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Case Pikku Kakkonen Creating Animated Stickers for Social Media Platforms Using Brand-Based Imagery – Case Pikku Kakkonen Sofi-Ilona Löhönen BACHELOR’S THESIS April 2020 Degree Programme in Media and Arts Fine Art 2 ABSTRACT Tampereen ammattikorkeakoulu Tampere University of Applied Sciences Degree Programme in Media and Arts Fine Art LÖHÖNEN, SOFI-ILONA: Creating Animated Stickers for Social Media Platforms Using Brand-Based Imagery Case Pikku Kakkonen Bachelor's thesis of 67 pages April 2020 Animation is an adaptable medium. In digital media, animation can be detected for example in the form of GIF. Today GIFs are used in multiple ways, such as a decorative, promotional and artistic elements, as well as communicational tools – for example as animated stickers – on personal messaging platforms. The purpose of this thesis was to create animated stickers, and two animated shorts for Pikku Kakkonen, which were set to be used in social media platforms as decorative elements and updates. Pikku Kakkonen is a magazine-styled Finnish children’s program. The program’s Art Director Elli Murtonen had a vision to add elements into Pikku Kakkonen’s Instagram by launching a set of stickers using the brand’s visual brand imagery. The research was carried out in order to study how animation, its principles and production works, and how it is being adapted as a medium. The thesis also explored the history and the technical functionality of the GIF, and how the format was used in social media. These findings were aimed at being utilized in the thesis project, focusing on important matters when creating animations using Pikku Kakkonen’s vector graphics, while simultaneously aiming to adapt the animation principles. An additional question was what to take into consideration when creating an animation project, and to describe the project and its outcome, as well as personal thoughts concerning the process. The project was created using data from the research, and by following Pikku Kakkonen’s Art Director’s directions. Key words: animation, principles, project, GIF, sticker, brand-based imagery 3 CONTENTS 1 GLOSSARY .......................................................................................... 4 1 INTRODUCTION .................................................................................. 5 2 WHAT IS ANIMATION .......................................................................... 7 2.1 Description of the history of animation ............................................ 8 2.2 Principles of animation ................................................................. 14 2.2.1 Disney’s principles of animation ......................................... 14 2.2.2 Additional foundations of animation .................................... 18 2.3 The technical execution of animation ........................................... 22 2.3.1. Genres of animation ........................................................... 23 2.3.2. Pixel based graphics .......................................................... 25 2.3.3. Vector based graphics ........................................................ 26 3 ANIMATION AS A MEDIUM ............................................................. 27 3.1 Adaptation of storytelling in animation .......................................... 28 3.1.1 Animation and visual arts ................................................... 28 3.2 Aims of production ....................................................................... 29 4 ADAPTING THE GRAPHIC INTERCHANGE FORMAT ..................... 31 4.1 History .......................................................................................... 31 4.2 Technique and the limits of it ........................................................ 32 4.3 Adapting GIF animation................................................................ 33 4.3.1 Social media ....................................................................... 34 4.3.2 GIF in use of brands ........................................................... 34 4.3.3 GIF and visual arts ............................................................. 36 4.3.4 Emotions............................................................................. 36 5 THE BRAND ....................................................................................... 38 6 THE PROJECT ................................................................................... 40 6.1 Description of the process ............................................................ 42 6.2 Final Thoughts ............................................................................. 53 7 PRODUCTION .................................................................................... 63 8 CONCLUSION .................................................................................... 64 REFERENCES ........................................................................................ 65 4 GLOSSARY traditional animation hand-drawn animation, originally on physical paper and later see-through film animation principles guidelines for creating lively animation and motion-work frame a singular image out of an image sequence in animation keyframe frames in animation, showing the most important frames of the movement rig a skeleton of a digital character or puppet, making it more practical to control rigging creating the rig for a digital character GIF short for the graphic interchange format, a file format designed originally for images, later also for short, looping and soundless moving image sticker in the context of the thesis a still or moving digital image, used for communication and personalization in social media emoji a pictorial symbol used for communication in messaging servers and social media emoticon a presentation of a facial expression using keyboard characters app application, a program for smart devices direct messaging a messaging system designed for private conversations composition a space in software providing timeline for the layers and their content, essentially a place for an individual project 5 1 INTRODUCTION Communication is part of human life. When speech and textual communication turn out to be deficient – for example because of linguistic or emotional reasons – we can use images as a form of communication. Images have an ability to depict information and emotion regardless of the viewer’s personal background, such as age or language. Some of this imagery is used in digital communication in forms of emojis, stickers and GIFs. In addition to emojis, animated stickers – or GIFs – are also used in direct messaging. The GIF was originally created for images to be compressed into a format which would not take up much of the computer’s memory. Later the GIF gained the ability to loop soundless moving image without requiring any separate playback system, which made it possible for the format to be spread moving images over the evolving World Wide Web. Today GIFs can be commonly found in smartphone applications, and are a form of direct messaging and personalization, as well as decorative and commercial elements on the internet. The thesis project is an animation project produced for Pikku Kakkonen, which is a Finnish, magazine-styled children’s program. The program’s running time is roughly an hour, and it is broadcasted twice per day from Monday through Friday, and on Saturday and Sunday mornings. The project was started to fulfil the idea for expanding Pikku Kakkonen’s brand by launching a set of stickers and animated shorts, which were executed by using the programs brand-based imagery. The stickers were used in a social media platform called Instagram – precisely in its Stories feature – as decorative and infographic elements. The animated shorts were published as Pikku Kakkonen’s Facebook and Instagram updates in order to advertise the stickers on the days of their launch. To dive into the matters concerning the project, the historical use of animation is being studied in the beginning of the thesis. Afterwards the principles of animation, as well as the additional foundations of animation are explained, in order to support describing the animating process. Animation as a medium is also researched to better understand its extensive functionality, and how it is being 6 utilized. The GIF is also studied as a concept throughout its history, and how it functions as a vehicle from technical point of view. This was also done in order to support describing the projects contents in more detail. The very meaning of images is also briefly researched and contemplated to address their meaning as communicative elements. The research question of the thesis was to unwrap what to take into consideration when starting an animation project from the described baseline, and to document and describe how an animation project was formed precisely for Pikku Kakkonen, when using vector graphics from its brand-based imagery. The aim was also to describe the project’s production and workflow in detail, and to narrate how the project turned out and felt like in general from a young animator’s point of view. An additional question was also how the principles of animation, and the additional foundations of animation were able to be adapted while using Pikku Kakkonen’s vector graphics. Additional research was done in order to immerse oneself more into the topics at hand, and to help understand the project and everything that went in it in more detail. 7 2 WHAT IS ANIMATION Animation is the illusion of movement that appears when still images – or frames – are being showed in prompt speed (Computer
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