Silent Movie: Development

Silent Movie: Devloping Timelines

Since the last session I have taken the 5 Ideas I think will look best on screen and mapped them across timelines, thinking about the duration different key frames will be on screen and how my ideas will work best when considering time.

I found doing this task has really helped me to consider my ideas for a motion graphic less as a piece of animation but more as a piece of film.

Here's a few pictures of my sheets;

Adobe After Effects Tutorial III

Keyframe Interpolation

The pen tool in Adobe After affects works in the same fashion as the same tool in illustrator working with anchor points to create a line of motion. The Convex Vertex pen converts curves into set points.

Using the Keyframe Interpolation window you are given the options editing and changing what happens before and after a Keyframe. When working with motion it converts movement into keyframes.

Before Hold Interpolation

When changing a number of anchor points using the keyframe interpolation window, the hold interpolation when working with motion removes the dots from the motion path. The keyframes in the timeline change shape, to show they have been converted to hold.

Note to self: The number of dots on a line within after effects represent Frames per second, the more dots on a line the longer something with take to move the fewer dots the quicker it will take.

After Hold Interpolation

When working between Illustrator and After effects you can use a shape or path from illustrator copied to a keyframe enabled layer in after effects to create a path of motion. 

To create a solid layer that isn't just a square as in the previous screen shots a mask is used and shapes from illustrator can be copied across to use. Mask Options;

Silent Movie: What I've learnt since the Timeline workshop

What Problems did I encounter?

During the sessions I encountered numerous problems, the main one being my consideration for the amount of time I was mapping my sequence to. I found that working with the 4th dimension (time) was alot more difficult than I had previously thought, solely down to the amount of maths involved figuring out how long something with be on screen for, at what point will it appear and how many frames will stretch across.


What Information did I need.

Before starting any motion graphic the first thing needed to begin is a time limit, I've realized that without a real understanding of the amount of time you are working with you can't put a pen to paper. I hadn't weighed up how short 5 seconds of time was to work with until looking at how my frames worked across a timeline.

I needed to know how quickly the effects on objecst would work on screen, for example how fast a piece of type moves left to right across the screen. This could for example be literally any time span between 0-5 seconds ( for the limitations I'm working to), without knowing this its hard to position the key frames on a timeline.

Silent Movie Brief : Crit

In today's session we were split into groups of 2 and set the task of critting each others sequences giving us the chance to find out some of the things we may have not yet considered. The main things learnt from the session were;

- Colour consideration? What colours am I going to go ahead with? will this be conssistent across my 5 sequences?

-3D, will my 3d be produced in photoshop or just in after effects?

-Perspective. What perspecitive will each sequence be viewed from, how will the viewing point change as the sequence progresses?

-Will the starting frame and ending frame be blank?

Silent Movie Brief : Lorraines Task 1

Today Lorraine set us the task of using our 5 favourite sequences we'd came up with to create a few more drawing sheets to represent how action safe grids work and how the placement of keyframes would work within our sequence. This helped to visualize when actions would begin in relation to time and how long the duration of each effect would last.

I was really happy with the development of my 3D drawing within my frames, I've adapted a couple of my ideas so that they are much more visually interesting in comparison to my previous ideas.

When working on A2 and A3 sheet I was starting to loose interest as the same format so I experimented below making my sequence fold out so I could view each individual frame on its own rather than viewing them all at the same time.

Overall it got me thinking about when and where I would need to map out my key frames when within after effects. There's places where I will need my word to move at its quickest within the frame and then there's places where I want my word to move the slowest within the sequence, this take definitely helped me to visualize this.

Silent Movie Brief : Working with timelines

With our 25 screen grabs we were asked to produce a timeline showing how the frames progress to an ending considering their position along a scale of time.  The video I was working with was 1.02 long so dividing these figures down to fit on a scale proved to be much more difficult that I thought. I need to get grips with basic maths haha.

I found this task really interesting in terms of figuring out how quickly an action moves across frames, thinking about time and the way I want to make things move is definitely making me weigh up how I would produce my work digitally.

A couple of pictures from the session;

Silent Movie Brief : Studio Workshop Task 2

Produce a series of sheets to communicate 5 possible sequences for each word you have, 5 x 5 sequences.

1. Use the entire word
2. Use 3 pens & 1 colour
3. Set of 25 mini screen Grabs from a video based on Kinetic type. (25 equally spaced screen shots and 25 from significant happenings within the video)
   
   My 25 screen grabs for the task are on my design context blog please refer to this link;
   
   http://w-cotterill1013-dc.blogspot.com/
   
   For each sheet I produced I took one theme from my previous work and began to develop it across 5 by 5 frames slightly changing the idea with each sequence I produced.
   
   I wasn't too happy with all my ideas because of them appearing to be quite bland, However I'm not yet a genius on Adobe After Effects yet so getting to grips with the software first would be something to consider before jumping straight in the deep End.
   
   My favourite word to work with was drop because of how many characteristics It could relate to, the word drop can mean numerous things other than its most obvious. The typeface I chose to use for Collide was Bebas Neue as the characters are strong and sterdy and the colours.

I found annotating my work with notes that were important to me rather than worrying about who was going to read them really helped. When you're not writing for an audience or considering who's going to be looking at it I found I could be much more personal in terms of discussing what was going on within my frames.

 I really enjoyed working with drop shadow and 3d lettering, this transforms the frame from being a flat shape to instead being a containing that you can peer into. I would definetly like my 5 final outcomes to use some sort of 3 dimensional form however I'm not too sure how this would happen when working digitally.

Silent Movie Brief : Studio workshop II

After completing the first task we got set the task of producing a 5 by 5 set of frames with one letter from our chosen word following a set of different rules/instructions relating to the way we worked within the frame.

I used to letter D to represent the word drop changing its scale, dimension and form to relate to the characteristics of my word. I used themes like having the D dripping like paint, dropping from the top to the bottom of the frame etc. I really enjoyed this task as usually when designing for print or digital the frame you are working with is always going to be fixed, looking at the fourth dimension that being time really interests me.

The last Idea I started to develop on the sheet above was my most innovative and successful idea, I tried to make the letter D's ascender fall like a bridge into the middle of the letter.

With the sheet above we were looking at how changing the position of a letter within a frame can communicate a certain feel, working with the letters falling from top to bottom and left to right crossing the boundaries of our frame.