Goal
To introduce a young audience to the Spokane Salish language through engaging, bite-sized immersion.
Background + Research
Representatives from KSPS approached our Motion Design 2 class with a request to make a Salish Word of the Week series, inspired by the national PBS Kids Word of the Week. Spokane Language House provided a list of Salish words with a script and voiceover for each. Every designer in the class was responsible for one 15-second animation featuring their word. The intro and outro were designed by Anna Morgan. The background is by Tyler Van Vlymen.
About the Spokane Language House
The Spokane Language House is a 501 c3 Non-Profit organization that strives to create a new, intergenerational community of fluent speakers who are grounded in the language, spirituality, and ancestral practices of the Spokane Tribe. (via Spokane Language House).
About the Spokane Salish Language
"Spokane Salish is the westernmost dialect of a language continuum extending from Montana to Washington State. Sister dialects are from the Kalispel and Flathead tribes. While our language is similar to one another our Spokane dialect has distinct differences. Our work here is striving to keep our individuality and the uniqueness of our language alive. We hope to make our elders and those who have gone on before us proud by holding on to our dialect and striving to speak the way our ancestors did." (via Spokane Tribe)
Design Process
My word was pqlqin, which means bald eagle. I got to work developing my eagle character and their story to accompany the script.
early eagle character sketches
final eagle character design
Motion Design
I brought all my assets into After Effects to assemble them. I experimented with using Transform properties to show the eagle flying, but it was a bit too chaotic for the time constraints. I pivoted and instead made the background parallax, so the focus stays on the eagle. In a separate composition, I used looping scripts to give life to our feathery friend, with blinking eyes and beating wings. I animated the rest according to my storyboard:
storyboard
Audio
In addition to the audio and music provided by our collaborators, I recorded and mixed in some foley SFX of my own including a "plop" of the text and a soft "thrum" of the wings.
