Motion Graphics Project & Submission

For our Unit 7 Motion Graphics practical assignment, we were tasked with planning and creating a 30-second animation sequence that introduces a character. The video was to be completed in Adobe After Effects using assets created mostly in Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator. For the project, we were encouraged to use a variety of effects and animations, as well as showcase planning and concepts that inspired the project. Time Management: One major aspect of this project was learning to manage time spent on different aspects of it. As such, we were instructed to create a schedule as a guideline. This helped to prioritise certain aspects of the project and effectively evaluate whether or not these priorities were correct. For my schedule, I put plenty of time aside to create the assets for use in Photoshop, while making sure there was ample time left over to implement them in After Effects. In retrospect, I could have made more time specifically for asset creation over the actual motion graphics, as the drawing of the characters and environments took much longer to create, while the visual effects were much easier to integrate and manage. As such, I only used my schedule as a loose guideline, and spent much longer on the drawings that I had planned, which turned out to work in my favour.

What I learned:

During the project, I learned many useful tricks for use in Photoshop and After Effects alike. The most important thing to remember for Photoshop in particular was to use layers as much as possible in order to allow for much better manipulation of the image’s components. Each layer in Photoshop can have its own specific properties to make it either stand out from the rest of the image, or act as a subtle effect. To allow for easier colouring of objects, I usually opted to keep the colours on separate layers from the outlines, however this meant that I had to group them together in After Effects later. Because of its later use in After Effects, during the creation process in Photoshop I had to constantly keep in mind that the different layers in Photoshop would have to be animated in some way using After Effects. This meant that some layers had to be redone completely in order to work well; the most notable example being the transition to the character portraits, where the background was initially drawn as a whole object. However, to make it animated, I had to split the background in two to allow for them to be animated separately. In the animating process in After Effects, which I was very new to when starting this project, I began learning the basic principles of the software and how most of the animation revolves around changing the properties of objects. This relies on the prerequisite that all the objects are on separate layers, and are distinct enough to change separately. In the first scene, the most commonly changed variable is definitely the objects’ opacity, as the lighting had to change as the scene progressed to create the illusion of a day/night cycle. The last scene with the boat makes heavy use of the parenting function, used to make other objects have the same properties (such as positioning, opacity etc.) as their parent by default. This was used here to make the different parts of the boat stay attached while still being able to animate them normally, such as the sail which makes use of a ripple effect.

The most complex function I learned to use was the shake effect on the ending logo, as this used a fairly complicated script which involved its position fluctuating depending on a null object’s position. This creates a subtle “earthquake” effect for the logo which fits very well thematically.

Room for improvement: Given more time I definitely could have improved upon the drawn scenes, as I could have added more detail to the environments. Particularly, the first scene’s grass could look much better and I could have improved upon that if I had been given more time, by applying more detailed foliage to the scene and lighting to accompany it. The weather effects (rain, lightning) on the second scene could have looked far better had I allowed for more time to be spent on them, especially the rain effect which is simply a set of lines. These effects could have been created entirely in After Effects, which I learned about only after creating the scene. The background for the third scene (character portraits) could have had more detail added to it, however due to having to redo the whole background as mentioned earlier, there was not enough time to improve upon it. Due to its “gem-like” appearance, I could have improved it by adding subtle reflections to give it a better sense of depth. The character portraits could have been made using 3D layer effects to give it more visual appeal, and due to its simplicity, this was the easiest scene to implement it with. Were time constraints less restrictive, I could have arranged the layers to appear 3D with relative ease. I considered adding some effects to the logo at the very end, such as lighting or rubble effects to emphasize the impact of the logo, but this was cut short as well, leaving it with a simpler effect.