The showcase

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2018 Winner Experience

2018 Winner experience 01
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2018 Top Talent

Submissions 8102 Semifinalists 2454 Honorees 64

Commercial
Animation / Motion Graphics

Winner

Color

By Wooyoung Kim
Finalist

The Brain - The Clash of the Hemispheres

By Doug Alberts
Finalist

Giant Plant Eater Hypothesis

By Matthias Ries | Charlotte Hintzmann | Matthias Ries
Designation

CoMotion 2018 Title Sequence

By Sofie Lee | Sunny B. Yazdani | Madison Ellis | Joel Desmond | Francisco Betancourt | Champ Techawongthawon | Gretel Cummings | Sofie Lee | Omid Seraj | Houhan Wang | Taylor Thorne | Augustus Rachels | Jamie Gray | Kayla Beehler | Matt Van Rys | Patrick Knip | Anastasia Skrebneva | Woo Yong (Leo) Cho | Dasul Kim | Sam Button | Nestor Tomaselli | Aishwarya Sadasivan | Ana Ospina | James Ortwerth | Vero Gomez | Yunho Park | Yixin Li | Leah Evans

Commercial
Packaging Design

Winner

Käfer: Coffee + Roaster

By Jordan Richards
Finalist

Packaging Design - Oryza Rice

By Joanna Shuen
Finalist

鼠來寶 The healthy gifts from chipmunks

By Yenya You | Hsinchih Tsai
Finalist

Vuelta Powdered Paint

By Yi Jun Lin

Commercial
Photography

Winner

GENDERLESS

By Suhail Suri | Disha Bajaj
Finalist

In My head

By Bonghee Kang
Finalist

Stroboscopic Athlete

By Tom Hegen
Honorable Mention

Nightcrawler Title Sequence

By Dillon King

Commercial
Print / Graphic / Illustration

Winner

Works in Progress CalArts Graphic Design Program Show

By Junki Hong
Finalist

My Rule

By yejin choi | SeoYeong Won | SeungYeon Ryu | JunWoo Kang
Finalist

ETH ZURICH

By Chloe Lee
Finalist

-BOV

By Elena Donets
Designation

FLEX'IE (The DIY Letter Kit)

By Hat-Ssal Kim
Designation

SYZYGY

By jinke wang
Designation

Playfully

By Krishnapriya Dutta Gupta

Commercial
Video Editing / Post-Production

Winner

That's So Muji

By Annette Lee | Brigitta Martiana
Finalist

GAMMA–INTERIOR

By Krupkin Aleksei
Finalist

SEALSON®

By YuShu Chien
Finalist

Google Pitch - Here and now

By Sofia Coelho | Patricia Arguelles | Valentina Orjuela

Commercial
Web / App / Game Design

Winner

MUJI IOT Concept

By kihyun Kim
Finalist

Neo- Investment app

By Geethu Sebastian
Finalist

Elevate

By Jake Anderson | Bradlee Thielen | Jake Anderson | Amy Spengler
Finalist

Flow

By Ashlynn Tan

Fine Art
Animation / Motion Graphics

Winner

be still, get up

By Siena Mae Allison
Finalist

David Lynch On Ideas

By Zoe Hu
Finalist

The Designers

By Rohan McDonald
Honorable Mention

¿Que es ser Mexicano? TRAILER

By Veró Gómez
Honorable Mention

Black Behind the Ear: Using Motion Graphics to Encourage Self-awareness and Embrace Racial Heritage.

By Carolina Lopez
Honorable Mention

VICE

By Maddy Hodgetts

Fine Art
Graphic Design / Print

Winner

Residue

By Chetan Singh Kunwar
Finalist

BRUTAL: Views from Brazil's Concrete Utopia

By Tais Ghelli Bishop
Finalist

Architecture Posters

By Janny Ji
Honorable Mention

Peeping Museum

By LUYING SALLIE XU
Honorable Mention

The Filter Bubble: Algorithm to Manipulate Thoughts

By Da Eun Hwang | Min Ji Kim | Yoo Sun Kang | Min Yeong Gwak

Fine Art
Illustration

Winner

Questionnaire

By Ben Bueno
Finalist

The Yijing

By Florian Leible
Finalist

Revolution

By Veró Gómez

Fine Art
Photography

Winner

Afro Indy Dandy

By Alena Sidorova (Gelen)
Finalist

The Quarry Series

By Tom Hegen
Honorable Mention

波み立つ

By Jia-Hong Huang

Fine Art
Video Editing / Post-Production

Winner

Every Grain of Rice

By Carol Nguyen
Finalist

Falegname

By Andrea Zangheri
Honorable Mention

Erythrophobia

By Liza Gusarova | Vera Romanova

Social Impact
Photography / Print / Illustration / Graphic

Winner

HABITAT – human altered landscapes

By Tom Hegen
Finalist

Li General Store

By Joy Li
Honorable Mention

Renew the school

By Wang Li-Ting | Ya Yu Tseng | Yu Tung Hsu | Yun Chi Chen | Li Ting Wang
Honorable Mention

slow-fish

By kaunhou cheang
Designation

If BART Can Speak

By Zheng Jian

Social Impact
Video Editing / Post-Production / Animation / Motion Graphics

Winner

You Are Not Okay

By Heewan Park | Doi Hwang | Heewan Park | Yumi Kim
Finalist

OLYMPIAK SG

By Jason Yong
Finalist

Digital Afterlife

By Hwirin Park
Honorable Mention

Winfried

By Jana Lenhard | Christopher Vogt | Victoria Sandvoß

Social Impact
Web / App / Game Design

Winner

Incognita | Abject Poverty in Major Cities

By Ethelia Lung
Finalist

Ukemented Reality

By Aimy Qi
Finalist

Tome: Connecting Real People to Real Books

By Chung Yu Chen

Black Behind the Ear: Using Motion Graphics to Encourage Self-awareness and Embrace Racial Heritage.

Carolina Lopez

Rochester Institute of Technology - CIAS, United States

Honorable Mention | Fine Art - Animation / Motion Graphics

MFA Thesis Project Black Behind the Ear is an animated visual representation of Elizabeth Acevedo’s poem “Hair”. This poem uses hair as a metaphorical element to represent the internalized racism and racial amnesia predominant in the Dominican Republic, a place that owes African slaves for much of the island’s racial, and cultural heritage.

Graduation Film, Rochester Institute of Technology
Design & Animation: Carolina Lopez
Poem: Elizabeth Acevedo
Thesis Advisors: Dan DeLuna, Chris Jackson, Kijana Crawford

Goal: 

This motion graphics piece intends to encourage self-awareness in a time when embracing one’s culture and race can break the ossified schemes passed through generations about personality standards based on physical attributes. 

Concept: 

In 1833, one of the most well-known Dominican poet Juan Antonio Alix wrote the poem “El negro detrás de la oreja”. The poem became so influential that the title of the poem became a colloquialism meaning someone with the black behind its ear means that has an African ancestry but hides it.

The concept of this project was born from this phrase. This project embraces heritage rather than ignore it. It hopes to change “Black Behind the Ear” from an insult to a prideful descriptor, giving the audience an uplifting perspective of themselves.

Poem by: Elizabeth Acevedo

Process: 

Throughout the making of Black Behind the Ear the visualization of the story along with its animation style changed from what was planned at the beginning. The first storyboard intended to be more abstract inspired by botanical shapes where everything would be symbolized to go along Elizabeth Acevedo’s voice.

While doing more research on the target audience and finding more cultural references the design shifted form to include more symbolic figures that would accurately express, the feelings and phrases within the poem. Keeping the abstract concept intact the visuals became more significant and deeper in meaning. 

1st Storyboard

Previous style frame

In the latest version, the visuals shifted from an abstract and delicate shapes to more aggressive symbols and representation of the words said in order to create an aggressive feel along with representing femininity in the Caribbean. 

The style and transitions transitioned towards stop motion animation style and stylized shapes and textures. Making the piece have an “crafty, handmade look and feel” in order to represent the struggle the ancestors had to go through to fight for their rights.


Latest Storyboard

Choosing the color palette for Black Behind the Ear was one of the most important decisions made. During the first half of the piece, the girl is in denial because of what her past generations (represented by the mother in the poem) has taught her. This dark emotional stage is represented with colors reminiscent of nighttime. The colors are cold with the exception of the character’s hair to contrast with the darkness and to symbolize the strength of their heritage. 

The second half comes as a sunrise to represent the awakening of the girl’s mind towards something being wrong, trying now to run from all the stereotypes and beauty standards her past has set on her and looking forward to become self-aware. This stage is mainly based on warm bright colors which usually are used for optimism, passion, aggressiveness and strength.  

Animation & Texture:

The main challenge for this entire project was the animation part, since it was the first time I tackled frame by frame animation with several illustrated details. 

The first step was to animate the overall piece, then polish, and since the entire style was based on using chalk-like textures I had to go back and texturize every frame. At the end around 3,000 frames were uniquely worked on. 
The audio version used for this project is a live voice recording of Elizabeth Acevedo by 
www.SlamFind.com.