🧠 5 Visuals for Your Next Video

Author

Rickie Ho
December 14, 2023

Happy Thursday everyone,

Hope you’re doing well. This week has been a really good week in terms of creativity and inspiration. I’ve just been really motivated as of late. What I’ve learned is that while my motivation comes and goes, as long as I stay disciplined in whatever I want to do, I’ll see results. When that motivation comes though, it feels so good and I know I have to capitalize on it.

In a personal update, I want to incorporate more cardio in my training and after a really good lift at the gym yesterday, I came home to do 40-minutes on my stationary bike at a heart rate of around 130-140bpm for the duration. Ideally, I’m doing that 4 times a week, so I’m hoping to just integrate that into my schedule.

If you’re not following me on Twitter, be sure to check me out for video editing content there as well!

Enjoy today’s edition!

- Rickie

5 Visuals I Loved This Week

1. This Simple, but Creative, Way to Illustrate a Line

  • I’m a big fan of integrating real life visuals into motion design.

  • This chart could have easily just been popped onto the screen via that swipe transition but you’d lose the ability to seamlessly tie the two concepts together: a plane and a “soft-landing” from an economic perspective.

  • Some details that I really like are the motion blur during the transition, and how the plane stays in frame the whole clip.

  • I thought it was an interesting decision to pre-populate the chart with the federal funds rate data instead of animating it alongside the CPI data, but they probably did this in order to not distract from the (more important) CPI data.

  • Stylistically, I’m not sure why the chart is slightly biased toward the left side of the screen, I’d likely leave more room in the margins on either side, but that is just my opinion.

2. How These Planes Are Brought to Life

  • What I love about this animation is:

    • A: the transition to the paper-like texture while keeping the Concorde plane front and center

    • B: how the F-16A bobbles after it comes onto the screen

  • I especially want to focus on B because of how this very simple animation concept makes it looks like as if the plane flew into the screen from a lower altitude.

    • This could have been a static image but the bobbling really brought it to life

  • This is something that could be widely applicable to any type of animation, not just planes.

    • What minor things can you do to a static image that will bring it to life?

  • Sidenote: I’m not totally sure what software Cleo and her team used to animate this video - could it be Blender? If you know, DM me on Twitter your thoughts.

3. This Business Model Illustration

  • The foundation of Codie Sanchez’s editing style comes down to:

    • A flickering glow effect

    • Lime green

    • Posterize time, which is an effect you can use in After Effects that reduces the frame rate to make the animation choppier

  • I think this is a really good visualization of examples of businesses as well as vertical/horizontal integration.

    • My only gripe: I felt that the vertical integration graphic was too sort-lived on the screen.

  • Her branding throughout all of her videos is pretty clear and she uses little text animations to supplement A-roll a lot - it’s not just these full screen visuals like the one above.

4. How Well Each Illustration Weaves into the Next One

  • I’m less of a fan of the actual visual itself but more of a fan of how each animation integrates into the next one.

    • The pie chart becomes the base of a horizontal bar chart.

    • The horizontal bar chart becomes the base of a line chart.

  • This kind of integration is one of the marks of a good animator - being able to creatively find ways to use what they’ve already made to transition into the next visual.

5. The Drop Shadow Effect on this Line Chart

  • This is a creative way to bring the focus onto a certain data point.

    • What I’ve done in the past is just reduce the opacity of other lines to highlight the line of focus but adding this drop shadow is a good way to bring depth into the animation.

    • It looks like the red line is popping off the chart because of how good the drop shadow looks on the yellow paper.

  • This is a simple effect to make too. You would just need to keyframe the drop shadow effect.

  • Comparing this chart to the one from the WSJ, I like the negative space on the left and the right that frame the chart.

    • I usually find that if a chart gets too wide, it’s almost harder to read.

X to Inspire

This longer tweet is pretty relevant to how I felt about where I was in my career not too long ago.

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