Prior to the session we were asked to bring an asset with us, a design of a character or object made in Illustrator which we could then animate. Depending on Illustrator skill level your character could be complex or simple but I chose to create a simple illustration of a bird:
For each part of the illustration we wanted to animate in After Effects, we had to save this to a different layer:
After this I then named the layers to make it easier to identify each section when I imported the illustration in to After Effects.
My illustration in After Effects:
To get my illustration in to AE I chose the correct file and then selected retain layer size, and deselected sequence button. I then made the background transparent by clicking the checkerboard icon so that I could see all my assets.
We were then asked to use anchor points on each of our layers apart from the main body layer. The anchor points would be at the the main hinge point where the asset would move from when animated. To move the anchor point I selected the dotted rectangle with a diamond icon.
Parenting
We were then taught about parenting; the action of connecting one layer and object to another layer and object. To do this you drag the spiral icon in the parent column to the layer you want to be the 'parent' - the layer you want the selected layer to follow around. I made the main body of my bird the parent layer to all other layers.
The next thing we looked at was using key frames.
To activate a key frame we had to select the stopwatch icon, which then would mean a diamond shape would appear on the timeline. We then selected and dragged the keyframes to certain points on the timeline, and to create a motion loop we copy and pasted what we had done to fill the rest of the timeline to get 10 seconds of footage.
To speed up motion, the key frames need to be closer together; to slow down motion, the key frames should be further apart. Using this we started to animate our character and making sure 1 layer worked correctly before animating the rest. I found this part of the session fairly straightforward and enjoyed animating the different layers and seeing them move all together when playing back the timeline.
Then we looked at the Position property, and using the 'jump' effect by selecting all the key frames and toggle holding the key frames. You could then modify the motion path created. After this we covered the Scale property and looked at the two different scale options - the x and y values.
We then created a new comp, set the frame rate to 25 fps with a duration of 10 seconds, and dragged our character to the new comp. We had to then create a background colour - a solid shape the same size as the comp, which I coloured blue to create a 'sky' background as I felt it appropriate for my character/object of a bird. For the foreground we created another shape the same size as the comp but a different colour, for the character to 'stand' on - I made mine green to reference grass. We were then asked to select to different textures and apply these to the background and foreground. We then learnt about trackmats and how they convert layers to masks/mats. I tried out a few textures but found that the effects were not very subtle and didn't work well so opted to leave the foreground and background just as a colour. We then rendered our compositions and uploaded the low resolution version to vimeo.
Here is mine:
Overall I am fairly happy with how my animation worked out, the movement could be smoother and maybe could have been a bit faster though. I mostly found the workshop quite easy to understand, which I think was because I made sure to write down Sara's instructions as she said them, and then reflect back and carry out the tasks, rather than try and do the task as we were being told what to do, as the instructions were quite lengthy and a bit challenging I found in some places.
