HEAD-Geneva, Master Media Design
Arabtation
Arabtation is a proposed Adobe After effects tool dedicated to animators in the fields of broadcast, advertising and film. It gives them the opportunity to forge novel and more intricate animations by overcoming the many obstacles and limitations and while respecting the grammatical and morphological rules of the Arabic script.
This tool is based on the hypothesis of a multidisciplinary type design space that grants the flexibility to animate individual Arabic letter-forms based on, and inspired by the whirling dervish dance.
Based on the motion study of the dervish movements, the “spiral unit” was conceived and according to which the Arabic letters were constructed. This unit system gave the Arabic letter-forms the flexibility needed to animate, to morph into their different instances within a word and to connect to each other to form words.
The After Effects tool contains all the Arabic letters in their different forms (beginning, middle, end and standalone instances) as pre-compositions. Each letter is, of course, built using the spiral unit system with its three different typographic styles: whirl, unfurl and gravitate.
The initial form of the spiral unit could be easily changed and manipulated according to a series of parameters controlled by sliders and key frames. The modifications applied will automatically be updated in the pre-compositions affecting the design of the letter-forms. Once the spiral unit is locked to the desired style, the appropriate instances of the letters are chosen, along with their pre-compositions, to form the wanted word, words or sentences in an HD composition.
The After Effects tool is a highly customizable template that allows the creation of a wide range of animations.
