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.