Video and motion graphic experements

My 1st idea dinner for schmucks:

 

All my video and motion graphics research and work.

Video and motion graphics

Areas with in after effects that interest me.

I’ve been looking at video and motion graphics now with Simon we have looked in to a lot of after effects techniques. I am most interested in the cameras with in after effects and some of the 3d tracking and mapping witch we haven’t got on to yet. I think I have got the hang of using cameras because using them in after effects is practically the same as using them in real life, the principles are the same. When looking at the cameras I came across a few problems that I managed to sort out with my tutor. My first problem was that when animating my kinetic typography the camera wouldn’t have a locked starting point and when I did my animation the start would never be wear I wanted it to be.  I solved this by looking at the camera settings in the menu and found out that that the zoom was locked on this means that when I start key chaining the camera the start point moves.

Kinetic typography ideas

Some of my idea when looking at examples online were to do a comedy but when I was looking a comedy typography they weren’t the most popular so I was thinking to get a more wordy piece of audio so that there were words being fired and it keeps the piece interesting and exciting. My first idea was to dinner for schmucks and a segment out of the film that I felt was funny and would make some good kinetic typography.  After experimenting with dinner for schmucks doing the opening I found that it didn’t have that thrill and excitement factor that I wanted and I was unhappy with the audio I chose. So now after looking at other very popular types of kinetic typography I found out that the top viewed are all very wordy and quick firing. This is why I chose anchorman.

When looking at kinetic typography I looked at the way they were made and I tried to think how they made it and what makes a successful piece. The things I found out is that the successful pieces have: Fast words, Animation, excitement, plug-ins and simple texts. I want to get my text feeling like its coming strait out his mouth. I want my audience to feel connected to my typography I want my type to represent the tone the actor/actress is saying it. This means that I might have to create the text individually.

Using External Programs, Ae & Ai.

I used only two pieces of soft wear for my Kenitic Typography assignment I used Illustrator for my illustrations and paths and I also used After Effects for my main text work.

Using text

Simon and me were looking all lesson to see why it wasn’t working and we looked at making them all paths but that didn’t work out so well. So what Simon and me decided to do was:

“THERE IS NO WAY TO STOP DISTORTION” because when you import in to Ae they are being imported in a pixel format and that means when you drag them around they become pixelated hence the distortion. So what you have to do is for the text is copy the text from Ai and pasted them into text layers for Ae because when you past into After Effects as long as you do it in to a text layer it automatically becomes a vector format and this doesn’t become distorted at all. When we copied the text from Ai you need to highlight the text from Ai and make a new text layer in Ae and paste the words in one by one. The annoying thing is that all the work you have done in Ai becomes somewhat useless. Simon says add it to the blog and explain. When you put all your text into Ae you will need to make the layout again. So if for example you had made an apple with text in Ai you will need to remake it in after effects.

Using Illustrations

Also for Illustrations you will need to make them in either Photoshop of illustrator. You will need to make the canvas size around 3000px by 3000px so that you are working with a high quality image and when you import it in to Ae there is no distortion. once you have made you image you will need to save it as a PSD and a high quality one. Then when you pit it into after effects it won’t become distorted.

Using masks

I used a mask several times through out my project I used it for hiding certain parts I didn’t want people to see. So for example when using a mask I would have my object 1^st as you can see below then I would use the standard mask you can invert the mask by clicking on the invert button on the right on the mask in your time line.

The only difference inverting the mask is that when you invert everything on the outside of the mask becomes visible and when you done invert it everything inside the mask is visible so this can some times be very helpful I tent to use and inverted mask more purely because I have a lot on the screen at one time. You can see my mask in yellow, the mask needs to be bigger than the object so that none of the object shows. When you have your mask bigger than the object you can start to animate.

Using Key Frames

So now I have my mask bigger than my object I can begin to key frame my animation what I need to do is decide on a starting point then drag my timeline guide to the start point and then press the key frame button that looks like this “below.” Then ill drag my start point to my end point and key frame it again so now I have two points on my time line that look like gold stars. Them when I scrub though my time line you can see the animation take shape. Key framing is one of the easier tools to get used to.

Importing Into After Effects  

When I was importing in to Ae I found only one problem witch was never fixed, it was that when I was importing into After Effects the imported file became distorted. I worked on this till I got my head around it. I decided to make what I was importing inside after effects to stop the distortion. One of the first things you want to do when importing into after effects is make sure what ever your importing you make sure its being imported correctly I looked at this:

http://help.adobe.com/en_US/aftereffects/cs/using/WS3878526689cb91655866c1103906c6dea-7f54a.html

I found looking at this helped to me to understand exactly what and how I was meant to do things.

Exporting in After effects:

When I was exporting in Ae I used the standard files to export my project as an mp4 I wanted to export as a mov. Because I’m making an alpha channel animation but unfortunately my computers hard drive couldn’t keep up with the bitrate necessary to play back such high-quality files. That’s why I decided to make a smaller file still with good quality.