Module 2: Animating with After Effects

Reading & Writing

In her book, Animated Storytelling: Simple Steps for Creating Animation and Motion Graphics, Liz Blazer talks about storytelling and the Three Act Structure. The Three Act Structure is the basic way most stories and other forms of communication are formed to simply and effectively get a message across.

Act 1 of the structure is the set up, establishing character(s), setting, and most importantly, the conflict. The conflict can be any obstacle in the way of the character’s goal. The story is the journey of them attempting to solve it.

Act 2 is when the character(s) try to overcome the conflict. They will usually fail the first few times in order to get the audience invested and raise the stakes. Things will build up to a tipping point until we reach Act 3.

Act 3 is the resolution. This is when everything finally comes together and the conflict is solved - or not. Depending on the theme of the story and what the message is meant to be, the characters may not achieve what they wanted. Or the conflict might be resolved in an unexpected way. Both kinds of endings can have a powerful effect on the people reading, watching, or listening to the story.

Create

For my animated introduction, the first step was writing a short script and recording my audio. I struggled to think of what to say, but I eventually settled on a few personal facts, art I like, and some other things I’m interested in. I used Audacity to record, and I improved with each take.

One thing I planned to do before I started was use Trim Paths. I learned about this effect in a past motion class and thought it would look cool to write some words like my name. I did the text in Illustrator and used the pen tool to trace over the letters. I made a red arrow with the pen tool as well. Then, in After Effects, I was able to import the files, create vector shapes, and adjust the Trim Paths settings.

I used three background images in my video. The first is some rain droplets. I wasn’t sure what to do for the beginning part, but I like rain and found a nice image that just happened to have a similar green and purple to my logo. For the paper artworks, I wanted a wooden desk to toss them on to. I found a good one, but it looked too light behind the pictures. To fix it, I added a dark brown solid on top and lowered the opacity. The final background is simply a pretty image of outer space.

Most of the video is about different art types, so I had to choose which pieces I wanted to show. For the paper ones, I used position and rotation to made them look like they were actually being tossed on the surface. The regular pictures I just slid in and out of frame. For all of them, I made sure to stagger the movements so it looked more interesting and natural.

Something I found out is that even though I tried to write my script so the video would be long enough, working with the animation and timing made it longer anyway. I ended up cutting some audio that I felt didn’t fit and breaking my recording into multiple pieces I could move around.