How to Win
Inspired by Rocky Balboa (2006), this motion piece channels vintage boxing culture to amplify Rocky’s motivational speech. Using organic typography and print, it delivers a vibrant and impactful visual narrative.
"The world ain't all sunshine and rainbows. It's a very mean and nasty place and I don't care how tough you are it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain't about how hard ya hit. It's about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward. That's how winning is done!" – Rocky
Dialogue from Clip from Rocky (2006) 0:43 - 1:10
Rocky was a memorable movie from my past and I remember watching the films with my father. This particular scene stood out to me the most and stays with me whenever I pursue a new challenge. The main idea behind this motion piece is to reproduce the same impact to viewers.
Challenges
This project required precise timing for legibility, meticulous character carving, and the challenge of producing a clean, well-defined stamp.
The consistent typography and colour scheme is derived from a vintage boxing poster aesthetic, of an off white, red, black, and yellow. This stamped linographic style is found throughout the video paired with a dominant background colour of a creamy off-white tone to hold an organic feel of the type.
The main idea was to uphold the impactful value of the speech given by Rocky. Consideration of the meaning behind each word was given and the result of the animation in each composition surrounded this approach throughout the whole video.
Each character used in the dialogue was printed out and used as a stencil in the Alfa Slab typeface. The stencil was transferred onto a block with an old-fashioned inspired tattooing method of pen and deodorant. After the stencil was applied, the Linotype method consisted of carving each character out of a rubber stamp block to generate each line in the dialogue.
Conceptualization
The output of the jittery typography was created naturally by displaying three variations of each word using the Linotype stamps to bring the typography to life as well as compliment the vintage aesthetic.
After the words were stamped, they were then scanned. Each image result was enhanced to a transparent background to enhance detail and ensure quality to avoid obstruction in legibility where it was appropriate.
The final process consisted of migrating the Photoshop files into After Effects where they were animated to also ensure easy editing in the files when they needed to be done.
Conclusion
The project was an intensive and insightful process to achieve an organic aesthetic. The overall project presents a playful approach in a very fast paced environment. Working with organic assets and introducing them digitally is something I look to include more in my future projects.
