What connects people? Is it common interests, language, or the way they look at things? Is it the path they take together, or is it the differences that make people rise above themselves and turn to each other? What connects people is not always clearly definable, but we all feel this force that makes us laugh with others, make new friends and share knowledge. For us as a group, it was important to capture this specialness. Intercultural communication should not only be the title of the event but an important pillar of our animation and work with each other. We are all forced to stay at home due to a worldwide pandemic, but our ambition is to create this exchange virtually and build something together.

For this project, we have chosen a quote from the movie "5cm", which perfectly represents the values we emphasize.

The movie 5cm is an adventure drama that focuses on friendship and nationalism. Many of us think that nationalism is a complicated matter. Through 5cm, we are invited to "play around" with a simple love for this country through the five friends who are the main characters. This film, which tells the many values of life, really inspires the younger generation to always think ahead and come up with bright ideas.

In the animation that we are creating, we want the audience to feel the closeness of friendship and togetherness throughout the animation. There is neither a limit to getting to know each other nor to working together when uniting creative minds, even through technology and imagery. We can reach out to one another and experience true understanding and connection.

We thought about how we could incorporate all these elements into our animation. So we've decided on a few things that we want to include. There are some shapes that depict words in the quote, for example, a "heart". We decided to add a simple illustration of a heart, use a string to connect each word, and make thoughtful choices of evocative colors, for example. We put all of that into our final animation and we want our audience to understand the no significance of it.

Quote from 5 CM (2012), Indonesian movie
»Friendship must have ears to hear each other,
hands to help each other,
and hearts to understand each other.«

An important part which we already discovered is the difference between song lyrics in each country. There’s a lot of music in Germany that has explicit lyrics, where the singers really express what they feel through their music. Meanwhile, there’s a lot of Indonesian songs that talk about love and friendship in more abstract or general terms. Only a small number of their songs have explicit lyrics.

There are a lot of aspects that have changed over the years, both in culture in general and in younger generations more specifically. We are affected by globalization and technological development. For example, in the current era, there’s a lot of social media that is connecting people all around the world. No matter how great the distance, people around the world communicate with each other through social media. Thus, not just the perspective and point of view, but also the values have changed and will continue rapidly changing in the near future. Nevertheless, unique cultural aspects still influence how people live in this society — but we will be more open-minded towards and tied together by the differences between us.

We used a quote from the movie “5CM”. This film is mostly based on Indonesian cultural values. We chose these words because love and friendship are an excellent base for our intercultural collaboration and we hope it can unite us as Germans and Indonesians.

Through our discussions about intercultural differences and based on Erin Meyer’s cultural research studies, we discovered that trust is earned and handled differently in our cultures. One example at hand is the movie Parasite, which shows a general application of relationship-based trust in the job field. In Germany, employers primarily look at the skills and the qualifications of the individual. Relationships might contribute to an applicant being invited to interview, but such previous ties will have little to no impact on getting the job offer. In contrast, in Indonesia, getting a job will be quite difficult if you don't have a prior connection to anybody working there already. Also, in Indonesia, there are many cases of corruption in the workplace, where employees have to pay sums of money in order to get into their desired field of work. This is an extreme case of trust based on prior relationships, as money, not qualifications, is the most important factor in gaining the trust of the employer.

How to decide on a leader in a group project. In Indonesia, we usually discuss and choose one from among us who will be the leader, or sometimes, there’s one person who volunteers to be the group leader. This person will become the leader until the end of the group project. Among German student groups, the leader position is flexible and can be changed during a project.

German students are much more disciplined relative to time than Indonesian students. The habit of being on time is very important in German culture, but in Indonesia adherence to “scheduled” times is not valued. Germans are known for being on time and notifying others when there is even a short delay, while Indonesians are comfortable with delays or late arrivals without notification or perhaps notification at the time of the meeting.

The message this film conveys is about the meaning of friendship, love, compassion, sacrifice, nationalism, and dreams for the future. The central quote already represents the main focus itself: friendship. Throughout this movie, we understand that there are many aspects to friendship that are really important:

• Communication is key
• Inspire to connect
• Never give up on any struggle in life
• Generating a sense of belonging
• As a community, we are stronger
• Be grateful for all the blessings that God has given

The animation itself portrays what is important in friendship. Central aspects include helping each other, listening to each other and not letting each other out of sight.

It's about communication, support, and understanding - and that from every side.

On a deeper level, the animation is meant to make you think. To never give up, to support others, and not to be afraid of new friendships because as a community you are stronger than when alone.

The idea of friendship, freedom, and love should be reflected in our concept as well. The focus of our approach is thus on the visualization of these emotional aspects.

For this purpose, we use on the one hand a very warm color palette, which allows the viewer a friendly, inviting overall image and gives them a pleasant impression. On the other hand, we use a font with a handwritten character to implement a very personal touch in our concept. This emphasizes individuality and makes users feel empowered and uplifted. During the animation, the letters are animated one by one. This creates the sense that the font is being drawn at the same moment, reinforcing the desired effect.

The tempo and melody of our music are moderate, calm, and friendly on a major melodic scale. We thereby avoid rapid jumps and the emergence of hectic passages and that might communicate tension.

The animation for the typography itself is smooth and a little bit slow instead of fast and contrasting. It represents the meaning of the quotes themselves and makes the audience understand better the messages that we want to deliver via our animation.

Our concept is to develop a very narrow distance between the creators and the viewers of the animation and to transport the values in the best possible way. We especially convey good vibes to our viewers and want to leave them with a feeling of love and friendship.

We started the animation process by doing some research, doodling, and building a mood board. This resulted in a very strong concept which underlines the values we want to communicate to our audience. Based on our concept, the realization phase began. Thus we searched for a suitable font as well as a color palette intended to make the user feel the love and passion of friendship.

A warm feeling is evoked by watercolor splashes. These provide warm coloring, even in slight gradients, and are blotted on behind the typographic elements.

The typographic aspect of the animation is set by a brush typeface. The brush typeface has an organic effect and offers a stronger "we-feeling" compared to a traditional typeface typical of impersonal communication.

Together with the color splashes, the connectedness in a community is further strengthened as the whole canvas looks as if it is being filled in by multiple people simultaneously.

In the background, a song with a soft melody, a dynamic drumbeat and background vocals that come in later, convey a very friendly, calm feeling that builds over time.

All of this ultimately resulted in the implementation of the animation. The interaction of all these components culminated in the composition in After Effects. Of course, the right timing and components were very important. In the end, there was the final animation - and an intercultural friendship.

With this animation, we want to inspire everyone to build friendships. The style we used closely portrays the benefits of being friends, which is also communicated by the quote centered in the animation itself.

Working on such an emotional topic in an intercultural team was a fantastic experience. Everyone voiced their suggestions and presented their own creative concept, which we combined to create a unified impactful animation. Everyone used their individual strengths to contribute to our animation.

The result is more than satisfying, we are very proud of the path we took as a group and how this workshop turned out.