Project Summary:

During the course of my Advanced Animation semester at Quinnipiac University I completed an iOS iMessage Sticker application called, Heggy. Heggy is a Free iMessage Sticker App available in Apple’s App Store. It includes over 20 free animated gifs that I created during the course of our semester. I credit my Motion Across Media class with Professor Golden to supply me with the knowledge to create the animations in my App.

The Heggy Stickers were drawn in Adobe Draw with my iPad Pro, vectored in Illustrator and colored and textured in Photoshop. They were animated in Photoshop using the Frame by Frame technique we learned during Module 1. I used XCode to code my iOS application. You can learn more about the process to create an iOS Sticker application here or feel free to get in touch with me.

One thing that has been missing was a way to promote my Application. Written posts on Instagram, Facebook or Twitter will only go so far. For my final project I knew I wanted to complete a iMessage Application promotional animation. This would be a great way to bring in the skills I learned during the semester and also promote my Sticker Application to the public in an exciting way.

After doing research on the techniques for this module, App promotions and triangular animation I had a good idea of the direction I would take for my project. I wrote down my ideas and started making a storyboard.

I found creating a storyboard for my promotional application was extremely necessary and helpful when it came to animating the messaging and devices. The combination of messaging and animation was key to my advertisement. If I wanted people to download my application, I needed to get their attention with messaging and eye-catching animation.

I broke my animation into Scenes. Each scene is its own pre-composition. This took some time to set up, but saved time and kept my file organized in the long run.

After watching Youtube tutorials specific to After Effects “effect panel” last module I had a better idea how to work with effects and key frames going into this project. I hit several road blocks, such as animating the messaging and device lockups at the same time, changing the color gradient behind the animated triangles and masking the overlapping animations. However, majority of these problems were resolved by a quick Google search. Seeing how other animators solved these issues as well as organized their composition and pre-compositions was very helpful.

I found that the reading this module helped me promote my work effectively. It might be hard to tell, I have a couple interactions occurring at the same time in my UI animation. Such as the device lockups, messaging and triangle animation. What I found useful during this project was creating multiple pre-compositions. This did not only separated my elements, but also kept my file extremely organized.

Overall I had a lot of fun with this project. My favorite part was concepting. After collecting my advanced animation inspiration from various sites and watching several Youtube tutorials I was ready to build on my ideas. Going into this project I had a lot of ideas, such as a virtual zoo or iMessage conversation. These ideas sounded good on paper, but would not fill the requirements as well as I imagined. Selecting a advanced animation that would showcase my work, skills I learned this semester and iOS application was a gratifying experience.

Heggy Stickers – I created my low poly hedgehog stickers in Photoshop and Illustrator. (Sketched on iPad Pro with a Apple Pencil)

Music – I wanted to keep the music serious and upbeat similar to Apple advertisements. I found the music on Youtube by searching for “Up beat instrumental background music”.

Sound Effects – I added sound effects that would go along with the text animations and confetti. I used ambient audio to give a sense of place.

Animation – I wanted to incorporate a few of the 10 principles of animation that we learned Module 8 as well as use some of the techniques we learned.

Below you will find the hedgehog GIFS I created during the semester included in my iMessage App. I created the hedgehog gifs in Adobe Draw, Photoshop, Illustrator and the iMessage Sticker Application in XCode.

The application includes a tab that includes static hedgehog stickers and an animated tab with animated hedgehogs. The animated tab was inspired by the material we covered in Module 1 on Animated gifs. I used the drawing and Gif Sketching techniques we learned in Module 1 to create the animated hedgehogs. This is where I used Adobe Draw on my iPad pro to sketch the rough draft of my hedgehog gifs. Sketching my hedgehog prior to creating the elements in Illustrator was a very important step.

If you have time to download and/or review Heggy that would be greatly appreciated. 🙂

If you are interested in learning more about iOS Sticker Applications feel free to contact me here. 🙂