For Dear Life (命辛辛) - ANIMATION

VIDEO EDITING

Adobe After Effects and Procreate, 2023

Description

A short remake animated music video based on my favorite song.

Original MV: https://youtu.be/QTxvUA4l0Vs?si=kYLst-j6akSXYkZr

For Dear Life is a song that I hold close to my heart. It talks about "the struggles, desires, and aspirations of individuals to break free from societal expectations, to seek personal growth and transformation, and to find purpose and fulfillment in a challenging world." (Source: Songtell)

These lyrics speaks the truth inside me. As an artist, I have been struggling to find my meaning of existence in life. Similar to Narou - the character in the original MV - I'm constantly juggling between my ego and my perfectionism. My ego would bring my own expectations up high, while my perfectionism would make me feel horrible when I couldn't make those expectations. It's a constant fight within me.

However, despite all these struggles and despair, I have set my mind on being better at doing what I love everyday, and pain is just temporal.

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Process

When I plan out the storyboard for this short MV, I wanted to loosely based on the original MV in terms of flow, but I also wanted to tell my own story in the video. That is why for the intro and music break, I try to replicate the editing/animation in the original MV but with my own characters. The main character is a representation of me visually, while Gummy, Choco and Pineapple is my own design based loosely on the names mentioned in the song.

Character Design

Storyboard

Since the sequence for the intro is also the one used in the music break, I spent more time polishing the artworks. Each charater was coming from a corner of the video and they have to create the feeling of being boxed in so I spent more time trying to create that nuance.

Repeated sequence

Assets