Animation 101: Christmas break finalising submissions: 5/1/18: Adjusting lighting in After Effects: Block interaction with rigs

Whilst looking over my chosen block interaction animation as this in my view was one of my best stopmotion animations from the last few weeks of animation 101. One issue with this though was the lighting in the animation, the issue being was one of the lamps in the stopmotion studio that I was in didn't seem to work or turn on, something I would have to address with James. I then wondered if I could edit the lighting since I now had After Effects or Premier Pro which I was still learning over the Christmas break ready for the next semester. I looked in Premier first but I couldn't find anything to alter the lighting, so I searched in After Effects.

I looked around the settings and effects tabs in the software and couldn't find anything so far until I looked in the colour correction section of the effects tab in the toolbar.

I could see a tab called Brightness & Contrast, and from experience I knew this could help alter the brightness and lighting of the animation/video in the screen. I selected this and it opened a tab for me to alter the brightness and it seemed to lighten up the film and stage of the film. I fooled around with the contrast a bit but it was the brightness I was more interested in the brightness and so I adjusted it.

Once adjusted the edited video was added and rendered to the render queue. I added this to my facebook page for a second opinion from Joe as I didn't know whether I was supposed to submit the original animation or the edited one. He informed me that either one was fine as he was only looking at the animation not the quality of the animation itself. This for me was a good learning experience for me as I knew how to adjust the lighting of videos or animations that I do in the near future.

Original Animation:

Light adjusted animation: