Having attended the previous workshops regarding After Effects, I was still feeling a little lost with regards to my animation and how to achieve what I wanted too.
I thought I may be able to help myself by searching for certain tutorials online or via 'Skill Share' ( a tutorial website I have recently signed up too), but quickly found out that it is hard to find tutorials on the very specific things you want to be able to do in this program.
Animated Sting Preparation: Print Separation
In order to strengthen the "cross-platform" element of this brief, I decided early on that i would like to animate one of my final linocut prints. I feel so much time was invested in creating these prints and that the composition was strong visually, that animating one of them would be a way of creating a successful sting and round off my final work for this module nicely.
Following on from the digital test animations completed previously, I have decided to animate my linocut print of the Invisible City "Baucis" as decribed in my chosen aithor Italo Calvino's novel.
In order for my flat print to work as an animation, I needed to sperate the composition into the various layers I wanted to move/animate.
I did this by scanning in my A2 completed black and white lino print and uploading it inot photoshop. From here I proceeded to select the various elements I wanted to animate and saving them as individual layers as i went along.
I quickly discovered that in order for this animation to work, I needed to separate the main Calvino portrait composition from the sun background, whoch I intend to be animated and moving independantly. This took some time and meant that I had to select and fill in ceratin areas of my composition so that the sun would only show through the top layer details in the areas i wanted it too.
Also once i had my various individual layers of selcted details such as individual flowers and telescope ends etc, the composition layer beneath needed to be fixed so that when these layers moved - empty space wouldn't appear beneath. This also took some time and was really fiddly, but overall i think this preparation paid off and i finally feel ready to animate.
Organisation in Adobe Photoshop was key at this stage. Each layer that I wanted to animate needed to be clearly named/labelled ready to be uploaded into After effects and individually manipulated.
Print separation process in screenshots:
After struggling for quite a while in terms of the next stages, getting frustrated and at the risk of dumbing down my idea for my sting, I managed to get a spare moment and sit with the new IT technician Rich. The help I received at this late stage in the module was absolutely invaluable and after a quick After Effects crash course in pretty much everything I could ever want to do, I felt confident enough to sit down, work hard and complete my sting.
Here is the process I undertook in screen shots:
What I learnt:
-How to set up a new project, composition and platform for an animation
-How to animate individual layers separate from each other using key frames
-How to edit/adjust and transform a layer and its appearance using key frames
-How to use the puppet tool - its awesome
-How to create a pan effect and animate individual layers that are also panning by using "parenting"
-How to apply a soundtrack to an animation and edit this in similar ways to the above
-How to bring together separate compositions in a "Final Render" composition
-How to clean up the movement of an animation using "easy ease".
-How to render a document and how to export it correctly ready for upload and use.
Overall I feel I have learnt so much during the process of creating my sting and once i got my head around After Effects and its many seemingly daunting elements, I really got into it and enjoyed using the program a lot. It is really intuitive with endless possibilities, and I liked it so much that I plan on having a go at animating more of my pieces in the future. Illustration doesn't have to be a static image after all.
No comments:
Post a Comment