Strange Powers — AfterEffects Animation
Having only used keyframes, basic expressions, some effects, and only in 2D, I really wanted to challenge myself for this project. In this post, you’ll see my entire process from beginning to end making an animated video to the song Strange Powers by The Magnetic Fields.
If you’re unfamiliar with Strange Powers, here’s the song:
I chose this song because whenever I listen to it, I can see very clear visual of the lyrics. I’ll break down the lyrics with my story idea here:
On the Ferris wheel
Looking out on Coney Island
Under more stars than
There are prostitutes in Thailand
Our hair in the air
Our lips blue from cotton candy
When we kiss, it feels
Like a flying saucer landing
In the first verse, I imagine a man and a woman on a ferris wheel looking out over Coney Island. The man is infatuated by the woman and they are sharing blue cotton candy. We quickly realize though, that the woman is not totally innocent. Her eyes light up with a green glow and she shoots lasers out of her eyes casting a blob of magic powers over the man. His infatuation deepens and they lean in for a kiss. At this point, the camera zooms out and we see that the entire scene is inside a UFO.
And I can’t sleep
’Cause you got strange powers
You’re in my dreams
Strange powers
The flying saucer flies through a wooded area and we are looking at through the window of a bedroom. The man is sleeping in bed but wakes up in a sweat. We zoom into his head and see the woman dancing around.
Now, I REALLY wanted to do the whole song, and I’ll attach my storyboard below, but I only got to finishing that first verse. I’ll get to why later.
In summary, the second part of the video would be a series of videos where the man is chasing the woman or searching for her. The scenes align with the lyrics. For example, the song talks about Las Vegas and he would see her silhouette in all of the flashing Vegas signs. It would end with the UFO returning and releasing him naked into the wooded area.
To come up with this storyline, I took the lyrics really literally. The “strange powers” were literally strange powers because she’s an alien. And she literally is in his head. I also recently dealt with some heartbreak and I put myself in the shoes of the woman I created to try to reclaim some power and dignity after feeling pretty down in the dumps over a silly boy. For this reason, the entire process of making this video ended up being pretty cathartic. The story is more about the woman than it is the man. And she really isn’t the villain, she’s using her strange powers for a reason…harmless revenge by haunting his every thought. I really expressed some of the anger I’d been feeling by crafting this storyline and designing the characters.
Visual Planning
At first, I wanted this video to be collage based, sourcing real vintage advertisements and post cards. I wanted to play off of the original album art — the very idealic 50s-esque, suburban, couple. I thought it would be an interesting paradox to use these seemingly happy characters (especially the woman) to tell a darker story.
I was determined to source every image from the public domain or by my own thrifting. I relied a lot on the NYPL Digital Collection database to find inspiration and assets, but after I thought I found everything I needed, I saw the resolution was only 720px for most of them. Though I did’nt end up using them for this reason, I did use them as references for my original asset creation. Here are some of the pictures.
The only unoriginal image I ended up including in the video was this real Coney Island post card.
For the man character, I actually referenced the guy up above and drew several different expressions and hand gestures. You can see the rest of the gestures in the actual video. The woman was more of my own creation, but I referenced a lot of art nouveau-style posters. I thought it would be interesting to have the two characters be styled from two different eras of art history. IT wouldn’t limit the story to a specific period and emphasize the imaginary world they live in.
I drew them both in Procreate and colored in Photoshop.
I then laser-cut the Ferris wheel out of cardboard and scanned them in with the printer. I wanted an authentic cardboard texture.
Animating Problems & Solutions
Problem 1: I really loved that liquor commercial we watched in class where the scenes were all nested inside each other. I was going to try to replicate this in the UFO scene but I really had a tough time with that. By the time I finished the composition outside of the UFO, I only then realized that the aspect ratio of the space inside the UFO semi-circle did not match that of my video so when I desperatley tried time and time again to make a smooth transition between scenes, I failed.
Solution: To camofaluge the misalignmend, I added a cross zoom effect in the transition. Sigh. If I were to do it again, I now know that I would either have to make the composition that;s going inside the UFO mcuh larger than is shown so it can fit in the UFO, or make the UFO have the same proportions.
Problem 2: I animated the ferris wheel in its own compositon and had the circle of the wheel and each car in a seperate layer. Simply making the cars a child of the ferri wheel would not work because the cars wouldnt stay upright with the moving wheel.
Solution: I parented each car to the roation element of the circle and added the expression thisComp.layer(“Circle”).transform.rotation*1 . This rotated the individual car counterclockwise (opposite to the rotation of the circle) at the same pace of the circle so it would stay upright.
Problem 3: I wanted the camera to follow the movement of the couple in the ferris wheel car as it roatated, but I couldn’t parent the position of the camera to the car because the car was in its own composition and I wanted the camera in the main composition. A solution has yet to be found. For now, its a very unstable which some people seem to like but I find it dizzying and distracting.
This kind of covers the biggests highlights (and lowlights) of my animating process. I enjoyed working in 3D space (somehting I never tried before) and I also enjoyed using multiple compositions. Previously I worked in one big composition which was just a big mess.
Conclusion
And now I present to you, my almost-one-minute final animation of Strange Powers.
While I’m not happy with the final result, it is close to what I wanted and I learned A LOT in the process. I kind of just want to strat from scratch and practice my improved organizational skills and workflow habits and I think my animating would go alot smoother. Making the story was the most enjoyable part. This reminded me how much I love stroytelling and film making but in particular music videos. For my final project, I definitely want to do something music related. There’s so much opportunity for movement and interaction with music in animation and I’m just really excited and motivated to keep creating.
