Animation

This week in the workshop we created our own vector animations. I started by making a quick vector in illustrator as seen below. Next I organised each element of the illustration into separate layer groups, before importing the file into After Effects. I later went back to the animation and decided to add the background image.

 

Once in After Effects I decided which elements I wished to animate, I chose the head of the fox and its tail. 

To animate the tail I used the 'ripple' effect. This manipulated the image to create the illusion that the tail was wagging.  I feel that this effect wasn't the right fit and to improve this animation I should make it less subtle and find a way to make it seem more realistic.

To animate the head I used the 'rotation' option under the transform tools and created markers at certain frames. I believe this worked well. I later experimented with the addition of a ladybird flying in a figure 8, this would be something the fox would be following. However, I decided not to include this as I felt that it didn't work well and needed further refinement,  something I did not have the time in the workshop to do.

Fox Animation from Sarah Walker on Vimeo.

After the workshop I decided to have a play around in After Effects and Illustrator to see if I could create an animation that was slightly more complex and animated more things. As I am new to this I thought it would be a useful exercise to help me get more familiar with the software. This is the animation that I created:

ANNIMATION 2 from Sarah Walker on Vimeo.

Additionally this inspired me to go back and reattempt my second brief, a book trailer. I decided to use a different book, 'Martian'.