Description
In our group discussions for our animation piece for the city project I suggested the idea of having a title sequence for our short animations so that it’s based around the theme of the city and show our topic. Given our lessons in Intro to the making of I thought it was best to use Adobe After effects as it would be a multi plane based piece and at the same time give me perspective into motion animation using a method recently taught to us in Intro to the making of on Monday morning. I had started this on Tuesday evening drawing, inking and digitally colouring the buildings and planes in Photoshop and importing them into After Effects for animation. However there was a problem and that was not remembering the process of linking the camera to the null object for the camera control or the timing of the animation itself. I asked for Annabeths advice and she informed me that the key was the swirl symbol in the toolbar that needed to be dragged and connected to the camera and null object. Upon receiving this advice I applied it to my work and I was getting back on track with the animation. I spaced out the keyframes of the offsetting and the zooming out of the camera in the composition. I repositioned the titles and background frames if needed and I felt like the piece was finished so I saved the file and a separate file to give to the rest of the group I proceeded to render the piece however there was a problem the render failed at the first few seconds.
 |
| sketches |
I wondered why and thought it had something to do with file space so I deleted any after effects files that I didn't need but not before backing them up to a pen drive. I tried again to no avail and so I looked on Youtube and at the following link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OoGWe-dwdgk I found an answer to my problem and that was in the cache and files which needed to be emptied and once done I could render again. However the rendering took a long time so I saved it for tomorrows lesson. The next morning I figured out the issue and decided to cut down the
 |
| Original sketches |
 |
| original sketches |
 |
| Colouring and adjusting in Clip Studio and Photoshop 5/12/17 |
 |
| 15/12/17 |
 |
| 5/12/17 |
 |
| Title in 3D 5/12/17 |
 |
| Colour balancing my work 5/12/17 |
Feelings
I was feeling rather excited as this would be one of the first motion animations that I’ve done for an element of the process such as a title sequence. I felt it could give me some insight to my future motion animation pieces for my graphic novel short pieces. As I worked through the process over the past few days I felt that everything had to be timed correctly and the spacing of the key frames would help to make it look a little realistic such as the offsetting of the clouds or zooming out of the background to the foreground. In the start of the process I began to feel anxious as I couldn’t remember one of the details of the camera control in After Effects and this was embarrassing as I was taught to do this on Monday morning but couldn’t remember how to do it the day after. Upon asking for advice from Annabeth on this matter I was feeling relieved that I asked her how to link the two elements together via the swirl symbol on the program. Near the end of the process I was rather nervous that I couldn’t get the piece rendered in time for tomorrow ready to show to the group, and I was feeling that the timing of the animation needed to be altered to speed up the rendering time.
When I was having problems with the rendering of the animation such as its failure to render fully I was starting to feel upset that I may not be able to render any future projects that I may have in After Effects in the future. However grief disappeared as I found a solution to the problem.
By the end of the animation I was feeling a sense of relief as the title was finished at last giving me the time to work on the short animation story itself.
 |
| composing in After effects 6/12/17 |
 |
| 6/12/17 |
 |
| Adjusting timing and layering 7/12/17 |
 |
| 7/12/17 |
 |
| 7/12/17 |
Evaluation
Looking back on the project I would think there were some good and bad sides to it, one good element was using the Bar sheets from Animation 101 to do the timing and positioning of the animation before executing it into After Effects. One other element was the use of modern buildings in the fore ground of the multi plane piece as it demonstrated the theme of the piece and for doing measurements of the background sections and even over lapping my sketched pieces to make sure the silhouettes are aligned and could be seen in the final piece. The colouring and shading was a good element as well since using newly learned shading techniques from my Pinterest board were very useful and made this look a lot like cel animation and modern day 2D animation.
There were some bad elements to the project and that was the inability to remember how to link the null object to the camera for camera control. One of the biggest difficulties in this was rendering the final piece as the rendering wouldn’t respond in the render queue and just failed at the first few seconds.
Analysis
Looking at the situations in this animation piece I could make some sense that After Effects does have its limits and that its Cache needed to be emptied before I could render again and that other people had this same issue. It made sense to do a title sequence in after effects as this would be a teaching experience in using the program and using a more recent learned technique in multi plane animation would show how I’m using elements taught to me in the sessions. When facing a problem in the camera and null object I could see the sense of asking for Annabeths advice on the matter to find a possible solution to the problem and make the necessary corrections. In terms of the rendering the animation the more logical solution would be to cut down the time of the animation to a minute or a few seconds keeping in mind the limitations of Instagram in our final submission.
Conclusion
Looking back on the project whilst there was a few issues in the development in the animation process and the lack of knowledge in the linking of camera and null layers I would think that I created a very good piece of multilane animation in the title sequence. I would think that I could’ve added music or sound effects to this sequence but I felt it best to leave that element for when the whole animation was brought together as a final outcome ready for submission.
Action Plan:
If I was given the chance to do this again I would’ve asked further questions into how I would link the camera to the null object in the layers so that I wouldn’t be struggling in that element of the process. One other thing would be to keep in mind the time and size of the document in terms of the rendering as I realised that the bigger a document is the more time it would take to render and I didn’t want to risk any damage to the computer or my program as the cooling system was working overtime to render the piece.
Comments
Post a Comment