“Bicycle Airbag Beats Competition by Miles in Safety Test — INDEX: Design to Improve Life®.” INDEX Design to Improve Life. Hovding, 7 Apr. 2014. Web. 14 Sept. 2015. <http://designtoimprovelife.dk/invisible-bike-helmet-tests-almost-100-ability-prevent-severe-head-trauma/>.

(I got to attend the INDEX awards in 2011 and saw the designers win the award for this, a very innovative product! It makes you really stop and think about head injuries and the importance of helmets and head protection for cycling and other athletic activities)

How does a bicycle helmet protect your head? - Explain that Stuff

2. Woodford, Chris. “Bicycle Helmets.” How Does a Bicycle Helmet Protect Your Head? Explain That Stuff!, 7 Aug. 2015. Web. 14 Sept. 2015. <http://www.explainthatstuff.com/how-bicycle-helmets-work.html>.

Rough Draft:

Unexpected impact or violent head rotation and movement can severely injure the human brain. Helmets are designed to lessen the impact that a crash has on the brain. They lessen this impact through the layers of foam that they are made up of. On impact the foam will crush, absorbing some of the crash energy and lengthening the stopping time of the head by 6 milliseconds.1 All forces acting on the head will be reduced by the foam barrier being crushed. The thicker the foam is, the more force it will absorb, and the less impact the head and brain will endure. It is essentially an extension of the circumference of the head.1

Density of the foam used is also important. Less dense foam will crush in both hard and light impact situations, but must be thick enough to avoid being crushed too far in high impact situations. The plastic shell on the outside of the helmet keeps the foam in place during a crash and helps the helmet to slide easily across a crash surface, so as not to create drag that would further injure the head and neck of the wearer.1 The hard plastic shell also spreads the crash force over a larger area, so there is a lower chance of skull fracture.2 A chin strap holds the helmet on the wearers’ head in a crash situation.1

Week 3–9.17.15

In the next steps for the project we had peer reviews. It was great to have a chance to get some feedback from another person as well as to review their writing and see how someone else would approach the assignment.

Some feedback on my first draft that I received from Jiyoung:

Hi Tracy,
As we have discussed in person, I think it will be helpful to arrange these abstract informations in a chronological order. 1. Let say that you are being involved in an bicycle accident. 2. Show how the impact of crash travels through the helmet (ex. crash point-> shell-> foam-> head?) 3. Show how the impact gets dispersed through the foam (most of your information regarding the thickness and density of foam can be placed here).
Also, is the foam only part that provides protection? Maybe you should look at the anatomy of a helmet. You briefly mentioned about the shell and the chin strap. How do they play a role in protecting a person when accidents happen? Maybe you can add more detail here to strengthen your paragraph.

A bit more feedback from Stacie:

The topic works well Tracy. Are you using found text in its native form? If so, you may find it beneficial to write this in your own words while still citing your sources as it reads more like a dictionary definition (with the numbers) than a continuous description. I also encourage you to rephrase ‘They lessen…’ so that it doesn’t end in a preposition.

After reading this I decided that I need to go back to the story that I wrote and find a few more examples and show more of a step by step of how a helmet would work in a crash situation. I needed to give this problem some context for my audience as well as a dialogue that was more human and less dictionary.

Week 4–9.22.15–9.24.15

A bit more background research:

Cycle helmets - an overview

3. “Cycle Helmets — an Overview.” Cycle Helmets. Bicycle Helmet Research Foundation, 1 June 2012. Web. 19 Sept. 2015. <http://www.cyclehelmets.org/1139.html>.

4. “How Helmets Work to Protect Your Brain.” YouTube. Snell Memorial Foundation, 15 Oct. 2014. Web. 19 Sept. 2015. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HA5bHYoIC1g>.

Draft #2:

A helmet is made up of a thick foam layer with a hard outer shell and a chin strap. The outer shell helps to keep the foam in place during a crash and the chin strap keeps the helmet securely in place on the head of the wearer.

Unexpected impact that causes violent head rotation and movement can severely injure the human brain. In a crash situation, helmets protect the head by decreasing the rate that the skull and brain are accelerated or decelerated by an impact. When the helmet strikes it stops moving almost instantly, but the thick inner liner of foam in the helmet lets the persons’ head stay in motion for a bit longer. As the foam liner is crushed, it applies a controlled braking force to the head to slow it down to a less violent stop. Assuming the head is stopped before the helmet runs out of foam liner, the force is softened to a limit that can be tolerated. The most effective helmets are constructed with a foam liner that protects the head as well as a hard plastic shell to prevent perforation. During a crash the hard shell disperses the impact force over a larger area of the liner. The hard shell also helps the helmet to slide easily across the crash surface, so as not to create extra drag that would further injure the head and neck of the wearer.

Week 5–9.29.15

This week I was still looking more at how to revise my narrative to convey my point more. Who is the audience? How can I word things so that the story comes across in a simple coherent way, but still gets across all of the facts? I also began to highlight and think more about what the highlight moments of my story are going to be and where I want to focus on getting the point across.

Draft Revisions

Week 5–10.01.15

I began reading the Moyer and McCloud assignments and started to learn more about storyboard styles and how to create a comic strip style storyboard that properly illustrates your point. Here are a few things that I found:

Notes on Moyer

Notes on Moyer and McCloud

Notes on McCloud

After going through this I decided that the styles from the Moyer readings that were going to work best for my storyboard and concept were the “just show it”, “timeline”, “vignettes through time”, and most importantly “comparisons”.

I also began to VERY roughly sketch and work through a few ideas about how my story line might begin to unfold:

Initial thoughts on storyboard process

Initial thoughts on storyboard process

These were the very rough beginnings of how I began to think through the things that I was going to want to show and also realizing how much more detailed my story flows would need to be.

Week 6–10.06.15

For this class I began looking at a few short video clip styles to see what might be the best way for me to animate or film my video. Here are a few styles that I found interesting:

From Paper to Screen

Interesting use of graphic typography to tell the story without narration. Though my concept will probably require more imagery than this.

Traveling Lights

I liked the simple graphics of this video. I think it helps to tell the story and get the point across without any words quite nicely. This may be a bit too abstract of a style for what I am doing with my piece, but I liked the look and if I choose to do mostly animation and not real photography this is a style that I would like to emulate.

What is Precious to You?

This video had a nice mixture of narration and animation. It’s not exactly the same type of message that I will be trying to convey, but it was short, simple, and to the point, which I liked.

Refugee Crisis

This is a bit long for what I want to do with my video, but the simple illustrations and narration clearly illustrated the problem and explain the consequences in a way that is similar to what I want to do with my piece.

Stop Motion

I haven’t done stop motion before,but I think it might be a really interesting way to add a new style of video to my portfolio with a fairly low level production skill set necessary and it could potentially be a really cool piece.

I think I would also like to look further into some more photo realistic options to see how they would compare, but my filming skill levels are not as good for this so I am hesitant to use this style.

I also began sketching storyboard frames for my idea. I think these will definitely need some more refinement, but they are very helpful in working out how I want to convey my ideas.

Story board page 1

Story board page 2

Story board page 3

In class exploration of potential actors and form

Week 6–10.08.15

A few more illustrative styles to consider, I’m still not exactly sure what the best way to illustrate this concept will be. I want it to be something simple, but also detailed enough to be informative…

Illustrative Styles

Illustrative styles

I also took some time to think more about my story and how I’m conveying my concepts and important points. I looked at a few existing bike helmet safety videos to see where they succeeded and where they had issues that I can note and improve upon. There surprisingly not too many credible videos on the topic. They were mostly vague, incorrect, and amateur explanations:

Consumer reports

Negatives

• not really graphically compelling at all
• technology and a factory setting created distraction from the main point of the video
• Some of the terminology was also not as simple as it could have been
• images of people riding bikes while narrator is explaining a concept, instead of the concept being illustrated while the narrator is explaining
• no explanation of the step by step of a crash situation and how it works

Positives

• good facts
• sometimes illustrative notations are used
• fit demo showed, but not entirely clear

Manitoba Cycling Association

Negatives

• dry comedic style is entertaining, but distracts from the message
• music is a bit overpowering
• metaphor comparisons make you think of the object being used more than the concept
• jumpy transitions
• doesn’t show how to fit the helmet properly when it talks about that
• more of a PSA than an explanation of how helmets work

Positives

• film style is entertaining
• good examples of hazards

The Active Transportation Alliance

Negatives

• This video was basically a joke, but was actually the very first thing that came up when I googled the topic, so there’s not as many quality illustrations of this concept out there as I expected
• jumpy video quality
• verbal description of what happens in a crash situation, but it just shows the actor speaking. There needs to be a graphic to illustrate as well.
• background surroundings are distracting from the message they are trying to convey
• not a very scientific comparison or simulation of of crash situation
• Not credible at all

Positives

• none

Get Geared

Negatives

• The video was too long, I lost interest
• narrator wasn’t very engaging
• it’s the same scene for the entire video, there are no animations or demonstrations shown

Positive

• detailed easy to understand description of how each piece works
• pulled apart pieces of the helmet to describe each one
• * inner lining is there to keep your head in place, it’s not just a comfort feature…I should add this information to my narrative
• *when your head bounces around inside the helmet with an improper fit, you can get secondary brain damage…I should think about adding this information to my narrative

Week 7–10.13.15

After watching a few videos about my topic as well as talking to a few people in class about it and beginning to work through storyboards. I decided I needed to take another look at my script.

Revision #3

How does a helmet work?

A bicycle helmet is made up of four basic parts: a thick foam layer, a hard outer shell, inner padding, and a chin strap. When a cyclist has a crash, the unexpected impact can cause violent head rotation and movement that can severely injure the human brain. Helmets protect the head by decreasing the rate that the skull and brain are accelerated or decelerated by an impact. When the helmet hits a barrier it stops moving almost instantly, but the thick inner liner of foam in the helmet lets the persons’ head stay in motion for approximately six milliseconds longer. As the foam liner is crushed, it applies a controlled braking force to the head to slow it down to a less violent stop. Assuming the head is stopped before the helmet runs out of foam liner, the force is softened to a limit that can be tolerated. During a crash the hard shell disperses the impact force over a larger area of the liner. The hard shell also helps the helmet to slide easily across the crash surface, so as not to create extra drag that would further injure the head and neck of the wearer.

The most effective helmets are constructed with a foam liner that protects the head as well as inner padding that fits the helmet tightly to the head and keeps it from bouncing around, which can cause secondary damage after the initial impact. They also have a hard plastic shell to prevent perforation and friction and to hold the foam in place. Lastly helmets have an adjustable chin strap to hold them securely in place. You should always wear a helmet when bicycling or participating in activities with the potential for high impact to the head. This will ensure protection against unnecessary brain and head trauma that could have life threatening consequences for you.

More Storyboards:

After revising my narrative again, I took a second look at the storyboards that I did last week. They needed a bit of reorganizing to relate to my story. I also wanted to pay particular attention to the transitions as Stacie asked us to do in this second round:

After revising these storyboards again I began to look more at the animation examples and actor forms that I started researching last week to see how I could possibly begin to digitize my storyboards and apply these forms:

anatomy of a bike helmet

person wearing a helmet after a crash

Person not wearing helmet after a crash

Week 7–10.15.15

I feel like it’s strange that my story describes the parts of the helmet in two places and that one of them is after the main description of how it works. Because of this I decided to reorganize things a bit again before jumping into motion videos.

Revision #4

How does a helmet work?

A bicycle helmets is made up of four basic parts: a thick foam layer, a hard outer shell, inner padding, and a chin strap. The foam liner protects the head, while the inner padding fits the helmet tightly in place. The hard plastic shell of the helmet prevents perforation and friction as well as keeping the foam in place. Lastly helmets have an adjustable chin strap to hold them securely on the riders’ head.

When a cyclist has a crash, the unexpected impact can cause violent head rotation and movement that can severely injure the human brain. Helmets protect the head by decreasing the rate that the skull and brain are accelerated or decelerated by an impact. When the helmet hits a barrier it stops moving almost instantly, but the thick inner liner of foam in the helmet lets the persons’ head stay in motion for approximately six milliseconds longer. As the foam liner is crushed, it applies a controlled braking force to the head to slow it down to a less violent stop. Assuming the head is stopped before the helmet runs out of foam liner, the force is softened to a limit that can be tolerated. The inner padding keeps the head from bouncing around within the helmet, which can cause secondary damage after the initial impact. During a crash the hard shell disperses the impact force over a larger area of the liner. The hard shell also helps the helmet to slide easily across the crash surface, so as not to create extra drag that would further injure the head and neck of the wearer.

You should always wear a helmet when bicycling or participating in activities with the potential for high impact to the head. This will ensure protection against unnecessary brain and head trauma that could have life threatening consequences for you.

Week 8–10.20.15

This week I had come to the decision that my graphics and After Effects skills would not be strong enough to get the result that I wanted for my video, so I planned to create a stop motion animation video and began testing out how this might work:

After an initial test with stop motion (as well as a long weekend spent fighting with After Effects and reluctantly learning a bit more about it for our other studio course) I came to the conclusion that perhaps this was not the best time for me to try and get creative with stop motion, at the risk of not producing something that afforded the professional look that I was interested in for my video. I have since resolved to take this as an opportunity to force myself to improve my After Effects skills, which will hopefully be a good thing in the long run.

Week 8–10.22.15

I have decided to stick with using After Effects for my video, but have gone through quite a few iterations of design style for the different elements. I based elements off of a few different images, either simplifying or detailing them as I worked through the illustrations. Here are a few components that I started looking at:

inspirations for human form

Week 9–10.27.15–10.29.15

Process video:

This will still require a lot of revision, but the narration and time frames make the story a bit easier to understand. I need to really go into each scene though and work through the details.

Some feedback that I received on this video during our peer reviews was:

Transitions

• use slide transitions not 3-d flips
• maybe look into opacity transitions for the helmet

Motion

• make the riders’ head move more
• exaggerate the rock impact
• eye slits to show more animation at impact

Visuals

• give the foam more depth
• it’s important to see more of the helmet layers
• increase the effect of the impact
• add the buckle outline later?
• too many impact scenes maybe use zoom so there’s less sameness
• less saturated blue background
• grey road
• remove rock outlines
• impact head at crashes
• skull and brain acceleration at 1:03
• more clear illustrations to go with descriptions

Timing

• speed up the helmet scene
• switch the helmet intro and non helmet scene
• intro is too long
• pauses and end sequence are too long

Week 10–11.3.15

In the process of finishing my video I discovered a few more lines of text and scenes that needed to be reorganized as well as a few lines of text that needed to be removed because they were redundant and made it a bit more confusing. After making the final modifications my final video is shown above.

Project Reflections:

Did you learn any new skills and/or approaches from doing this project that you think you may find useful in the future?

I definitely improved my understanding of after effects greatly during this project. I think this project gave us a very generous amount of time to work with the program and through our concepts at whatever level we needed to within the program. This gave me a much less stressful learning environment to take on after effects and I’ve really enjoyed learning it in this way. I think it’s going to be a very useful skill for me to have. I also learned a lot about how to write something complex at a level that is more understandable for everyone else. I realized that its much more than the explanation, but also the delivery method/styles that are crucially important for making a concept understandable.

Did you apply any skills and/or approaches that you learned in the last project to this one? If so, please tell me about them too.

I was definitely thinking about things like how a concept is represented and not using the same style changes such as opacity fading or color change to represent more than one different part of the explanation. I was also trying to pull things apart from the big idea to the details which I think was a bit similar to the last project.

How do you feel about the outcome of this project? Are there things you would change? Do you plan to use it for the documentation of future projects?

I like the outcome of the project. There’s definitely more details I’d like to add/tweak based off of feedback that I received at the presentation regarding the visuals/descriptions of how the helmet foam crushes. I think I’m also still struggling with the balance between making something clear enough to understand well without over simplifying the concept, which was something I was concerned with in my last project as well.

How do you feel about the movement through this project? Were there sessions that did/didn’t resonate with you?

Everything flowed very well for me in this project. I wish I had started getting into the more final versions of the videos a little earlier and maybe done one less round of written storyboard though. I think I was able to think through my story and parts that I needed much better as I was trying to actually create it and put it all together in after effects. I find it hard to think in specific storyboard detail about scenes when I’m just doing hand sketching.