MARINA CARSELLO
OLYMPIC WEIGHTLIFTING TIMELINE
The timeline below breaks down the clean & jerk lift on the top half and the evolution of the sport Olympic Weightlifting below. I chose to show the competition lift and how it came to be to contrast the briefness of the competition with its historical timeline.
"
But Marina, how did you make those sweet graphics?!"
Great question!
First, I captured photos of athletes performing the clean & jerk movement.
The initial idea was to string the photos together through the timeline. But as you can see the photos were captured in low light and had a busy background.
Emphasizing the athlete's body position is essential to the viewer understanding the reasoning behind the movements. This lead me to creating to minimal graphic images for the timeline.
I traced the athlete's body and bar in closed path shapes. This helped break down the body positions for the viewer rather than making one basic outline around the athlete and bar.
Lastly, I deleted the image behind the outline, refined the line work, and made the athlete's outline black to further differentiate it from the olympic bar. As can be seen to the right, the graphics are simple and 2-D. They show the viewer the athletic positioning without distracting surroundings.
And voila! We've made graphics.
