Moving
Memories

Video Project: Moving Memories

Assignment:

"Select a historical story from the Stadsarchief Amsterdam website and conduct thorough research to bring it to life. Develop a storyboard that visualizes the narrative and determine a style that complements the story’s tone. Translate this into a cohesive animation that communicates the story visually and engages the audience."

This project was a collaboration, created alongside Ando de Ridder, who contributed to the research and animation process. You can view their portfolio here: [Insert Link]
Tasks for the Project:

- Researching a historical story from the Stadsarchief Amsterdam archives
- Creating a storyboard to visualize the chosen narrative
- Defining a visual style that matches the story’s theme and tone
- Designing and animating the story as a short visual piece

Research


For this project, we selected a story from the Amsterdam Stadsarchief website. After exploring the archive, we chose a piece about the legacy of Johan Cruijff, the iconic Dutch soccer player. Once our story was selected, we broke it down into individual scenes and began exploring potential visual styles. To do this, both Ando and I created collages that reflected different approaches to the narrative. I’ll mark Ando’s collage in blue, so it's clear which one was his.

For additional inspiration, Ando suggested a reference video that guided the tone and atmosphere of our visuals. I’ll include the clip next to this section for context.

Article of Johan Cruijff

Reference Video

Sketching


After settling on the visual style, we began sketching the scenes using general shapes in Illustrator and creating initial assets in Photoshop. We then used warping paths in After Effects to create a rough animation, which served as a blueprint or outline for the final piece.

Working at 30 fps, we referred to a hand-drawn 7 fps reference video to guide the animation's pacing. Once the initial animation was done, we took screenshots of key frames and hand-drew each frame and background in Photoshop. Given the project's scale—over 2,210 frames in total—we reused many assets, but a significant portion was hand-drawn, with After Effects used for additional movement and effects.

This back-and-forth process between Photoshop and After Effects took roughly 100 hours in total, split between Ando and me. The result was a refined animation that followed our sketch blueprint while adding more detail and life.

Final Product


After completing the sketch and animation, we finalized the piece by fine-tuning the visuals and incorporating the hand-drawn elements into the full animation. The process involved revisiting key scenes and adding intricate details to make the animation fluid and cohesive.

The final product was showcased at the Dutch Design Week in Eindhoven, where it was displayed on loop. Ando visited the event and captured some videos, which are included here. It was a great opportunity to see the animation presented in a professional setting and gather valuable feedback. The images below showcase the final animation and some moments from the event, where our work was highlighted.