So my last big project was the Nelson Mandela Doodle project. My manager suggested it to me a few months ago and my initial reaction was that it'd have to be a serious and somber sort of Doodle, which was a bummer because I was looking forward to doing something wacky/fun.
After doing some more research on Mr. Mandela, I realized I could make something fun out of this project for myself. I thought the best way to present Nelson Mandela was through his words. The project became a good opportunity for me to learn how to use After Effects and get better at typography/hand lettering. I started by selecting a few of his most famous quotes, did some research on Nelson Mandela and South Africa, and did some research on typography and hand lettering.
See the full Doodle here.
Here's the final art work that I used in After Effects:
This is an early sketch of the home page screen.
The second and third slides are the only slides (other than the home page) where I used a pre-existing font. The little houses are houses commonly seen in the Mvezo, the part of South Africa Nelson Mandela was born and grew up in.
Earlier version of the slide. The quote was too long, so it ended up getting cut into two parts.
This is the previous version of the slide, the quote got changed at the last minute because it turns out this is not actually a Nelson Mandela quote, even if it is commonly attributed to him.
An even earlier version of the slide that would have required more complex animation.
Earlier versions of the jail slide with some rough lettering.
The graphics on this slide are inspired by the silk shirts Nelson Mandela liked to wear called
Madiba shirts.
I really wanted to end the slide show with the quote "It always seems impossible until it's done", but it turns out that that's not a real Nelson Mandela quote! Thanks to the Mandela Foundation for fact checking this project.
