These are the final installments for the first part of the brief.
To be fair, I was quite impressed with myself after doing these animations. Especially since I was new to the software, and it normally takes me a while to warm to a piece of software. In some respects, I think that I could of done alot more in terms of developing the animations, say if I had spent more time experimenting and testing the limits of After Effects instead of relying heavily on effects. On reflection, they do look a tad unnecessary and detract away from the nature of the word, and as I said, relies on the effect to give it a literal meaning.
Feedback from the storyboards had been good though, but by having too much confidence in what I had produced without a variety of responses to the word restricted the outcome for this brief.
In spite of the last few words on the final animations, I do think I have communicated the word 'pop'.
After making the A2 images, the time was to start conceptualizing our animations in the form of storyboards. After an inspirational seminar on how to go about actually doing a storyboard, not just doing the first thing we think of which is gridding up a piece of paper, and just going ahead to try to think instantly what we wanted, but doing initial sketches, considering the format size, angles, using axes for positioning, use of dimensions and so on. Despite this, I have started with my method of just going with an idea and trying to learn from it.
This set is the outcome for the large scale images, just to test the water with the 2 words I was unsure about choosing from, either pop, or fold, as I think close speaks for itself in being a limited, or rather too dull a word to animate, all I see is closed doors, and a long corridor with no lights.
This next set is after we had the seminar today, so this is a cheeky backblog, the difference being that we had our After Effects introduction session, and an afternoon workshop, where we started to learn more about how to actually apply this method of strategic planning for animation. As it is most probably going to underpin alot of what we are going to be doing for this particular brief.
Each particular sheet had a set of principles, these were as follows :
To go back to something I used to do on a very basic level - at school in my free time at lunch, making animated banners for emulator sites on fireworks - was refreshing to say the least.
Apart from how to navigate around the program, and how to understand the timeline and so on.
It works quite like the same as Photoshop, and InDesign in the way that it is used for prepping and laying out a piece of work, except its also used for finishing it.
One of the main things to remember is that it works like InDesign where you have to keep all the files used in the same folder, otherwise it causes a whole heap of trouble when editing and moving the project around.
Some more of the pearls of incredibly helpful wisdom was that every project must contain at last one composition which is more or less the programs equivalent to layers.
Before opening or indeed starting any document/project, the settings dialog box has a multitude of confusing settings that have to be addressed before starting a project. Issues include things like aspect ratio; the size/format of the frame used, for example 16:9 (widescreen), Frame rate; determines how many frames are in a second, which can effect how smoothly the animation goes, and finally preset; this is screen standards/resolutions used to determine quality and effects on where the final project will be placed, for example PAL or NTSC.
PAL is the European standard for display, and NTSC is the North American/Asian screen standard for display, the best example found for this would be when you turn on a Gamecube, it usually asks you if you would like to view the screen in PAL or NTSC, which the difference is either a 50Hz or 60Hz refresh rate, but one thing we did learn straight away is that PAL plays back at 25 frames per second. Other resolution issues to do with display quality includes how many pixels have to be rendered for the final project, which is covered in more detail in the second paragraph down.
When using something like still images, its best to use a widescreen square pixel preset setting, as it is right for the format and context of internet streaming, but where as if using some form of digital video, using something more like a square 4:3 format would be more appropriate, due to the way the pixels are shaped and are viewed on screen.
Fast forwarding on a bit, when using the playback feature, instead of using the real time playback, using a feature on the far right of the playback panel, the Ram preview slows the animation down to view the problems that may occur when playing in real time. This feature - before it plays back - calculates how each frame will look for final playback, the green line showed in the timeline shows the progression of how long it is taking to calculate how the end animation will look.
One of the most important parts of animation is keyframes, these are indicated on the bottom right of the timeline palette. This area is also similar to sorting out layers, where you can edit variables such as how an object travels across a motion path, which are made using anchor points. The diamond icon in the bar is used to create keyframes, which are essentially key points in the sequence that are used as checkpoints for the object to travel on. The nearer the middle dot is to a certain point, the quicker it will travel, as is with all animation, time is a major factor and it is never, NEVER on youre side.
Almost any Adobe based file can be imported into After Effects for use, Illustrator, Photoshop, and even Flash or video files, but you must change the settings to fit the settings used in the document, not just to avoid irritable messages, but to keep things easy and running smoothly, just like when links are missing on an InDesign document. REALLY ANNOYING.
To finish, some shortcuts; select a layer and press : [P] - Position, [A] - Anchor point, [R] - Rotate, [S] Scale, [T] - Opacity, [O] - Time, these are all to show the various layer properties for each object/path etc. Holding shift is standard to add more and thus you can view multiple properties of the layers using this technique.
The video was the result of the session. We all love pong.
From the three words we got from the "randomizer", these are the 3 responses to the words, having to include the text somewhere on the images we produced was the only mandatory requirement. The first sheet is the initial development work towards the images made on A2 paper.
The 3 words were; fold, pop, and closed.
Out of all the responses to the first task set within this first task I would say the fold one was probably the most intuitive out of them. Obviously due to the crafty approach, making me consider making a typeface from folded paper, even if it has been done before, I still think it would be worthwhile.
The point of this task was to see if we could represent the word effectively, using limited restrictions as to what we could produce.
