WORKSHOPS;

Unfortunately I was unable to upload the results of the workshops, instead I’ll show some print screen shots and write about the processes and my thoughts on their impact to my animation.

AFTER EFFECTS BATMAN LOGO

This was my first ever After Effects tutorial. The task was to make it fly in, spin and then fly out. This wasn’t as daunting as I initially thought and it introduced me to the transform options of rotating etc and key framing. It eased me into After Effects and helped a lot.

AFTER EFFECTS PARENTING AND THE PUPPET TOOL

For this tutorial we had to animate a 2-D character. We did this by parenting the body parts to other body parts to make them follow each other and move as one. We then learnt how to use the puppet tool and this was basically selecting the joints on the body where we wanted it to move such as knew, elbow etc. These were both good techniques and I will try and use the puppet tool to move the tentacle in my animation. The idea of using a character in my first ever animation is far too complex but hopefully just the tentacle arm will be achievable.

AFTER EFFECTS 3-D LAYERS, LIGHTS, CAMERAS AND TEXT

This After Effects tutorial was more difficult than the previous as it involved firstly removing Spiderman from his cityscape background. I learnt a lot from doing this as I didn’t know how to feather the edges when selecting or how to spot heal the background to blend it in. We then made him move from the top left to bottom right using the position tool and others we had previously learnt. I then learnt how to add 3-D elements such as cameras and lights to give a dramatic realistic effect. I shall defiantly use lights in my animation as it creates mood.

AFTER EFFECTS GREEN SCREENING AND MOTION SKETCHING

When I first heard we were doing green screening the process seemed advanced and ‘Hollywood’ but to my surprise and joy it was simple and enjoyable. We experimented doing it in two different ways. The first was by creating a mask around the man’s head using the pen tool and then moving the points throughout the sequence to make sure no green could be seen as the head moved. The second was using the key light effect and high-lighting the green of the background to remove it then replacing it with a different background.

After that we did motion sketching and this involved creating text and a path trail for it to follow. It was simple and really effective. To this we added a shape and changed the size to make it increase and decrease throughout the sequence. This made me think that this technique could be used to make my boat move as it could achieve a nice fluidity bobbing back and forth in the sea.

STOP MOTION- I Can Animate

This was a really fun and simple workshop. The programme I Can Animate is very simple in comparison to After Effects and therefore was quick and easy to learn. However the time consuming aspect of stop motion is its downfall. We produced a Tetris game using Lego and this meant repeatedly moving the Lego pieces down slightly. I could of done my animation using stop motion but I felt it didn’t fit my storyboard as it couldn’t provide justice to splashing waving and fluidity.