Psalm 4:2

not my hands nor my power

When I called upon him, the God of my justice heard me: when I was in distress, thou hast enlarged me. Have mercy on me: and hear my prayer. (Psalm 4:2 DR)

I wanted to play around with some type on this one, and so I went with a condensed typeface to fit more into the composition without making it feel crammed. I also wanted one that would feel like it didn’t overpower everything when getting enlarged.

Bee One is a great typeface for this use, as it’s condensed enough to pack a lot into a small space, but also has enough distinctiveness to not be boring or hard to read.

I was thinking through how the impetus of the action is on God’s part; the Psalmist says: “Thou hast enlarged me.” Thus, I wanted to capture this in the animation with the hands literally enlarging the “LARGE” letters of the text. I wasn’t intending this per se, but I like how the smallness of the remaining letters remains, giving the sense that the enlargement isn’t generated out of the Psalmist’s own effort, but is wholly on the part of the divine action and initiative.

(BTW- while I usually try and have some meaning in the piece beyond it looking interesting, not everything is meant to have a meaning. The hands are just hands that were available in the pose I needed.)

Bee One isn’t a variable typeface, nor is After Effects yet able to handle them without some workarounds, so I just split the text into various layers, modified some anchor points, and from there was a pretty simple scaling action.

This is supposed to be a loop, and thus the text had to scale back down, but I had a bit of overshoot at the end, which I thought also nicely dovetailed into the essence of the piece, for once the hands leave, the text returns to its normal state. There’s probably a metaphor there somewhere…

Enjoy.

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