Asset Creation

For the asset manipulation, I mostly used this technique where I colour-picked close colours of the object I would be enlarging and used the brush tool to draw on patches next to it to expand the asset's size. Then to blend it in I would use the clone stamp tool and sometimes the healing brush tool. Some examples of where I used this technique is in manipulating the clouds and creating the main scenes' background.

For assets like the dove, the apple, the blue eye, and the woman's head and face I simply cut out the images using masks selected by the magic wand tool and adjusted them using the brush tool to add and remove parts of the picture. 

Regarding the assets for scene 5, I cut out the outer part of the eye along with the white and the iris of the eye and merged that into one layer. Then I cut the inner part of the eye and made a duplicate. in one of the two versions, I painted over everything using the clone stamp tool making the whole background blue. In the other version, I selected all the clouds using the magic wand tool and created a mask. There I refined the clouds by removing any extra bits and manipulating the clouds using the manipulation technique mentioned at the start. Then I positioned the blue later at the back, the clouds' layer in the middle, and the last layer at the top and I put them all in one artboard, ready to use for the animation.

When creating the man's asset I used the man from the 'Son of Man' painting and merged his face with the face of 'the art of living' painting by removing the apple, putting the face behind the hole that was left, adjusting its size to match the existing features such as the eyebrows, then slightly colour correcting the colours and finally merging everything and using the manipulation technique mentioned above to adjust the whole thing to a good state.

When creating the background for scenes 2 to 5 I took the sea background from the 'Le double secret' painting removed the woman and her face from it and used the content aware fill to fill in the empty space. Then I continued adding more detail by using the manipulation technique mentioned at the start of this document. After the sea was done I decided to do the same thing to the sky from the 'Son of Man' painting and then merge it with the sea. Before doing so I adjusted the brightness, contrast and colours to match the ones of the sea.

The assets in scene 1 were done very similarly to the rest of the assets. Here I selected all the large men in the image one by one and copied and pasted them into new layers. Then I adjusted the ones which were not whole by duplicating parts from other men which were in a close angle and shade to them and merged them together and corrected their colour using the manipulation technique mentioned at the start. Then once I was done I merged them all into one layer. Then regarding the house, I removed the big men used and used the content aware fill to quickly fill in the empty spaces. Then I polished up the image using the same tools and technique describes at the top of this document.

Animation Process

For my animation, I used a duplicated version of the animatic and continued building on top of it. This served both as a base and as a reference. Then I imported 2 photoshop files, one with the assets for the 1st scene and the other with all the assets from scenes 2 to 5.

First, I animated scene 1 where I moved the y's position of the men's layer downwards and gave it a bit of a bounce back at the end.

Afterwards, I went into the composition containing the assets of scenes 2 to 5 and grouped the assets for scenes 4 and 5 by using pre-compose. This was done to keep the file organised.

For scene 2, I animated the dove's position going from right to left and then animated the wings flapping by using the puppet pin tool.  

Here I also adjusted the speed duration by using the speed graph to slow the dove's speed when it goes in front of the man's face.

In scene 3, I animated the position of the apple falling down. Here I once again adjusted its speed as I did for the dove and slowed the apple down when passing in front of the man's face. I also added a duplicate cut out from the bottom part of the sea, put it on top of the apple's layer and animated the background moving upwards and transitioned the man out of the scene using transparency. All this was done to help give the illusion of the apple falling down into the ocean. 

While animating this part of the animation I also made the decision of removing the stone apple from the animation. I did this because when I tried transitioning the green apple to the stone one it looked ugly and felt extra so I continued the animation using the green apple.

When it came to scene 4, I started by animating both the head and the face in the scene together and then I animated the face moving to the side. I had an error in this part where the animation was not animating properly. To solve this I linked the woman's face with the woman's head so I did not need to animate the face entering with the head too. This solved the issue.

After that, I quickly animated scene 5 where I grabbed the clouds and slowly moved them from right to left.

After scene 5 was done I went back to scene 4 to add more to it and to figure out a way to transition it to scene 5. Here I decided to go with the idea of using the spheres inside the head as eyelids which would open up into blue eyes. 

In order to do this I had to go back to photoshop and divide the spheres into pairs of eyelids. Then once I went into after effects I animated the first pair using masks. My first approach to animating the eyes was with using the puppet pin tool but then I released that it would make more sense to use masks. Something which I realised, later on, is that for the animation of the lids opening up, I could have easily used the reflect action function by linking one of the mask's positions with the other and inputting the *-1 at the end of the animation's code. I will make sure to keep this in mind for next time.

Then once the first pair was done I decided to copy and paste it into a new composition and use that instead of animating the other eyelids from scratch. Note that I did not use the duplicate function to create more copies of it because the duplicate function synchs all the versions together and therefore it did not allow me to change the time of the keyframes. The reason why I wanted to change the keyframe times for each eye is that since I was using duplicates and not the original for each eye I could not make them appear from where each animation starts but I had to show them earlier so that the original eyelids do not show. 

To transition both scenes 4 to 5 and scenes 1 to 2 I decided to keep things simple and use a clean cut instead of using a more complex zoom-in transition. I did this since I felt that just some good timing was enough to link these scenes well together.

Finally, for the title's typeface I went on google typed Rene Magritte typeface and clicked through the results. While doing so I found this page Where I found the typeface where I found a link to a typeface which matched perfectly with his handwriting as well as with the theme, so I used it.

Final adjustments and extra refinements

For the audio, I asked a friend of mine who is in media to add in a little bit of a fade to it since I did not have enough space on my laptop to download more software. But I was not satisfied with it since the last scene ended too quickly. To fix this I sped up my audio as well as my compositions by a second and then added a bit of reverb to it in After Effects by following this tutorial

After this, I adjusted the timing of some of the elements which seemed off and then I decided to add one final touch by adding in water droplets once the apple falls into the sea. For this, I created one water drop using the brush tool and the eraser in photoshop and then I changed its colour for it to stick out from the sea using the shadow/highlight effect in after effects.

Then I animated the first one using position, rotation and opacity and duplicated it and adjusted the settings of the rest. Then I varied the timing of each drop by a frame and exported my animation. 

Opening Sequence Preproduction

Storyboard

Animatic:

Youtube link to animatic

Music: 

Stromae - L'enfer (instrumental) 00:44 - 01:16 sped up by 2-4 seconds

Adjusted Assets:

A list of other assets which need adjusting:

The eye in the 8th shot needs to decrease in saturation

The clouds for the last shot need to be adjusted

Opening Sequence Concept Development

Mood Board

Ideas Storyboards

Idea 1

Idea 2

Idea 3

Animation process Task 1

WalkCycle

I started this animation by creating a rough sketch of the character in my sketchbook. Then from that, I created the character in illustrator by experimenting with shapes, styles and proportions. 

After I finished my character I separated everything into generic layers ex: right leg, left leg, head etc. Then I decided to create a brick-like background for the character to which I added an isometric stone tiled floor to, for some 3 dimensionality. Then I topped it off with two lights on the wall. Then I grouped the whole background into one layer.

After that, I went back to the skeleton character and divided its layers further ex: right hand, right arm, right palm etc. Then I created a new 1920 * 1080 composition in after effects and imported the illustrator file along with a walk cycle video as a guide. Here I animated the rotation and position of the character's body parts starting from the limbs.

Once the character animation was done I animated the light in a different composition by linking all the bigger light rays to the smaller ones and then animating that one. Then I added two of that composition into a new one containing the background and placed the lights. Then I put 3 of that last composition into a new one where I animated the position of the background to make it look as if it is moving.

The next step was to match the character with the background's speed and loop the whole animation. I struggled a bit to do this part. But I managed to do this by shortening the background's speed till both it and the character's frame matched the ones at the start.

Some mistakes that I had done along the process are, I had switched names for two of my assets which confused me for a bit but then I fixed them. I also had to go back and separate the light into individual layers and reimport the illustrator file to add in these new layers, since after effects only updates existing layers and does not show new ones, which is a bit inconvenient. I also had to adjust the length of several compositions while working since I had to start certain duplicates earlier than the rest.

Animation link: https://youtu.be/EB5L0275ag4

Principles of animation used: Timing & motion, Arcs (within the skeleton's body movement), slow in slow out and appeal. 

The character sketch:

Initials Exercise 

For this exercise, I first separated all the individual parts needing to be animated, into separate layers. Then I created the strokes, to be used as masks, in separate layers. Once that was done I imported the illustrator file into after effects. There I animated the corner piece and the initials in two separate compositions, by using masking and trim paths. Then I inserted them both into another composition where I adjusted their placement. 

This exercise was quite easy to follow through but I found difficulty in matching the two strokes used for the initials. I solved this issue by playing with the stroke size and giving the strokes a rounded cap.

Animation link: https://youtu.be/qPiDAJ3dO-Y

Principles of animation used: Staging (the initials are the first and last to be animated), appeal and timing. 

The strokes which were used as masks:

The difference between strokes using rounded caps and regular caps:

Butterfly Exercise

For this exercise, I illustrated a butterfly in illustrator, imported it into after effects and switched on the 3D feature. There I animated the left wing's rotation and then linked its rotation to the right wing and reversed it by adding *-1 at the end of the animation's code. Afterwards, I created a path for the butterfly to fly through on illustrator and pasted it on a null object in after effects. Then I linked the wings to the null and went to auto-orientation and clicked orient along path. Then I slightly adjusted the path and the speed of the butterfly to make the animation smoother.

I also added two solids for the background and adjusted their positions by switching to different camera views. Then I added in some ambient and point light and enabled cast shadows on them and cast shadow and accept shadows on the wings to add in the shadow effect. For some final detail, I added some small details to the butterfly in illustrator, using the pencil tool, and refreshed the updated layers in after effects.

Animation link: https://youtu.be/iqA_8wtoWL0

Principles of animation used: appeal, timing and motion.

The 3D button on after effects:

The butterfly's path that was pasted into the null object:

The decorated butterfly used:

Hello

I started this animation by writing down the word hello in illustrator, using the pencil tool and then adjusting it with the direct selection tool. Once satisfied with my design, I imported the .ai file into after effects, added trim paths and animated the end path. Then I gave the key points some easy ease using the hotkey F9. 

Then I decided to take it a step further to add some more interest. For this, I precomposed the composition and replicated it 3 more times. Then I gave them different colours by playing around with the change colour tool and gave them different starting times. For this animation, I also experimented with different backgrounds which I decided to not include in the reel for simplicity and continuity. In that version, I also looped the animation by pre-composing the animation, replicating it 3 times, trimming all the compositions' endpoints, sequencing the layers through keyframe assistant and reversing the 2nd and 4th compositions.

Animation link: https://youtu.be/-9uiOiAa8Q0

Link to the older version (using a background): https://youtu.be/4mBaTBnegKI

Principles of animation used: slow in slow out and follow through (through the use of the different colours).

Animating the endpoint using trim paths

Some adjustments I made with the change colour tool

Giving each colour a different starting point 

Rotating Planets Exercises 

Sun, Earth & Moon Looping Animation 

For this animation, I created 3 circles, different in shape and colour and gave them different positions. Then I moved the earth's anchor point to the middle of the sun and did the same with the moon anchoring it to the earth. thus was done, because the rotation will be done according to the location of the anchor point. Then I linked the moon to the earth and animated the moon and the earth's rotation. Something which I found a bit tedious was having to adjust the element's size and position to make sure they have good spacing between each other while not leaving too much or too little room from the composition's border.

Animation link: https://youtu.be/qVbcU4X6S7c

The rotation stopwatches of the moon and the earth

3D Planet Rotation

I started off this animation by creating two circles representing the earth and the moon. Then I moved the moon to its position through its anchor point to keep the moon's anchor point in the middle of the earth so it can rotate around it. Once that was done, I animated the moon's position as well as its scale so it will look larger when it is closer to the viewer. Lastly, I split the earth's layer into two using the hotkeys Shift + Ctrl +D and then positioned the last part of the earth's layer underneath the moon's (creating a sandwich with the moon in the middle). This was done to allow the moon to go behind the earth when it is rotating.

Animation link: https://youtu.be/5c1VvZ75Inw

Principles of animation used: slow in slow out, secondary action (being the moon to the earth in the first one).

The earth's layer split into two with the moon's layer in the middle

Dividing Blobs

This animation was done to test out the 'reflect' function mentioned in the first point of my class notes. I started this animation by creating two circles with different colours and linked both of them to a null object.  then I animated one's position and reflected that action to the other circle. I did this by opening the non-animated circle's code panel by pressing atl, linking its position to the position of the animated circle and then adding *-1 at the end of its code. 

Once that was done I animated the circle's opacity, duplicated the keyframes and added the loop out in the coding of both the opacity and the position of both layers. Then I precomposed this animation made a duplicate of it and changed the duplicate's starting time. I did this to increase the number of circles shown within a loop.

To give the circles the merging effect I added in an adjustment later on top of them which has a fast box blur and a levels effect where I played around with their settings to get my desired effect.

Animation link: https://youtu.be/UxxROzXRL_c

The effects used to create the blob-like effect

 Rotating Hexagon

For this animation, I created 6 solids, switched on the 3D layer feature, rotated all their Y rotation to 90 degrees and formed them in a shape of a hexagon. Then I duplicated these solids and moved their duplicates behind them. This was done by using the top 3D view for clarity. Afterwards, I added in a camera, animated its position to go through the hexagon tunnel and animated its rotation. After that, I inserted the Dividing Blobs animation into after effects and replaced the solids with this video by selecting all the pannels then dragging and dropping the video on the solids while pressing the alt button.

Animation link: https://youtu.be/VLp8nmxPnSI

Principles of animation used: appeal (through the colour used)

The 3D top view used to animate the camera going in the hexagon tunnel

Box Exercises

Box exercise 1

For this animation, I created two squares, one in a darker hue than the other and then placed the darker one at the back. Then I linked the darker square to the lighter one and animated the lighter square's position moving it from side to side. After that, I also animated the darker square's position to move out towards the centre when the squares move to the sides.

Box 1 Animation link: https://youtu.be/UE6gXcrkeic

The cube in action

Box exercise 2

In this animation, I created two squares next to each other and moved their position through their anchor to touch each other's edges while keeping their anchor points on top of each other. Then, I scaled one square's side towards its anchor point and animated it being scaled back up while the other one is scaled down. After that, I used the corner pin tool to animate the height of the corners at the edge decreasing and increasing for more depth. Then finally, I used the hue/saturation effect to change the colours of the shrinking side of the cube to a darker hue while the other side gets lighter.

Box 2 Animation link: https://youtu.be/qGXWvRlroeU

The effects used for this animation

Box exercise 3

In this animation, I first created and positioned all my squares. Then I placed all the anchor points to their folding edges and linked all of them together, with the square at the centre linked to a null. After that, I enabled the 3D feature and animated their rotation to 90 degrees forming a 3D cube. Then I finally animated the null's position and orientation to make the whole cube rotate while being animated. Different 3D views were used for this animation to see properly what was going on.

Box 3 Animation link: https://youtu.be/qPSeIIYCBuY

stopwatches used for this animation

Box exercise 4

To start off this animation, I created a square and moved its anchor point to the bottom right edge. Then I rotated it to the right by 90 degrees. There I added a null, linked the cube to it and then did the same rotation on it.  Then I repeated this process one more time. After that, I went back to the start of the animation and added some other rotations to add some anticipation and added CC Bend It to bend the corners of this part of the animation for some extra appeal.

Box 4 Animation link: https://youtu.be/InjLedX_j2g

The square with its anchor to the bottom right

Principles of animation used: solid drawing (boxes 1, 2 & 3), timing and motion (box 1 since it is smaller in size it moves faster due to it being lighter in weight and size),  arcs (boxes 3 & 4),  anticipation (box 4) and exaggeration (box 4).

Mcdonalds Test

For this test, I tried creating an animated reveal using the Mcdonald's logo. This here was a failed experiment since it did not turn out as well as I thought it would. Before starting this animation, I prepared all my assets in illustrator. Here I took the Mcdonald's logo and retraced it. Once done I imported the illustrator file into after effects. 

I started the animation by, animating the ball's scale and position to follow the logo's path. Then I animated its shadow's position, scale and opacity. Once that was done, I linked the alpha channel of the traced logo to the stroke path of the logo and inverted it to use it as a mask. Then I animated the logo's line path to match the velocity of the ball. I did this by using trim paths. 

Something which I found difficult was, adjusting the trim paths timing to the speed of the bouncing ball since it was very tedious and required multiple keyframes. 

Animation link: https://youtu.be/YD4g8HnbOUQ

Principles of animation used: secondary action (through the use of the shadow).

The assets prepared in illustrator

The keyframes used for the masked layer

Creating The Reel

For the reel, I exported and imported the exercises as .wav files and put them in a new composition. There I put them in order and adjusted their length and speed by using time stretch. I did this to match the pace and length of a few clips, such as the first box exercises, which as a result have a rhythmic pattern. Here I also added some texture to the animation by adding an adjustment layer on top of all the animations and then adding some effects to it. These effects include Fractal Noise, where I played around with its brightness and contrast, Noise, Colour Balance (HLS) and Venetian Blinds. This was done to create a more grungy/vintage look to the animation. 

Animation link: https://youtu.be/qIrMsv4j_Vw

Effects used on the adjustment layer

Class Notes:

• To link the two object's speeds but in reverse: open coding add *-1 at the end of the code.
• Alt-drag and drop to replace assets but keep the same attributes like position, scale etc.