after effects experiments

Another experiment trying using mainly the rotation and position keyframes in after effects, this idea was to have the C from Collide colliding into the rest of the word and taking them out.
Feel it worked really well for a silent movie.

after effects experiments.

added motion blur to the animation, felt it added a big improvement onto the over all video, gives it more of an impression of pace and a really nice finish.

after effects experiments

This idea was to have the letters C and O dropping down onto the rest of the word and shattering it,
like a wrecking ball.
This animation was allot more complex then others i hat tried, having the word break up as the CO collided with it, i did this by having each element of the shattering letters on seperate layers then piecing it together on after effects and moving each one individually to give the impression of collision.

I felt this animation worked quite well, and with some slight development could work really well for one of my final idents.

after effects experiments

Trying to create the newtons cradle animation but finding it hard,
cant seem to get the string and the letters to move together to create a smooth motion, also would like the strings to bend slightly to show the motion of the letters, really finding after effects awkward for this one.
Need to change my idea slightly to make it easier for me and get more practice animating

 setting up the file on illustrator, making sure each section was on its own clearly labled layer

after effects experiments

Decided to change my concept slightly to make it easier to animate, getting rid of the strings so i wouldnt have to worry about moving the letters and string together,
i feel this attempt worked allot better but still not as well as i would of liked, need to get the animation smoother, also the E makes some dodgy move from left to right as it collides back with the D which i cant seem to work out why it is doing it.
Still a slight improvement, slowly getting there..

after effects experiments

Developed my idea again slightly, realised that without the bowling alley included within the animation it's hard to convey a sense that the ball was moving towards the type.
So here it is agin including the alley lines, also neatened up allot of the animation, smoothening the movement up using easy ease and motion blur.

Was very happy with this outcome, starting to get abit more use to after effects now.

after effects experiments

Felt it was about time to start having ago at creating these animations on after effects, i bagan by breaking down my first concept into a final story board, clearly developed and outlining what i wanted to produce on screen.

Then broke down each element of the animation within illustrator, keeping each letter and shape on a separate layer so i could move then individually when imported into after effects.

The typeface i decided to use was helvetica, simply because it is just such a simple neutral typeface, doesnt necessarily convey any meaning behind the typeface just type at it simplest form but still with enough weight and clarity to be clearly animated. Thought it would be the perfect typeface for this type of animation.

Then changing the position and scale keyframe i slowly moved the ball forward whilst decreasing its size, to give the impression that it was moving towards the type, then as the word spelt collide it smashed into the letter sending them flying off screen. I did this by changing the position and rotation of the letter over a short period of time to show them flying off screen.


Finished animation Test 1...

I felt my first attempt at creating an animation didnt go too badly, although im really struggling with the software, need to get some more practice in on after effects if i would like to get my animations to look any way like i would like them to.

Timeline Exercises

We were then set the task of placing our final developed sequences onto timelines to see how the animation would pan out across the 5 seconds to help see if it would work or not.

after effects induction - 13/12/2011

Using the pen tool to curve a line.
Create a solid with at least 2 keyframes then use the pen tool to curve the lines.

You can also do a similar thing for altering the motion path using the keyframe interpolation option by selecting a keyframe and going to animation - keyframe interpolation. 

One of the options which will have the most significant change to the keyframes is the hold option, their will now be no more movement between the keyframes, changing the temporal interpretation specifying that they are hold keyframes and the layer remains in the same position until the next keyframe.  This is useful for animating things such as clocks or if you want to make something bling, flash on and off.

Another option i can do in the keyframe interpolation is change the roving setting, you select ever keyframe except the first and the last keyframe and by changing this to rove across time it will change the spacing between each keyframe to keep your animation moving at a smooth pace throughout the animation. 

Another way to create position keyframes, create a solid on after effects then open up illustrator and create a vector then copy the vector, go back to after effects press 'P' to enable the position option, click the clock to enable keyframes and paste the shape into after effects and the solid will follow the path.

When you animate something along a path the shape stays at the same orientation throughout the animation, to change this go to transform - auto orientate and then the shape should orientate along the path.

Using masks in after effects, create a new composition then whilst having the layer selected create a shape and place it over the object you want to hide, in this example we are using the word reveal and using masks to make the word reveal itself. Using keyframes to make the word slowly reveal itself, i then added a feather to the mask.

sequence

Took my favourite concept from the crit and developed it slightly, drew it up again using feedback from the crit to make the concept more clear, then made it into a gif to see how it would work within animation.
Here is the outcome, i think it shows a very clear animation movement and that it would transfer really well into after effects and for a final silent movie concept.

click to view

crit response.

The response i got from my ideas was very positive, only a couple of improvements which could be made to make them clearer;

-try to keep the style of drawing consistant throughout the animation to keep it clearer.

-add a alley down the concept of a bowling ball to show perspective when the ball is rolling down the screen to knock out the word collide.

Other than that i was very happy with the crit, it just seemed at that point that some of my ideas were very technical and would not convert when trying to produce them on after effects with my very basic skills so i would probably have to simplify some of them quite dramatically.

Workshop crit

These were the sequences which i created for the crit, the sequences were to be our developed ideas ready for animating, the aim was to produce 5 detailed, clear sequences to be shown to a group of people to see if the ideas on paper made sense to other and whether they would work within animation.

I created a couple more than 5 because i found it hard narrowing down the ideas which i had, here are the boards i created.

Idea development

I decided to see how the newtons cradle idea would convert within an animation so i i developed the drawing slightly and placed it within a gif,
i feel it shows that it could work brilliantly as one of my silent movie outcomes if my after effects skills were to be improved.

click to animate

Workshop with lorraine.

For the next session we were asked to be some story boards along showing some of the  initial ideas for animations that we had, one sheet had one idea on it and then each line showed different approaches to animating this idea. 

I fought i had come up with some pretty clever ideas which would convert well within after effects, especially ones such as the newtons cradle, a really simple idea which would work really well as a five second animation. This session just got me really excited about the prospects of the projects and made me want to crack on and get animating on after effects however i still did not have a clue how that programme worked.

Timeline workshop

In this workshop we used the 25 screen grabs which we took from the kinetic type animation of our choice, taking 2 sets of 25 screengrabs of an animation, one showing the key points of animation and movement within the animation and one at equal time diferences through out the animation. We then placed the images on a timeline showing the specific intervals across a timeline, initially this really confused me, the maths behind it trying to work out how long across a timeline a certain amount of time was, however once i got the hang of it i found it quite easy.

The second task we had was to produce a timeline for your animation and then stick the specific time screengrabs of key scenes across it. This helped show the duration of a film and how long specific scenes take, gave me some form of temporal awareness for the project.