First Animation

My brief outlined that I had to create a 30 second animation using 2 dimensional figures on Adobe After effects. On the previous interaction project I had used Photoshop to design most of my images in which I have used quite often before so I had no trouble using the software however after effects was new to me.  I had never used the program before so at first it took me a while to get a grasp of how things work. Once I figured out the basics of how to move pictures and around and thus create the animation it all became a lot easier. On the first day of the project we went out in groups to take photographs, which we would use for our project. We went to one of the university buildings where the walls and floors were white. This would make it easier to cut out and manipulate the pictures later on.  During the first lesson the lecturer talked about different styles and shown us some examples in which she mentioned comic books. As a fan of comic books this immediately stuck in my head as an idea. Originally I had wanted to make the animation into a scrolling comic book strip but as I was inexperienced with the program I was coming across a few complications. If I had more time and knowledge I may have been able to do it. I scrapped that idea but kept with the comic book and instead had the animation zoom into the comic book cover and go from there. As I was originally just experimenting with the program I never really planned my animation. I just went with the flow and added to it where necessary when an idea came into my head. I believe this is more so because I didn’t know how to use the program so I was learning as I went along and with the time restriction on the project I did not want to spend half of it learning how to use the program.  This goes against my normal design process where I like to plan and sketch ideas. I did do a bit of research on comic book covers at the start but that’s as far as it went. If I had planned from the start I probably could have avoided some of the problems that come up the end when I shown my 30-second animation to my teacher as she mentioned some inconsistencies with the styles used. After taking this criticism and making some improvements I am happy with the 30-second animation I have.

Below is my first attempt at the 30 second animation , and then my refined version with improvements. Enjoy:)

V1

V2