After Effects class blog final

So the phone spews the ribbons out using the bulge effect. The bulge effect has independent vertical and horizontal radii and a the bulge height is the property that will determine the degree of warping on the phone. The principle here is to know your effects and the properties within them. This is half the language you speak to aftereffects so your effects list is like a vocabulary you need to learn in order to be fluent in after effects. The other half of the language of after effects is understanding how the the effects animate to give you look you need, in the case of the phone bulge it is the timing and extent that you animate the bulge to make it look like the phone is spitting, if effects are the vocabulary then the animating the properties would be the grammar.

The ribbons are in their own composition and you will use linear wipes(Effects»Transitions»

Linear Wipe) to have them spew from the base of the ribbon where the phone spews from to the completion of the ribbon off the screen. Animate the wipe angle as well to be perpendicular to the tangent of the curve of the ribbon so that it looks like a particle that curves along its trail and feather the wipe so that the particle looks like it has a motion blur. Of course, knowing how to respond to this visual expectation comes from being fluent in the language (effects and animating properties) of After Effects.

The Chat bubbles with social network icons can spew out seperately (as independent layers or seperate composition)and use what we learned about easy ease (animation»keyframe assistance»easy ease, or F9) to smooth the animation of the bubble you can shape the motion paths of these bubble in much the same way you use the anchor points of an pen path.

For the observant in the group you will also notice that the there are also little rings that pop out of the phone as well. Use the same principle we used with the chat bubble animation.

The ribbons for the second scene will be examined in terms of a 2-D object in 3-D space. We can parent these bubbles to the phone. What we will notice one examination of the project video is that the chat bubble§ are not on the same two dimensional plane and need to be seperate 2D objects in varying positions in 3D space and a camera move in the project video, a roll and then a pan reveals these properties. That said. We will create a new camera in order to animate our view point and see the effects on static objects in 3-D space and move around our camera to see the move using the camera control tools in the toolbar.

To acheive more control over the camera, especially when animating, we can create a null object and parent it to the camera. This allows you to control the null like a regular 3-D object and the camera will follow as if it is on a dolly track.

Your final assignment will be to reach to the 15 second mark in the project video and import a video into your composition parented to the laptop layer and masked and transformed to match the laptop perspective and parented to it.

You have two weeks (14 days) from this post date to hand in the assignment for which a qualitative assessment of your work through the semester will be done. In the interim I will publish your grades fort he mid term assignment at my earliest convenience.

For any further help please check the messageboards at www.creativecow.net and the video tutorials at www.VideoCopilot.net/basic/tutorials.

I will be available for mentorship in your final projects via email (teamwillopro@gmail.com or twitter (@teamwillo) provided they are within the scope of my expertise.

Class 4 Emergency.

i'm on my way having difficulties in getting to class because of the weather. In the meantime. Finish the bulge on the phone. using the the effects >>distort>>bulge effect. (Ask Shane to help).
Then look at the video and start setting up the ribbons spewing from the phone as a photoshop file with the same high def. settings. I am trying to get there for 3p.m. please complete it by that time.

CLASS 2 Lecture Summary

Now that we have the prerequisite knowledge of the effects and animation, we can move on to the first section of the clip we are recreating.

Every element that moves in after effects has its own layer and it's own instance on the timeline. So we begin with our background with a white to light gray radial ramp applied to a solid at composition size. The composition is set at 1280 x 720 pixels. There is no animation on the solid so no need for keyframes.

Our first animated element that comes onto the screen is the text "This, that and everything else! HD Communication." Analyse each element on its own and decide what properties of our layer is animated. In this case our text fades in from totally invisible to 100% opaque black text. The animated property on this text is Opacity. After creating our layer by typing on our text on the composition, we can find the opacity property by pressing the "T" key (Think Opaci-"T"). Click on the stopwatch to tell after effects you want to animate this property, be aware that the keyframe diamond for this property for the this layer for this instant becomes active, to the left of the stopwatch and also to the right of it on the play head (red vertical line) on the timeline.

if you were to move the playhead to when you want the text to start moving off the screen click the stopwatch for the position property (press "P" for position) then another keyframe would come up, move the playhead again to where you want it to go off the screen, (imagine the time it would take in your head and then estimate it on timespan of the move on the timeline), then move the text off the screen. Aftereffects creates another keyframe automatically because the stopwatch is enabled. From the project clip we also notice that the text starts to decrease opacity halfway through it's exit. click the empty keyframe symbol to the left of the stopwatch for the opacity property for that layer so you do not have to move your playhead, then move your playhead to where you want the text to disappear and then change the opacity property value to zero.

Drag the end of the layer clip to where the text disappears on the timeline to indicate we don't need the text for the rest of the animation.

Create new text layers for the words that follow and use what we learned about keyframing and animation to follow the clip for appearing and disappear, and moving on the screen.

You will notice that the movement of the second set of text layers, slow to a stop, this is the easy ease property and you acheive this by going to the keyframe you want the animation to ease into and go to Overhead menu option: Animation>Keyframe Assistants>Easy Ease.

In the next class we will discuss:
Parenting Layers in after effects
Nested Composition in after effects
Layer Masking in after effects
Linear transitions in after effects

Please research these topics on the net. The knowledge is necessary for our next class.

Problem Solving from the guy who created Mythbusters

I found this link and thought it might be useful reference later on in the course.

CLASS 1 Lecture Summary

After Effects is a post-production software used for:

• Colour Correction
• Compositing
• Motion Graphics

These are all involved in the category of Special Effects.

A good starting point for learning After Effects is at The Video Copilot Website.

The Aim for course is to produce a complex motion graphics piece involving videos, photographs, music and custom graphics as seen in this clip

Research Topics for Class 2:

• pixel aspect ratio
• tweening
• video broadcast formats
• planning for final output

I welcome comments and questions.