Week 7 Tut: MUSIC!!!

Yep, so this week's tut was for us to mess around with some music and stuff, and create some elements that will change according to the music...

Messed around a bit with some of the stuff Paul showed us in class... and added that Audio Wave thingy for the fun of it.

The track is Square 1 by Jemex from their album, From There To Here. It's available under Creative Commons License at http://www.jamendo.com/en/album/19298

This is just a simple animation. Enjoy the track though, I think it's real good~.

New Discovery!!!

I still remember the first lecture. I went in, I sat down, and I panicked.

Coz I've never done Animation / Motion Graphics before.

I can't even make my stick man walk in flash animations.

So.

I REALLY (like really really) PANICKED.

Thought I was gonna screw up for sure.

 And ...

6 weeks later...

My first assessment due.

And I COULD ANIMATE STUFF!!!!!

So yeah... I'm not that bad at animated stuff after all... =p... although I could definitely do much much better.

I guess having taken the time to explore AE and messing around with some of the functions, animation using AE isn't too hard, just time consuming, like all other design related stuff (even photoshop can be extremely time consuming).

I wouldn't say I'm a fast learner, though I think I managed to pick up AE in quite a reasonably short amount of time, probably due to the fact that this time, I actually have some sort of guidance, unlike previously when I taught myself everything I knew on Illustrator and Photoshop.

Looking forward to the rest of the tuts and the final assessment!

I've kind of gotten a rough idea of where I wanna head towards with the final assessement. Since I've got all these drawings lying around waiting to be turned into a book or something. I bet my muses wouldn't mind either. Plus, there's that added benefit of not having to trawl through the net looking for Creative Commons images to use. =)

Since my first assessment is about didi dreaming, my final shall be about the first ever character in my drawing series: iki!

I'm gonna tell iki's story in 2 mins. Doable? Definitely. First step? Find paper ball animation stuff online (I wanna open the scene with a paper ball un-crumpling itself).

dream.

dream. from Vivienne Koh on Vimeo.

Yeah!! I finished my animation assessment!! here's the completed vid! 

(p/s: updated the link to the vimeo one instead of blogger version)

Week 6 Tut!!!

Ooo... Graffiti!!!

I like street art. Graffiti is street art. And now I get to do my own "Graffiti" on AE!!!

Not too hard, just tedious. But hey, at least I won't get into trouble with this particular Graffiti piece.

Credits: 

Pac-man graffiti: http://blog.shankbone.org/tag/graffiti/ 

"Joaquin Phoenix is a Poser" graffiti: http://www.streetsofdublin.com/wp-urban/archives/62154

Drawing Swirls...

I know I wanna do a drawing thing-a-magic with my assessment, and, after exploring the write-on animation effect Paul told me about, found it a bit tedious that I've got to add a text layer and all before I can do my drawing.

So, decided to hunt around for more info on how to do that drawing thingy...

And came across this site:
http://layersmagazine.com/animated-swirls-in-adobe-after-effects.html

Simple instructions, simple way to do my drawing thing!

Here's a practice vid to show how it looks like after following all the steps...

Inspiring Animation

Really liked this motion graphic piece. Loved the message it sent, and it's got some styles that I'd like to use in my piece!

Inspiring Animation by Adcom from Herryanto Siatono on Vimeo.

Week 5 Tut: Duck & Cover (and hell)

When I saw what we were gonna be doing for tut this week, I got really really excited. Until I actually started doing it. Because then it wasn't fun. Because it was tedious. And I hate the cyclist in my video now. He was horrible to animate. *faints*

 All graphics used in this video are original!!!

At this point, I'm saluting all the people who animate stuff daily and provide us with all that wonderful animations... because I think I could die if I had to do this everyday.

As fun as creating animations & motion graphics can be, it's really tedious work. You burn hours and even days trying to get this stuff out, and at the end, it's a really short clip compared to how much time you actually spent getting it to work well.

One of the issues I had was the cyclist. It looked and worked fine in the raw composition, but once I exported it, that lil' bugger SHRANK. Up till now I have no idea what happened during the export process. I wound up rendering the raw animation without the sound first, then re-exporting it with the sound added, and it was alright. So I guess that's good.

Links!

Found this site while searching for some cool stuff I could use for my assessments. It's got some sweet links to a buncha animation stuff. A couple are from video copilot.

http://www.noupe.com/tutorial/50-excellent-adobe-after-effects-tutorials.html

Week 4 Tut: Cheesy Mad Mack's Ad!

Ok, so this week's tut was a cheesy ad for "Mad Mack's" (do they really exist??)

So's without further ado, here's the 20s Vid.

Not too hard to do, but I think the worst part of this is the masking (again) and trying to make it 20 seconds (on first try it was only 10) without it feeling draggy...

Credits to: 

Blender Image - Wheredidyoubuythat.com (http://www.flickr.com/photos/wheredidyoubuythatcom/3902957621/sizes/l/in/photostream/)

Hair Dryer - Shanon Phantom (http://www.flickr.com/photos/phantomm_/4898730108/sizes/l/in/photostream/)

Toaster - Massdistraction and her little boy *he gave the toaster eyes and a mouth* (http://www.flickr.com/photos/sharynmorrow/352144488/sizes/o/in/photostream/)

More "Research" !!!

I just *suddenly* recalled a video I once watched maybe last year or something like such, that actually might have been the trigger for me to come up with my idea (once the "storyboard" is up you'll spot the similarities).

Loved the vid, loved the crystals too (hey, I LIKE shinies....)

PowerPivot Motion Graphics

Saw this while messing around on youtube trying to find inspiring stuff. Looks like something I might consider.

 

And here's the best part: I found a link that teaches you how to animate the paper guy!!! 

http://iaian7.com/aftereffects/DynamicPaperCutouts

The Wolf Motion Cycles

Considering that an Aardwolf and a wolf have very similar anatomy, I'm guessing a motion cycle for a wolf might work well for an Aardwolf?

Hmm, looks close enough to an Aardwolf's motion. Think I'll keep this as a reference.

Next step:

STORY BOARD!!! (I love this part).

KIB 105:Interstitials

Been cracking my head over what to do for the first assessment. Am suppose to come up with a commercial of sorts that's promoting something (anything actually), and initially, I couldn't really think of much to do. And I happened to glance at my name card.

Then I kinda thought to myself, you know, maybe I'll do something for me. For Aartwolf (since for the past year there's only one page to it. That says "Site Under Construction". So maybe after it's been submitted and graded and stuff, I could embed it in the website, then lead to the "Site Under Construction" page. Hmm.)

Anyway, I though it'd be fun to do something a tad whimsical. Something like this:

Well, it's cool isn't it?

Will probably try to attempt something like that, but without the human input I guess?

Week 3 Tut: Jump!

Today's tut we had to make some guys from some pictures jump. And to do that we had to do a very VERY VERY tedious masking exercise...coz AE doesn't have that wonderful thing called the magic wand (i LOVE photoshop)...

So after spending god only knows how many hours doing the masks, we had to animate the people (and a dog) and make them jump in the landscape. And to make it that tiny bit real-er (ok i invented that word)... i took the liberty to mask the graffiti wall as well (it's the fastest to mask out of everything)

I know I only need 5 guys/gal/dog to be jumping but, since I'm at it, might as well go crazy.

On hind sight, maybe I should have changed the image in the background to something simpler and plain as well, coz some of the jumping guys just look plain odd with the background.

Credits:
Éole - http://www.flickr.com/photos/eole/3306193932/sizes/o/
Éole - http://www.flickr.com/photos/eole/2342256254/sizes/o/
mikebaird - http://www.flickr.com/photos/mikebaird/2678307443/sizes/o/
anirudhkoul - http://www.flickr.com/photos/anirudhkoul/2523651888/sizes/l/
jumpinglab - http://www.flickr.com/photos/jumpinglab/2633227714/sizes/l/
anarchosyn - http://www.flickr.com/photos/24293932@N00/2707596343/sizes/l/