Animated Type
Calligraphy
For this project I took an idiom or an old saying and I made a calligraphic treatment out of it. In this case I chose “Idle hands are the devil’s playthings,” which means that a person with nothing to do is more likely to cause trouble. After multiple iterations on the concept I decided to do a rigid geometric Blackletter font with a more free flowing hand-drawn calligraphic fire. Taking the expression literally with a devil and hellfire motif.
Process Work
There were multiple thumbnails and sketches I went through before concluding on the final. So many variations on idea of the devil and also trying to incorporate the idea of hands. I thought “Idle Hands” should be represented by lazy or rigid, idle type. While the “Devil’s Plaything” should be more expressive and illustrative.
Animation
Drawing the calligraphic type took a bit of imagination and artistic skill, but now to actually take the illustration and then animate it in After Effects? That takes a little bit of trickery and cleverness. I was able to animate the flames using a ripple and wave effect. For the audio I thought that the calligraphy had a very 80’s heavy metal look to it, so I picked a royalty free heavy metal soundtrack that I think fits the illustration.
