The Outcome

My final project aims to be a series of animations that intend to engage and raise awareness about the signs of burnout. The audience intends to focus on those in the workplace. There will be 8 animations that run for around 15 seconds each. 7 of the animations will cover signs of burnout and what it might look like when experiencing it. The other 1 animation involves a montage of activities that can be done to escape from burnout and possibly relieve yourself from it. These 8 animations will be displayed in a website or Youtube video for the final exhibition for participants to view. The content viewed intends to relate to the participants and prompt conversation about burnout and if so, realise they are suffering from it. These animations will be followed and accompanied by an interactive component where participants will be able to look through snippets and segments from these animation videos and then arrange them to create their own sequence that represents their burnout experience. This would be a powerful device as participants would be building their own story of burnout rather than it being built for them. This could give them a greater sense of control against burnout. There intends to be around 34 of these snippets or moments to choose from.

The ideal exhibit space for my project is visualised to be 4 office desks, each with a computer on them. The first and third one playing through the burnout animation series. With the second and third one featuring the ‘create your own burnout story’ activity. However, if the space or resources are limited, 2 desks is viable. I aim to create the stressful atmosphere workplace peoples experience when burnt out by populating the space with clutter such as scrunched up paper, ripped up documents and pens and pencils everywhere. I also wanted to include a plate of burnt toast as a nod to the name of the project.

For the website being shown at the exhibition, I decided to begin mapping out what this might look like.  This initial version of the website contains the project's title, a brief introduction, the animation series and the interactive activity. I wanted the website to have a drag/drop functionality for the interactive 'create your own burnout story' activity. Therefore, I turned to the website builder Cargo for this to work. Although it took some workshopping and research to finally figure out the draggable function, the desired result was found. Although the interactive activity uses still images from the animations so far, they will eventually be GIFs for the final. Stills have also been used in place of the animations.

Through utilising the animating program of Adobe After Effects, I finally created an initial version for each animation for the burnout animation series. These versions will be refined accordingly for the final outcome.

Problem over People

Ineffectiveness

Tired the Whole Day

Not Getting Up

Always Thinking About Work

Sick of Work

Overworked

Escape 

After having another look at the sketch plan and further conversations about the exhibition, adjustments were made to how the outcome will be presented. Due to there being limited space, the exhibit was simplified to just the desk (or 2 desks) with 2 computers. One displaying the animation series on a loop and the other displaying the interactive activity. It was also realised that the website displayed at the exhibition won't need a project introduction or the animation series as this will be shown respectively on an exhibit plaque/banner or the other computer. Therefore, the website was simplified to just the project title and the interactive activity.

Utilising Adobe Photoshop, I created a mockup of what the outcome's exhibit will roughly look like in context. The space will take up approximately 2 metres by 1 metre. For the space, I've decided to just go for one desk with two computers, as well as just one chair. There has also been the addition of vinyl stickers on the wall to compliment the space - this features animation characters and the project's title. 

After further feedback and conversation, I made the final adjustments to the animations and refined them. This included modifying some of their timing, adding in more animation to make areas look less still and fixing up awkward animation.

Problem over People

Ineffectiveness

Tired the Whole Day

Not Getting Up

Always Thinking About Work

Sick of Work

Overworked

Escape 

Having finalised the animation series, I was able to refine the website being shown at the exhibition. I also changed the hierarchy for some of the elements and added in more text to make the instructions for the website more clear.