Digital Photography and Imaging | Week 10

25/10/2021 / Week 10

Shofwa Alyadiena / 0350019

Digital Photography and Imaging / Bachelor of Design (Hons) in Creative Media

 Lecture 

In our tenth week, Mr. Fauzi started the briefing with an introduction to After Effects. After Effects is sort of an animation application under Adobe. The first method of animating Mr. Fauzi explained to us was by using keyframes. Keyframes are used to determine the positions of where we want the element to be. Using two keyframes as first and last will result in the element automatically transitioning from first to second position that we determined. Mr. Fauzi continued to show us demos and tutorials on how to do certain transformations using those keyframes.

Other than that, we were reminded to keep our files organized for our own convenience. 

 Introduction to After Effects 

To further understand how compositions and layers work, we are given the task to complete a short looped animation of the file given to us.

Fig. 1.1 Importing PSD File (30/10/2021)

The first thing I did was import the file to After Effects to kickstart the exercise. Following the tutorial, I edited the import settings from "footage" to "composition - retain layers".

Fig. 1.2 Layers in After Effects (30/10/2021)

I then looked at the layers and figured out what I wanted to do. For the typewriter, I followed Mr. Fauzi's tutorial and applied a mask to make it seem as if it appeared from the bottom. 

Fig. 1.3 Keyframes of each layers (30/10/2021)

After finishing the tutorial video, I experimented on my own with how I wanted it to look like. I moved on to the fencer, making it come in from the right and sway back and forth, then leaving the same direction from where it came. 

For the shark, I copied the tutorial video and have it come out from the bottom right, and appear like it's swimming in the middle of the composition, then zooms out to the top left, opposite of where it came from. 

Last, I adjusted the opacity of the projector for the first few seconds to make it seem as if it's struggling to reach full view, then disappearing in a similar manner. Finally, I realize I forgot to change the duration of the animation; so I went to 'composition settings' and made it last for 15 seconds, and proceeded to render it as an animation, because H264 wasn't an option.

Fig. 1.4 Final Composition Animation