I hope you are all doing well in the time of this COVID-19 stuff going on. I hope you and your family are doing well, staying healthy, and most importantly stay up to par with personal hygiene. Today I would like to go over my progress as to where I am at with a couple of things.
We have our Portfolio ad rough draft due on Monday (April 6th, 2020) and I have gotten that completed as of yesterday. Here is my rough Draft…
This is the 30 second one. We also have to make a 15 second one in which I will share with you in my next blog.
2. Our instructor for our Digital Media Studio class, Chris has taken on the recent role of showing us the 12 principles of animation in video format like such…..
In this video he talks about “Timing & Spacing” and he also shows us this gif….
In this gif what you are seeing is how the graph editor looks compared to how the ball animates. This gif is very helpful because it shows you exactly how the shape is going to react to how you animate your curves in the graph editor.
and in this video he talks about “Squash & Stretch”
Now in just these two video I was able to learn quite a bit and take on my own practices of it in the After Effects software. I really appreciate that he has taken time out of his day to make these videos possible for us. Now there is a few things while watching these videos that I looked into further and Ill share with you what that is in a moment. First, let me show you some notes I took while watching the video…..
I even made my own little preview to see what Squash & Stretch would look like….
After making the above preview I gave myself the concept of what I would like to do for my 12 Principles of Animation. I am going to make little demos like this one, maybe with different shapes or faces and combine them into one video where I show off the 12 principles.
Now, while I was watching Chris’s screen recordings I could see that he had some windows or settings in his After Effects program that I didn’t recognize. I know we have gone over plug-ins and scripts before but sometimes life as your attention at others things and that information you get doesn’t always sitck which would lead one into learning the importance of practice lol. Now, it wasn’t until I looked into what Motion V2 was that I was like “Oh yeah! They have scripts to make things like animating in After Effects way easier!!” In his videos he was making the anchor point just immediately go to the center of a shape layer and I was like dang thats so intuitive. You could be saying, “Lance you can just press the shortcut for it!” but let me show you this video that will show you the true power of Motion V2…..
I have to say I really appreciate this above video. He get’s straight to the point and does it in a very simple and straight forward manner. And here is some notes that I took during this video….
I really like this script because not only can I center the anchor point but i can also adjust it to the other points on the shape layer.
After looking into this script it lead me to look into the other two scripts (that I could see of lol) that he had in his After Effects software.
Here is a video explaining what “zl_ExplodeShapeLayers” is….
This is a very powerful and effective tool. I wish I would have had this tool before I did my portfolio ad project. It would have made breaking those pieces up so simple from one AI file vs the multiple I made. But that is the cool thing about this field is you are never not learning something new.
and here is a video describe the “Decompose Text” script…..
This is also another tool I wish I would have had during the animation process of my portfolio ad project. Possibly when I get the feedback from it on Monday I might have another opportunity to use it. Definitely recommend getting it.
Other than that I will leave you with a couple of books that he also recommended….
“The Illusion of Life”
Disney Animation
Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston
“The Animators Survival Kit”
Richard Williams
Director of Animation ‘Who Framed Roger Rabbit’
Well, that is all I have for you today. I look forward to sharing more with you in the near future. Until then make sure you take care of your self and stay safe out there.
12 Principles of Animation Project Hey, I hope you are all doing well in the time of this COVID-19 stuff going on.