My final After Effects workshop was held today, with Sara producing another animation. For the final session, we were to create a ten second film, using an object that would fly through the sky, from the right side to the left. At the end of designing our object and adding effects to our personal animations, we collected each students video, and produced one final, four minute movie that included every students flying object/animal.
I brought my flying object to the lesson with me, I created it using Illustrator, and produced a butterfly. Starting out, I traced the shape of an existing photograph, then added colour, and a lot of detail to the wings. As you can see, the patterns inside the wings are soft - I created a feather look, using an inner glow on each segment, as well as the smaller circles around the edges. The colours are warm tones of orange and yellow, not too bright for the black body of the butterfly. I was happy to use this in my animation, it also faced the left side, which is the direction it should be flying once I set up my animation.
I brought my flying object to the lesson with me, I created it using Illustrator, and produced a butterfly. Starting out, I traced the shape of an existing photograph, then added colour, and a lot of detail to the wings. As you can see, the patterns inside the wings are soft - I created a feather look, using an inner glow on each segment, as well as the smaller circles around the edges. The colours are warm tones of orange and yellow, not too bright for the black body of the butterfly. I was happy to use this in my animation, it also faced the left side, which is the direction it should be flying once I set up my animation.
To start the video process, I set up a workspace in After Effects, and coloured the background in a dark blue. This blue was a default colour for us to use, it would be used throughout the whole finale film so the background for every students flying object would stay the same throughout the three minute movie. Once this was set, I imported my butterfly, making sure each layer that I wanted to move separately, was clearly labelled. I had the body, the left wing, right wing, and anteneyes all on different layers, ready for me to start adding effects. For an object to move across the screen, throughout the ten seconds, the positioning, anchor points, scale, and rotation settings could all be changed. I had a problem with trying the move my wings correctly, I then realised my butterfly had a 3D look rather than just a flat shape, so I changed each of the wings to 3D, giving me other options and ways to rotate my layers. I have shown the X, Y and Z rotation options below - I then used my own knowledge and practice to work out which of the options I needed to adjust to make my wings flutter in the right direction, on the right angle. I have the timeline for one of my wings open below. Key frames have been placed throughout the ten seconds for each of the rotation settings, at a speed I thought worked well.
As well as submitting the movement of the wings, I needed it to fly across the screen, which was a original given task. I created I null object to attach my butterfly to, I then used anchor points to move my butterfly with from one side to the other, setting one key frame at the beginning and one at the end. As well as seeing the butterfly fly in a curved movement (using the anchor bars along the movement line) I wanted it to get smaller as it got closer to the left side. This gave the effect of the butterfly flying into a distance, as it was facing towards a distance anyway which made it easier. So to make this work, I changed the scale of the whole butterfly, slowly decreasing the size as it got to the ten second mark.
I was finished before the end of the lesson, so to improve my animation, I produced a rotation for the full butterfly. This gave a swooping effect and added more movement that equals to a realistic butterfly. I also duplicated my butterfly so I have two, however I changed the movement of the second butterfly, creating a separate curve on the null object, and started it a few seconds after, so they both flew in at different times.
I have added a lot of my own techniques into this animation and I am very pleased with the overall 3D looking outcome. I rendered this movie to add onto my Vimeo site, the animation is shown below. I have also linked the full film that my group put together.
Butterflies from Emily-Beth Phillips on Vimeo.
Group B Finale - 16:40 from Motion-go on Vimeo.
