Before Stonewall: 8 Early Milestones in the Fight for LGBTQ Equality
Motion Graphics Video
I was tasked with creating a (approximately) 1 minute long animated video, that could be educational in nature, a narrative story, or a PSA, on any topic. I had to use After Effects to animate the video. This is the first full length animation I've ever created! I used Illustrator to create most of the inital artwork, and imported the files into After Effects to animate them. Click the button at the end of this description to view a behind-the-scenes PDF presentation about the process of making this video.
Lots of people know about Stonewall, but not the decades of work that happened beforehand. I want to make it very clear that these are ONLY eight events, and there were many, many more that took place, many more activists and activist groups that existed, many more protests and riots, many more horrific laws and hate crimes, etc. This video only scratches the surface of the vibrant history of queer people and queer activism in the USA, let alone the world, and I encourage you to continue to learn more.
When creating this video, I wanted to contrast the old, black and white photography with a modern artistic style. I chose more muted, "retro" rainbow colors when creating the palette, wanting to pay homage to the classic rainbow iconography associated with pride. Including old photography was an important choice for me, as I wanted to really hit it home that LGBTQ people and activsm are NOT a new phenomenon. We have been around for centuries, and been fighting for equality for decades.
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To match the feel of the old photographs, I leaned into a a paper cut-out, "collage" feel.
I kept this in mind when choosing the background music as well, choosing a modern remix of an old song form the era (full audio credits can be found in the description of the Youtube video embeded below). As a proud queer person, this topic was incredibly personal and important to me. I hope it can serve as educational and insightful to the audience it reaches. A majority of people never learn about queer history, despite it being as rich and important as many other topics, and I hope I can make a small difference with this project.
Check out this presentation for a glimpse into my design process.
