We started with finding something to base our animation on whether this be a spoken word soundtrack, a clipping from a song, or some kind of written word. Having recently watched the 2009 film Zombieland I decided I wanted to use one of the rules from the film and perhaps recreate a similar type of visual effect as they do within the film for each of the rules when it becomes relevant in the story of the film. I chose rule number 32; "Enjoy the little things". I chose this because I thought it was longer than some of the other rules and would give me more scope to be creative with the effects.
After we had decided on the content we had to create storyboards for the animation, using illustrator - which was set up to the same dimensions as After Effects (1920 px wide by 1020 px tall). I created a board for each of the different segments of my video - making 4 in total.
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| My storyboards for a more minimalist animation |
After this I then began to recreate each of these storyboards in AfterEffects, seen as my video was mainly based around the words there was no soundtrack or live action video in the background, so I began to use the text tool to copy and paste the text from Illustrator into AfterEffects. Once all this was in place I began to stagger the corresponding layers to get a better timeline of the when the elements would come into frame.
Once this step was complete I went about getting the motion and timing of each the different elements right. This was just a case of timing the entrances of the different bits of texts so that there was enough of a gap between them so that it was easy to read with a naturl flow, whilst trying not to cramp them into a shorter space of time, you have to be cautious as to not give it too much time in between that you disrupt the natural flow. The motion paths of the elements also had to be planned so that they didn't crash over each other and prevent a viewer from reading them.
I then began to experiment with various entrances effects and styles. Whilst I found some pretty cool effects to use for each of the elements, using them in conjunction with the others didn't feel right, so I chose a much simpler range of effects and animations to create a better harmony and match with the flat aesthetic of my piece.
If I had more time I would have liked to explored more of the effects to give the piece a more advanced look. I would have also liked to have reconsidered the exits of the pieces, again to give a more professional ending to the work.
