Today we played students’ work in class and did some peer review. I got to see so much talented work and got a lot of inspiration. I received some good advice on my work as well. For the shadow of the object, I didn’t know how to keep it at the angle all along. Our tutor Jess taught me to accomplish that. Firstly, duplicate the object. After that, move it to the position you like. (notes: do not only move one key frame but all together , or it will wander around) The last step, change the mix mode to multiply so it would look more like a shadow.

oct.2

Basic idea and inspiration

I wanted to make this work a combination of my favourite elements. It turned out to be a bit abstract but I would say it was the best representative for my feelings on the first class.

There is a few elements in my mind:

• religious feeling
• mysterious
• sea/nature
• end of the world/apocalypse

I imagined a story out of this. After the apocalypse, the human culture was completely destroyed. The sea creatures began to take over the world and a new religion which honoured sea creatures was gradually formed. They would hold rituals regularly to announce the greatness of sea creatures by the seaside. And this work showed one of them.

The turbulent displacement

I tried to add a new effect called turbulent displacement, which is applied to the background of my animation, to simulate a sense of sea waves.

I also added the turbulent displacement to the spiky shape, so that it would look like a hand-drawn style.

Sea elements added

I chose a sound of sea waves and a background that looked like sea waves to illustrate a scene on the beach of the seaside. The spiky shape took the appearance of the sea urchin and the eyes were shellfish.

Additionally, I wanted to express the texture of shellfish. So I added the texture and spinning spiral into the eye shape and it ended up satisfying to me.

Sound design

Additionally, I added some sounds to my clip. Apart from the sea wave sound I downloaded, for the wandering spiky ball, I recorded a sound of rubbing carpet for it to present the uncertain motion. Also, I downloaded the sound of the bell ringing and the metal clicking for the eyes blinking to create a mysterious feeling.

source website: freesound.org

oct.1

to save files all together: file>dependencies>collect files

1. basic motion practice

At the beginning, we learned about a few movements of shapes and the effect of easy ease.

Tutor Jess gave us an After Effects file including different motion tasks for a few round shapes. For example, the one that impressed me the most was three round shapes that were moving from left to right horizontally with the same speed. The task was to add normal ease or stronger ease to the last two shapes, then learn the difference between ease-added motion and the normal one.

In conclusion, we knew the basic technique of working with After Effects and learned that easy ease in/out would make a motion look more rhythmic and nice.

2. shapes to form a self-portrait:

Firstly, I sketched a bunch of random shapes that I could think of to represent myself. (socially awkward, nervous and hesitating)

choose 3 shapes to make animation: eye/splash/spiky ball

Then I created all of these shapes with the shape layer tool and pen tool in After Effects.

Sep.25