1 John 4-7 Animation Process

During the Covid Pandemic shutdown, I was sparked by a thought to begin reading the bible. However, instead of reading the whole bible, I decided to read certain scriptures and use my motion design skills to interpret those scriptures according to my understanding. I researched online to see if anyone else had animated bible scriptures online, and did not find any interesting animated bible scriptures. I decided to start a personal project where I created animations of scriptures. I experiment with different styles, stories, visual metaphors, and typography, in order to tell a story using my understanding of the message in the scripture.

Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God.

1 John 4-7

CONCEPT

One question I wanted to answer in this video for myself was the following: 

“What do you Worship?” The answer I received was plainly in my sight. 

My phone. My Dream Car (Camarao). Money.

Inspired by the “American Gods” trailer and some amazing Music Videos I’ve seen in the past, I set out to create a piece that revolved around my materialistic obsession/worship. I, like others, whether we’re aware of it or not, worship some form of materialism and/or consumerism over our values and being. At some point in our lives, we care about and obsess over these finite objects that come and go, instead of cherishing the important things in life, like family, relationships, and experiences with our loved ones. I’m not saying don’t strive for these things, strive for them but don’t worship them, there’s a difference.

I also realized these obsessions were there as a bandage because of the lack I was feeling in my life, and that lack only one entity can fill it, and that is God. No object, addiction, or materialist thing of this world can fill what we lack, only He can. I wasn’t able to see that until now.

For the concept, I use a Museum exhibit to showcase how much value is placed on these items. They’re guarded in cases and hung on a wall to “preserve their essence.” But, I use this as an example to show how we tend to place this value on these items. 

The animation style is a slow movement through the piece. I was influenced by music videos that used slow motion throughout the video to represent the story. I used the same idea to reinforce the importance of the objects by keeping them in view as long as possible while moving to the beat of the audio. 

Versus, a crazy talented producer, produced the audio. I came across his process of creating this song on YouTube and enjoyed it so much, I knew it would flow with the concept of this video. I used this track for the audio because it plays on the “paradoxical juxtaposition” that I enjoy making with these videos. The audio says one thing, but on display, we’re watching something different.

STORYBOARD