Work Shop Q&A

What Problems have I encountered?

One of the problems i found was placing your specific time of your animation across a measured area, I found this fairly easy when applying a simple number like 60 seconds or 30 seconds across a timeline, this breaks up the values equally. It was a bit harder applying a number like 56 seconds across it as the numbers didn't break equally.

 WhatI have learned?


Laying out a sequence is easy but then applying it to a timeline is not so straight forward, I found that when applying my sequence across a timeline i had to take into account the pace of the animation in real time and this often resulted in the scenes being much shorter.

A timeline helps to show pace in a sequence speeding up or slowing down instead of just showing the key frames you can work out how your frames will sit across your timeline.

The simple maths to working out a timeline:

(Time of animation in seconds) / (Length of timeline in centimeters)

=This will give you your equal distances to break up your timeline. 

Crit

Criticism on my sequences were that the 3D elements weren't very clear with the shading, but this was just my badly executed hand drawn skills. All my Sequences were relatively clear and could be made out to be what it looked like it was going to be except the bottom sequence on the Top Sheet, I instantly knew this sequence would have some trouble being translated into only 10 frames so i even attempted to draw a diagram on the side of it to make it more clear. But after talking about it and how it would work on screen it was given the all clear. 

Advice from Lorraine:

With Regard to 3D, The 3D button will pretty much produce something as 3D as a board board cut out, which made a lot of sense, as i played around with this option and pivoting type it wasn't as 3D as it started out to be.

A quick way to model text in illustrator: Create outlines for type then copy and paste straight into after effects, then change the text in illustrator to what you want to be and then copy and paste into after effects you should then be able to animate the middle bit in AE easily. 

First After Effects Test

I decided to have a quick go on after effects while waiting for my crit and i was rather surprised at how easy a simple animation was. This animation did teach me that the frame sequences we were drawing were good but at the end of the day it was very hard to predict the temporal properties of the animation. I ended up animating this sequence then changing it as i had 2 seconds left with my animation finished, so i just changed a few of my idea's aspects and managed to easily fill the 5 seconds. Also realised half way through that using the "Safe Zone's" were all good in practice but this brief is aimed for view on screen not a tv and i forgot about that while producing this and ended up going back to my frames and moving everything around to fit around the 1050 x 576 pixel box.

This quick test made me appreciate setting frames on timelines although going onto screen and playing in after effects seemed to be a quick easy solution instead.

At the end of the scene u will see the D is suppose to sit against the wall but i missed out arranging it when going back to it.

Work Shop Task for Lorraine

This is my first initial sheet with 2 sequences on but after rethinking i changed both of them to something with works a bit better and would look better on screen, pretty much combine these two with 2 other sequences to fill up the 5 seconds. 

My only worry is taking the 3D elements into after effects, after animating a simple 2D one i realised its very easy but i could get stuck with the more technical side of animating when getting to my harder sequences.

Workshop Task

We were asked to produce 5 sheets with 25 frames on each of them. On each Sheet we had to represent an idea which referred to our word then produce 5, 5 frame sequences exploring this idea.

Very simple sequences of Drop, tried to keep the type standard so i didnt have to produce it in illustrator but i found myself wanting to make my own type.

All used a standardized typeface as i knew what typefaces i was going to plug in on screen, my hand drawn skills were yet again letting me down. The bottom row sequence interested me the most on this page, was just worried about handling the 3D aspect in After Effects. 

The Top 3 rows on this page all caught my attension, the top one was very simple and might need a bit more to fill 5 seconds but very simple to try and do in After effects as a first attempt. The bottom two 3D sequances looked really good and i am very keen to try and recreate them in After Effects, just not sure how to do it yet. 

Timeline Workshop

Studio Workshop

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In this workshop we had to use the 25 screen grabs from our chosen kinetic type workshop and place the images of the specific intervals across a timeline, this gave us an idea of how the clip progressed across a timeline although it didnt show key scenes it did show the progress of a animation.

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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.

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After Effects 2

Within Photoshop.

The Film and video presents help to give u an workspace which is the same size as the one in after effects.

action safe zone, keep significant artwork within the rulers so it wont be cropped off on low grade televisions. When working with text it should be kept within the inside rulers to stop it getting distorted around the edges. 

Safe Zones within After Effects

Transparency, 1 layer, psd. format

Select footage which will import text as a single layer

Drag layer into the timeline which will centre it as well