Showreel

During the showreel class I had my mind occupied by the Collide Show however during the class I got inspired by a showreel that Sara showed us, it had a logo or shape in the centre of the screen throughout the video and it really caught my eye and I wanted to make something from that.

I have done a few folding animations in the past but none of them haven't really gone anywhere, I didn't expect this one to either but I played around with it a bit more and a new colour palette worked a lot better with my final showreel.

Sea

I've been playing around with some ideas in After Effects and creating gifs in Photoshop, this one had a few issues with playing online so I've had to upload it to vimeo as well. The idea for this experiment came about when looking at someones visual research during a lecture, the image was an illustration of the sea which was in a handcrafted style, I particularly liked the shape of the waves in the image I saw, after looking at it for a while I might add some pattern into the waves and some texture to give it more depth.

Plants Part 2

I've been working on my plant animation a bit more. I was hoping to have finished by now but my After Effects has been processing it for too long and finally gave up today! Looking back on the animation I have noticed a definite reference from a game called Neko Atsume at the time I had just started playing the game and I really like it's unique style.

From a viewers point of view the bold lines and calm colours of the game make it very relaxing to look at, the less detail used puts less strain on the eyes which again makes it relaxing and calming especially if you have a headache.

The plan for the final video is for the animation to be more atmospheric with rain and wind outside and a fire with crackling wood, hopefully reflecting the relaxing art style of this piece.

Fairytale Motion Graphics

Fairytale Motion Graphics from Phoebe Whitehead on Vimeo.

During this motion graphics class we were asked to get inspiration from fairytales to create our own statistics and illustrations. I took inspiration from the fairytale Rapunzel, one of the things I will take from this lesson is how to create a tilt shift look on the work, it is a pretty simple technique that requires me to create a composition seperate from the one I used to create the animation I wish to manipulate, the original compostion must be imported into the new one and then all you have to do is press 3d mode and play around with the angle of the animation layer.

Karma Fields - Greatness from Raven Kwok on Vimeo.

This is a video I stumbled across when uploading something to vimeo. This music video is created with code and created and edited using Cinema 4D and After Effects. During the video, the music beat influences the shape of the triangular pattern which is somewhat relaxing and hypnotising. I would like to create something like this in the future for a project.

Plants Part 1

Plants Part 1 from Phoebe Whitehead on Vimeo.

After Sara's animation class I wanted to do something using the techniques we had learned in the lesson. I initially only had plans to create a gif of the plants building themselves but now I want to build the scene further where as the camera zooms out the room will get bigger and bigger adding more slight details.

Paper London

Paper London Animation from Phoebe Whitehead on Vimeo.

In this class we were shown more of the animation presets in After Effects, this class also made use of the camera option during the animation. I had already created an illustration from some images I took of a trip to London but decided to use another illustration I made that day.
I originally wanted to use the camera to pull through the layers to look like the viewer is walking through streets in london but because I ended up using a move fixed image that had too much detail to zoom in that far. I'm really happy with the end result and that I managed to combine some work I did outside of uni that was inspired by the task for the class.

After doing this I want to create a set of worlds with similar zone outs to this but with images of York. The end result might be interesting especially with the comparison between modern London and a more historic York skyline. 

Notes:
toggle switch 3d, 2 views top and front - setup
Effect > colour correction - also good for editing in future
Layer > New Camera - make sure one view is active camera

Handdrawn Animation

Heart Animation from Phoebe Whitehead on Vimeo.

For this After Effects class we were asked to create an image or word that has been drawn digitally or by hand. The image had to be traced over and saved as jpgs so we could then import into After Effects as a jpeg sequence.  My drawings were created by hand then transferred into illustrator, the specific brush tool is one I downloaded that replicates a marker pen. The tracing animation is created by using the image mask tool and using the pen tool to draw around the drawing outline, the lines thickness needs to cover the whole pen outline so when the mask excludes the background it doesn't crop a bit out the design. To make the animation look like it was drawing the heart I then used the effect Generate > Stroke.

Christmas Card Workshop

Snowman And His Head from Phoebe Whitehead on Vimeo.

During workshop week I took part in a workshop in which we had to create an animated Christmas card which was to be displayed on the front of the creative arts building at night around the Christmas period. The theme for the project was Snow and we could create anything we wanted, this was around the time I created my cereal box creature and I wanted to create another character using illustrator. After looking at other examples of animations created that were Christmas themed I knew I wanted to got with something simple in style. While creating the animation it slowly got more and more detailed as it went on, I added texture and trees, near the end I added a drop shadow effect to the trees and snowflakes to add more depth to the short.

During my Conversation brief I was asked along with a friend to work on the university's christmas card. The Christmas card had to have two outcomes, one printed and one animated card. We were put in pairs and I worked with my friend who is an animater, I focused on the graphic design aspect of the card whilst he focused on animating whatever I created.





 

Car Conversation from Phoebe Whitehead on Vimeo.

Fox Rotoscope from Phoebe Whitehead on Vimeo.

In this class we used the mask layer and the pen tool to cut out a moving object from a video. After tracing around the character in one frame I clicked the stop watch on Mask Path so it would move fluidly in the animation through the whole video when I adjusted the path each frame.

After successfully tracing around my character in the 2 second clip we had to stretch the 2 seconds to 10 seconds in a new composition, however I only stretched it to 5 seconds so the jumping movement would still look natural. After editing it to 5 seconds I looped the clip to last 10 seconds. I then added a background and animated that so it moved slightly as well, adding a a green overlay on the fox video so it looks slightly handdrawn.


Rotoscope Fox Experiment from Phoebe Whitehead on Vimeo.

After the class I played around with adding wings to the fox which I will edit further later so they have texture on top to see if I can make it fit in more with the animation.

Erm from Phoebe Whitehead on Vimeo.

I've been playing around with different type animations and got into the habit of making lots of animation presets to add into future projects. At the time I was also making my animation for the Conversation brief and I wanted to put this exact same animation style into it.

Bubble Man from Phoebe Whitehead on Vimeo.

For this animation lesson I just wanted to use basic vector drawings so it was easier to animate it all. They were all relatively easy to piece together at the beginning and had to be on different layers so I could animate seperate pieces on the character.

After getting to a point where I was happy with the final animation I grabbed some texture for the character and the background and overlayed it on certain layers using Track Matte.

Some shortcuts from the lesson:
t = transparency
p = position
r = rotation
s = scale
a = anchor point
u =  to show key frames

After finishing the class I also added sound to make the animation short more engaging and exciting.

Animating Type

During this lesson we were taught the basics of type animation -  how to move type across the screen and how to spin and manipulate the type.

Because I learnt how to animate type in my own time (see here for tutorial) I decided to use this time to try and perfect the techniques I knew and created a title page for my animations so they end professionally. As I mentioned in an earlier post where I created typefaces, I wanted to edit and look deeper into parts of the designs I created. I did so with the origami-like text to the left where I played with opacity and drop shadows. I ended up using a combination of the two for my final clip. The triangles in this clip are animated using the x rotation tool which can be used to rotate an object once the layer has been made into a 3d layer. The spinning isn't obvious on this clip because it fades into the transition. Below is the  animation I am very happy I was able to include my own typeface into the clip because it makes the animation a bigger reflection of my work.

Short Title Animation from Phoebe Whitehead on Vimeo.

Below is a short clip of my initial work in the class where I played around with spinning letters. It is very simple to do, the method is the same way as spinning an object but it is under the text option.

Text experiment from Phoebe Whitehead on Vimeo.

Kinetic Typography Introduction

Frankenstein from Phoebe Whitehead on Vimeo.

In a previous post I talk about how I created kinetic typography for a short movie advert.
In this lesson I used past animation techniques and improved them, this time around I made use of the opacity tool and made better use of the space on screen. The end result looks cleaner and smooth, the sound effects create a scene for the viewer. 

Animation Introduction

Mouse Test from Phoebe Whitehead on Vimeo.

Creating an animation is very similar to text in which you can create each movement with the use of keyframes. To move one piece you create a keyframe, then drag the time indicator along the timeline to the place where your character is supposed to have moved and create another keyframe and edit your character whether it be clicking or dragging on the object or being more thorough in. transform options. To find the transform button press the arrow next to the coloured square on the layers list, a drop down menu should appear, with the option for transform - or text and transform if you are working on a text layer.

There are many options the ones used to create movement are position and rotation, however, scale can also be used for your character to walk up to the "camera" viewpoint.

Earth Artefact Project

Sketchbook is available here.

Final Animation

Woodland Wildlife Short Final from Phoebe Whitehead on Vimeo.

Animation Short

Fox Short from Phoebe Whitehead on Vimeo.

After Effects Introduction

Reunited on Vimeo.

In the introduction to After Effects we were asked to create a short movie advert
involving a selection of images or video. I chose to create an advert for a comedy,
the music I selected is taken from the beginning of  Escape by Rupert Holmes which
fitted the theme of my movie perfectly. The beat of the song allowed me to pack
a lot of information in and made the advert more exciting to watch.

I firstly edited my music in a new composition and cut it down to 15 seconds. After completing that I could then move it into another composition for the main video, this is so that if I edit the track on the music composition the copied composition in the video would be automatically edited.

I then played through the track a few times and placed markers at the same time so I could mark the exact time a new beat played.

The marker shortcut is * or x on the number pad.

To animate the type I firstly had to lay out all my type in the position I wanted it on the screen and on the timeline, I then went into underneath each layer to start editing. Unless you want type to come up individually by each character you can leave the option Anchor Point Grouping to be on Character; but for my video it had to be fast and easy to read so I needed the letters to come up by Word. The next option I had to change was scale I needed to change it to 0%. Then all I had to do was drag the time indicator to the start of the layer and click the stopwatch next to scale then drag the time indicator to where I wanted my text to stop transitioning and become full text and edit scale back to 100% and click the stop watch to finish.

To quickly set this to all my words on the frame I went into Animation>Save Animation Preset. After that you can click on each layer and simply go into Animation>Apply Animation Preset and select your saved preset.

In the latest lesson we were shown a website called cuteststockfootage.com which has all  effects that you can overlay onto footage to make it look grainy or to add lens flares etc. I didn't really want to use it on my photographs I thought it wouldn't work as well as on video so I used animation I found in the background of my text. I wanted to use it only at certain times the technique to do this is the same as adding photographs at certain times on the timeline only you have to make sure the layer for the animation is under the type.

DBLG Animal Planet