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Project Overview
The Project
For this project, we were to make an animated countdown video of 1 minute or greater. We could pick whatever topic we wanted, but it had to tell a story and animate from 10 to 1.
The Product
Quinn's Quills is a local craftsman who runs a freelance calligraphy business. I made the video to be educational, but also an ad for the business. Educational content marketing can be a good promotional strategy.
The Goal
The goal of this project was to have fun, but also to showcase examples of how people wrote throughout history, and to advertise the brand.
Project Duration
January - February 2026
Research & Brainstorming
Brainstorming
Due to the open-ended nature of this project, picking a topic was one of the hardes parts. I brainstormed a few ideas such as top 10 --- from a video game, animating mario, top 10 HP Lovecraft stories, and so-on. I initially decided to go with a Terraria theme, but went instead with calligraphy.
I already do calligraphy and have all sorts of books about it, so I consulted my books to decide which scripts to animate.
Starting the Design
Paper Sketches
To help me decide on a topic, but also to plan out my animation, I sketched my ideas on a storyboard. I drew the major keyframes for what one letter on the countdown would look like.
I would start with the name of the script, then show the letter, then animate each stroke, and finally show a historical example of that script from real life.
Creating The Animation
Photoshop
Once I had the animation planned out, I practiced and drew each letter and took a picture of the best one.
I've been doing this for a while now, so I didn't need too much practice for each letter, but I still had to consult my books as a reference on how to draw each stroke. I only have the Italic script memorized.
Once I had a pic of each letter, I loaded them into Photoshop, fixed the lighting and color, did some alignment if necessary, and then masked out the letter.
Once the letter was masked out, I masked out a layer for each stroke. I added the arrows in Illustrator.
After Effects
In After Effects I did a stroke mask animation for each stroke to make it look like each stroke was being drawn.
Final Video
Going Forward
Takeaways
Impact:
Viewers seemed to really like the video, in terms of the topic and how it shows something most people have never seen before. A lot of people said they liked the music choice and that it fit with the visuals.
What I learned:
This was my first video project, so I learned a lot about planning out the sequence of "scenes" and keyframes. I had already done some animation in web design, but a video like this requires a lot more planning. I also learned a lot of cool After Effects techniques. Most importantly, it was pretty fun!
Next Steps
Some of the only feedback I got was to add a second of blank time at the end of the video. If anything, there could be multiple of these videos, and they could showcase even more of each script.