Production

I made the animation in Photoshop, after finishing the initial drawing stage, I scanned in all the illustrations creating layers. I thought it would be even more relevant to my essay having either colour or imagery tying in different cultures. However I realised adding colour to 56 slide would take too long, the idea of having flashing backgrounds also felt right as it would add to the intensity of the topic, seeing fleeting images entwined almost feels like an argument between different concepts, each slide only has so long to set out their view and before you know it's gone, metaphorically highlighting that you can never really have a clear understanding of the definition of "masculinity".

Initial ideas for backgrounds:

^ I later edited this background to have a red hue

I realised having tested these out it's best to have an all over coloured background, for example with the image of muscles above there's too much going on in the frame, it would distract too much from the animation which should always be the focal point.

Initially I tried it out having a different background per frame but it was way too intense; I then changed it so that every third frame the background image changed, it's still rapid but not too fast that you cannot make out the imagery.

In order to use the backgrounds I spent days using selection tools on Photoshop, in order to get the most precise defined edges, I needed to ensure all the drawn lines were still visible in the cutouts so the character wouldn't get lost into the background. This was incredibly time consuming but seemed to be the neatest way (lucky I'm very patient!). I had initially tried different techniques like image trace on Illustrator but I never managed to get a clean edge with all the lines it and by the time I edited it it took longer than using the magnetic selection tool.

56 cut outs later...

Ensuring the frames were consistent I used rulers and guides to keep the masculine monster in check.

Title sequence Outro

I taught myself through tutorials how to make a glitchy text gif on Photoshop as I feel this hints at the shift in opinion of masculinity, mirrored through the hashtag.

I rendered and exported the animation from Photoshop into iMovie to add the audio.