After effects 6 - Finale

For our final After effects project was a collaborative piece between all the students in the group. We wanted to create something similar to the video Lantern Fish by Adam Gault. The lanternfish video is a video that displayed illustrations of different deep sea lantern fish , each one with different actions, each one of these actions leads into each other . for example one of the lantern fish would be killed by another and from the fishes remains another fish would appear leading onto the next transition with flow.

 

For our own videos we had to create a 10 second animation of a fish that just swam across the screen. For my animation i created a pack of Mantarays. I had one Mantaray that was my centre of attention , this is the vector which i added all the key animations to. Although simplistic i felt that adding a pack of Mantarays added to the detail. I added motion paths that made the fish look as if they're swimming.
Once the main path was created i added a sinking boat to the background , this was to add further detail to the animation and make it more identifiable as my own. I created the simplistic boat vector in illustrator so i could easily animate it. In my own animation i had to leave the background blank as it had to be exported to the public drive to be added to the main animation.

One thing about this animation was that i didn't particularly learn any new skills , the animation was fairly simple and didn't require any new skills to create the piece , i would have enjoyed it if i could have learnt a new skill to push my animation further.

 

The finale for the after effects sessions included all of our 10 second pieces stitched together. This created a piece similar to the lantern fish video. The background retained a constant colour while all the students fishes swam across the screen. I feel that the piece showed how far peoples after effects and illustrator skills had developed massively over the year.

After Effects 5 - 3D Type

This session was a further development from the last session that looked at a specific typeface. The session began with a video to give us inspiration for our pieces that we were to create. The video 'BBC Today - Stephen Hawing' shows how the camera can be used in after effects to give a sense of motion and atmosphere to the animation. In the Stephen Hawking sequence the camera travels through different words and phrases while also taking us on a journey through , what it looks like , a blackboard full of work.

 

For my own piece i decided to use lyrics from The Smiths song : Still Ill. I didn't try create a specific atmosphere for my own piece as i wanted to focus my attention on learning the new skills with the 3D camera. Before finalising my design it had a very messy feel , i couldn't get my text to align in the final frame due to the camera pacing through the text too quickly. I solved this problem by working backwards and arranging the text before adding the 3D effect.

I felt that the alternative above view came in very handy when creating the animation as you could see the exact motion path of the text as it moved throughout the text. The camera tool came with a series of transformations just like shapes and vectors do. These included options such as Depth of Field , Positioning and zoom.

My own animation consists of the camera moving backwards through the text , i used a depth of field to create an atmosphere when the text passed close over the camera. I used different weights of text to draw attention to specific words. I added the flip transformation to the word 'Mine' to draw attention to it. My favourite part about the animation is how it all sets in to one neatly arranged grid.

If i was to improve this animation i would add a background with a texture as it would add add more of a feel to the animation due to it been basic colours such as black and white. I feel that a photographic or textured background would work effectively , preferably one that would relate to the song.

After Effects 4 - Typography Facts

Previous animation sessions have focused specifically on character design , for this task we had to pick our favourite type face and create a short informational piece about the typeface. The typeface i chose to research was 'Roboto' , i chose to use this font as i used it in my first project and instantly fell in love with it , my favourite aspect of the font is that it is available in so many different weights and styles.

Roboto is a sans serif font that was created specifically by google for the android operating system. This font style has been used in thousands of mobile devices and android products. Google describes the font as "Modern , yet Approachable" and "Emotional".

My aim for this piece was to create an animation that flowed into each key scene smoothly , i felt that this was essential to my animation as simplistic type isn't very interesting to look at on its own. this session allowed me to combine my knowledge of animating shapes with keyframes and animating type to create a more advanced piece of work.When choosing colours i stuck to black and white for the main sequence , however when mentioning 'google' i used the specific colours of each letter to add characteristics to the text. 

Originally i had difficulty trying to make the colours flash up separately for the word Google so i settled on bringing all the colours in all at once. Although i seemed help asking how to do this it proved to be too complex for the amount of time i had to complete the piece.

Towards the end of the animation i used the same shade of green that the android branding uses for their 'Android' character, i felt that adding this character would give the animation some more personality , making it more interesting for the audience and providing a direct link to android.

After effects 3 - Character

This after effects session was based around creating a character using vector shapes to animate. We initially had to find an image from the internet and use image trace to change the shape into a vector or create one from scratch.

I chose to create a character from scratch in illustrator , i felt that this was a good starting point for me as choosing an existing character would take too long as i wouldn't know what to pick. My character was a floating head that multiplied using its body parts. As this was one of my first few weeks using after effects i felt rather inexperienced therefore had to stick to using simple effects when using the keyframes. The main two transformations i used were the opacity key and the location.

One thing i struggled with when creating this animation is the motion paths of the character as they constantly kept overlapping and ruining the sequence.i eventually solved this by taking more time to analyse the timeline , plotting my keyframes more precisely so the timings were exact.

As a final touch to my sequence i added some moving clouds as the background , i felt that was relevant as the heads i created had no body to situate them on the ground. The floating heads outcome now looked rather trip. I felt that the moving clouds swell as the heads worked well as it added a sense of motion to the piece , making it more detailed.

After the session had finished i felt a lot more confident with after effects , feeling like i could start to look into the more complex pieces in the sessions to come. although the animation was basic i feel that it has set foundations for my skills to develop over time. This session has also made me more confident with illustrator as i mainly worked on photoshop before the course.

Heads by Ben Moulson

Blog Setup / Vimeo Account

This process and production session involved initially setting up our blog to allow us to start documenting about our Theory , Process and Production and Studio lectures. In this session we also begin to start our small animation about a book of our choice and set up a Vimeo account to show it on.

We created our Blogs using Blogger , which is run through Google , other potential sites we could have used were Wordpress and Tumblr however they are all more technical than blogger so we used it to get our posts up and published as soon as possible. We were shown how to lay our blogs out then were given time to customise it to how we wanted it to be presented. Although mine is nothing special in the design aspect of things it is still clear and presents information easily. The 3 main items we had to blog about were Process and production , Contextual/Theory and Studio sessions. As well as anything personal that we think will fit in , e.g. videos , book , exhibitions and artists that may link to my work.

http://benmoulson.blogspot.co.uk

My Blog ( You're on it )

We then set up our vimeo account which literally involved putting in an email and password so didn't involve any serious design aspects like blogger. After setting up our Vimeo account we were given the task to think of a book we enjoyed , in this case i picked A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess (1962). Although unfinished yet my animation consisted of the iconic Clockwork eye emerging on the page and leaving swiftly. I wanted to make my animation like this as i felt that it would allow the audience to identify what the Book was without seeing the title. In my next sessions we will use After effects to string our frames together and hopefully create a successful animation.