Carambole

December 2024

Video & Animation

School project

I created an animation in After Effects depicting the absurd journey of a balloon bouncing around a house. The collage style and bento grid composition enhance the video’s playful and original tone.

Context / Issue

The mission was to create a short bento grid animation illustrating a place and its different spaces, as part of an After Effects course.

This project was carried out as part of my After Effects animation classes at L'École de design. The objective was to produce an animated video of 20 to 40 seconds, presenting a location (house, apartment, museum, restaurant...) and its different spaces, while respecting a bento grid structure. The project also required clear storytelling, with a beginning and an end, and a coherent visual aesthetic.

The main challenge consisted of staging a place in an original and dynamic way, while respecting the technical constraints of the course: limited duration, storytelling, and bento grid format. The video needed to be fluid, understandable, and engaging, while allowing for strong creative and visual expression.

Methodology

Concept and storytelling: I imagined the story of a man kicking a ball, which bounces through all the rooms of a house. The idea was to create an absurd and humorous effect, reinforced by the sound rhythm of the video.

Art direction: To match the absurdity and the desired atmosphere, I chose a collage style, combining different textures and images to provide an original and playful visual rendering.

Animation and editing: This phase included creating the animations on After Effects, organizing spaces and elements according to a bento grid, adjusting timing and sound to reinforce the absurd and rhythmic aspect, and completing several iterations to ensure movement fluidity and visual consistency.

Impact & Results

The final animation lasts about 30 seconds and shows the ball bouncing through all the spaces of a house, in a dynamic and quirky collage style. The bento grid is respected, allowing for a clear reading of each space, and the visual storytelling is reinforced by the sound and the rhythm of the bounces. The project successfully demonstrated my mastery of After Effects, my sense of composition and storytelling, and my ability to experiment with an original graphic style.