'Smoke Piece' Motion Graphics
A one-minute 2D motion piece interpreting Yoko Ono’s Smoke Piece through intimacy, secrecy, and the strange moment when something hidden becomes emotionally visible.
Duration
2021
Client
RMIT University Vietnam
Services
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Digital Media
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Photo & video
Overview
Smoke Piece was an individual 2D motion graphics project created as a visual interpretation of a haiku/poetic text. Rather than illustrating the poem literally, I used motion, metaphor, and audio to explore its more intimate emotional layers. The piece focuses on themes of secrecy, desire, vulnerability, and acceptance, translating them into a surreal visual language built around smoke, hair, forest-like imagery, and the gradual revealing of the self.
Software used: Adobe After Effects, Adobe Audition, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator
The Problem
The project aimed to solve a translation problem: how to make a short, ambiguous poem emotionally accessible without losing its weirdness. Instead of explaining the text directly, I wanted to use motion to help viewers connect with its emotional tension through image, sound, and rhythm.
Research
My research sat between conceptual art, multimedia theory, and audio-visual emotion. First, I looked at the source itself. Grapefruit is not just a poetry collection; it is a book of instruction works that asks the audience to complete meaning through imagination or action. That gave me permission to avoid literal storytelling and lean into interpretation instead.
Second, I looked at multimedia theory. Richard Mayer’s multimedia principle argues that people learn and process more deeply from a combination of words and pictures than from words alone. For this project, that supported the idea that spoken poetry plus moving visuals could create a stronger emotional reading than text by itself.
Research has found that emotional design in audio-visual pieces significantly affects audience emotional experience, and that animated short films can shift viewers’ emotional state in the direction of a film’s emotional valence. Another study on abstract “visual music” found that abstract animations synchronized with sound can still convey shared emotional connotations. Together, these ideas supported my decision to build the piece through mood, pacing, and metaphor rather than explicit narrative.
Discovery
What clicked for me during development was that the poem did not need to be “cleaned up” to become understandable.
Design Process
I translated the poem into a small visual system: hair as secrecy, forest as the inner world, fire as desire, and smoke as connection. From there, I developed the piece through slow pacing, minimal compositions, and layered transitions so it would feel more like drifting through a private emotional space than watching a straightforward narrative.
Final delivery
The final outcome was a short 2D motion piece that used abstraction, voice, and symbolism to reinterpret the poem as an emotional experience. More than illustrating the text, the project became an experiment in using motion graphics to make ambiguity feel intimate, atmospheric, and alive.