Animated Poster Final

Wong Kar Wai’s In The Mood For Love follows the lives of two situational characters, who become drawn to one another after instances of loneliness, infidelity, and inevitable attraction. Throughout the film, viewers continue to guess whether the two would eventually end up with one another, resulting in an intense need for some kind of resolution. For me, what resonated the most from the film was its pronounced depiction of longing through the usage of bold, rich colors and periods of silence, used to emphasize distance and the impossibility of certain desires.

With the design, I tried to emulate that idea of something physical that impedes romantic fulfillment. The characters would face inward, as if constantly thinking about the other, but instead separated by a barrier. Since smoking was central in how the two characters spent time together, I associated the cigarettes with the inception and endurance of their attraction. My hope with the cigarette fumes was to have them reach across the barrier and come close to entangling with the other’s fumes, playing at this idea of almost belonging to one another. As for the colors, I initially had a palette of deep reds, golds, and greens, but settled on red and gold tinged with black to amplify the type of grand, impossible love shared between the characters.

For the final poster, I realized that the colors in the draft felt a little flat, and perhaps not moody enough, so I added a gradient and animated the opacity to match the moving placement of text. From draft to final, I spent more time in Illustrator and Photoshop prepping layers that I wanted to animate in After Effects (Chinese characters along with other text). I settled on Adobe Garamound and PT serif for fonts and added the director, the main actors, and the translated title which I knew I wanted to animate as if writing them in calligraphic style.

I did a little more 3D animation to the wall to exaggerate the separation of the characters and I manipulated the smoke a bit more to suggest an overlap of desires. Overall, I’m happy with the poster: my goal was to keep the eye moving from one piece to another across the poster, allowing the viewer to take in all the information while still expressing the overall theme and emotions of the movie.

For this first animated poster draft, I mainly incorporated 3D positioning, pupped tools, and some light text effects. As indicated by the wall and the darker colors of the piece, I wanted the animations to enhance those feelings of longing and separation. The 3D camera effects were intended to further the distance between the central characters and the smoke was animated to suggest a possible convergence of the two (although this could definitely be improved). I like the text font I used in this piece more than the previous draft, but for the next round, I’d like to go further with the animation & symbolism of the text w/ regard to the rest of the design.

First Sketch

In this first sketch, I used mostly illustrator to create the outlines for the characters and separately added cigarettes and fumes. I leaned a lot on negative space in order to make the intentional split more pronounced. The fumes were added so that in theory, the two characters were able to come together or at least touch in some capacity. I don’t love the flatness of the wall — I think it works for a static composition, but not necessarily for an animated piece. I also don’t love the font and will likely chance that next round.