Expressions

 

Personally, I have found expressions quite difficult to get my head around. You need to know abit about the basics of expressions before you can attempt to make one yourself.

 

I read up on the basics in the book 'Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects' by Trish and Chris Meyer. Chapter 37 is all about Expressions. They talk about enabling and disabling them, breaking them, and fixing them. They also talk about how to control them which is very important.

 

Once you know the basics, you only know what look they achieve if you apply them to your work. As well as trying the ones in the book, i looked into new ones.

Expressions

This is a link to Dan Ebberts 'Expressions Lab' which i found very useful when it came to using expressions in my work.

After the lab with Wolf Winter, I looked into Dan Ebberts as we were told he was a pro at expressions. I found many of these expressions saved me alot of time and allowed me to achieve the look i wanted.

 

 

 

Here, i used the inertial bounce expression.

 

 

I used wiggle expression to allow the candles to 'flicker'. I used Wolf Winters idea of changing the composition to 32bit and using the Light Ray effect to achieve this look.

 

Final Artefact

 

This was my first draft of my piece. I had just very basically animated each season and added them all together on its own composition.

 

There was a lot of changes made from the first piece to get to the final one. This includes making small changes to create more of the illusion of depth of field, by lowering opacity of objects further away. Adding expressions to many elements. And adding my puppet rigged characters. I also added small details such as the Santa Claus at the end and the butterfly in Summer.

Technique Practice

I wanted to create a 3d look where you could tell a distinct difference between each layer in the scene, like in the opening title sequence for Lemony Snicket.

My first attempt wasnt so great, i added lighting and moved the assets forwards and backward in Z space. I feel this didnt achieve the look i wanted.

After adding drop shadows to each element in the scene, i managed to get a little distinction of distance between each object.

Lab Work

 

This is what i learnt from a Lab session with Rakesh. I learnt to make a puppet walk realistically, in Illustrator, you would have to draw each element of the body in a different layer. You then have to chose an anchor point which would be the point the object would rotate. You then have to use the pick wick to chose the parent object.

The heads parent is the body

The hands is the lower arm, the lower arms is the upper arm, the upper arms is the body

The foots is the lower leg, the lower legs is the upper leg.

Developing My Idea

I decided to go with the changing seasons idea as i feel i could experiment a lot more with different techniques in After Effects.

I looked into each season and decided what i thought symbolised each season. For example, Christmas, Snow, Night time - all symbolise Winter for me. And beach balls, Sun shine, ice cream - all symbolise Summer.

I began to plan how each scene would flow from one to the other.

After created the storyboard and began to build assets for my piece.

Since my last years Motion Graphic piece, i have become a more confident drawer. Like Angie Taylor said, when you get the hang of it, you begin to have preferences. I have noticed i always draw in a certain style.

My style is quite cartoony which i have began to like. Although i would have liked to experiment with new drawing styles i thought it best to stick to the one i am good at for this project, but would later like to do the project again in a different style of drawing.

Angie Taylor - Design Essentials

Angie Taylor - Chapter 2 - Planning

 

Important stages

*Break down brief into parts

*Research each part in detail so you have enough knowledge on doing whats asked of you

*Come up with a rough idea - ensure you will be meeting the briefs' criteria

*Experiment with idea - add more details, look at inspirations, take photos, books etc to give you ideas for your own work

*Sketch ideas - allows you to be more creative in other ways

*Brainstorm - try different ideas and elaborate on the ones you do have

*Create a moodboard so you know your on track meeting requirements of brief - such as colour, fonts, logos etc

*After approved, start to storyboard. Storyboard will keep changing.

*Start off with a rough design, simple with room for addition - approve then expand

*More detail, show colour, camera movement ideas - approve

*Digitalise work - create using computer software such as Illustrator in my case

*Manage time carefully - be sure to make my own deadline and stick to them so i can make sure i am on track

Angie Taylor - Chapter 4 - Animation

 

Animation is the process of sequencing drawings, computer generated artwork or photographs of models to creat the illusion of a moving image.

Animation is hand-drawn, computer generated and model.

It started as an optical illusion of a moving image from a reel of still images.

Computer animation - 'My philosophy is not to mimic the real world too much and try to adapt the rules developed'. 146

When creating my animation, these are things i have to remember:

Keyframes - points where major changes occur

Tweening - drawing to fill in all the frames inbetween the keyframes

Interpolation - how changes occur through keyframes and how objects travel from one position to another.

Velocity - Rate of change

Motion Path - the path the objects travel

I have used pose-to-pose animation as i have sketched out ideas and storyboarded my entire opening but will only start creating after everyone has approved.

Laws of physics

I will try to mimick the way real life objects move and look to make mine appear more believable.

Rules of animation

When the laws of physics are exaggerated and made noticable it can make an animation look much more effective.

I will exaggerate the my characters facial expression as these are what are important in my scenes.

I will use staging and anticipation to direct the viewers attention o a particular part of the screen.

Reactions are important as it tells the audience something has happened.I will use this alot as it shows the dramatic changes between the rich and poor environments.

I will use an upbeat fun rhythm to make my animation move fast but smoothly.

 

 

Angie Taylor - Chapter 3 - Composition

 

Composition can help convey messages,meanings and feelings to the viewer. This is why layout can be vital. It can help portray certain things without being so obvious, through the way and where you place them. If taken into consideration and thought about carefully, it could make your work look more aestethically pleasing. All elements such as shape, space, lines, colour etc should be thought about when choosing composition. Choose each element purposefully and carefully so they audience can understand the right message.

When placing all my elements i shall use grids to help me, as i am only learning about composition. When i start to feel more confident, i will go by instict. For now i will use grids, screen division, rule of thirds etc to ensure i use the space wisely and to experiment with the different outcomes.

The principle of composition will influence my choice of layout.

Limitations will be my biggest task as i am one who likes to be over creative and adventurous and this is sometimes by negative point as i get too carried away.

'Simplicity is your best friend'

Angie Taylor

Pre-Planning Documents

Storyboard

 

Order of seasons and sequence.

 

 

Moodboards

 

These are the ideas i had for each of the seasons and what would represent them the best.

 

 

Techniques I will use in my work

 

I am hoping to make good use of the 3d space by creating different layers and enhancing the space between them.

 

For the background, I am going to make a sky with clouds made in After Effects.

The sky will change from dark to bright as the seasons change.

I am looking to use expressions which I can add to a layer which will simply save me time key framing each move.

• It will be used to make the butterflies wings flap.
• It will be used when the daffodils form a circle and rotate.
• It will be used when the dandelions fly away.
• It will be used as the candles burn to create a flickering effect.

Expressions will be used on the small details to make everything look more realistic.

 

I have been looking at how to create a glow effect for the candle scene to make it realistic. I have been practising how to create a yellow glow from the candle flame.

 

I have been looking at how to create realistic rain and snow. With practice, I hope this can make the different seasons look more realistic.

I shall be using motion sketch to draw a path for the umbrella to follow in the spring season.

Flocking will be used to make the butterfly wings flap

I want to use the shatter effect for the summer title and the sun. As it shatters, behind is the next scene, therefore the shatter effect will be used as a transition.

Light glow will be used for the candles burning. It shall create a realistic glow from the flames.

The fractal noise effects will help me create realistic looking water and puddles; this is why I chose to teach this in the Motion Graphics lab.

I am hoping to use interesting transitions between the scenes such as the umbrella floating and the shatter effect. I am also looking into masks which can be used for transitions as we learnt in one of our labs.

Test

This was my second attempt at the 3d look i wanted to create. I used drop shadow on each asset to make the difference between the elements more obvious.