Taking inspiration from a previous project (I'll link it in a minute) I wanted to add a dripping effect to the goo in my Call of the Abyss video. I was very happy with the way it turned out, but as I'm now approaching the point where I have lots of videos to bring together, timing is becoming a factor. On it's own, the full clip of kinetic typography is around 9 seconds, that's probably unrealistic in terms of having it fit into my 60 second (max) video.
One consideration I had was to just focus on one word, so if the clip was panning quickly through this scene then the viewer would be able to get a grasp without having to take in a full sentence. I enjoyed doing this path by path, as opposed to the repeated-effect-on-rectangles that made the drips above.
After following Rebecca's tutorial on parallax camera movement I wanted to incorporate it into my showreel somewhere. It worked out quite nicely that I had made this ball rolling over a landscape, so I was able to create a a backdrop for it and then apply the controls for the scenery to add some movement into the scene. I'm not 100% sure about some aspects (the hills moving only after the ball/square has left, the speed of the mountain feels a bit off) but in general I'm very happy with the overall output.
Having made this logo a year or so ago, I wanted to give it a little bit of movement. The fact that it contains glasses gave me and obvious in of doing something with a blur clearing itself. I had a few issues when it came to the adjustment layer, but after a few experiments with masks, asking my tutor, and then both of us playing around with various options I ended up with a solution - at some point in my trials I had made a mask that I could shrink to envelope the whole adjustment layer before dragging the path points into the shape of the lens. After this, I thought a nice clean clock-wipe would be a nice way to clear the logo, and thankfully the effects panel had just what I wanted - huzzah!
This was one of these "It would be cool if..." moments where I wanted all the colours came out from under the first shape, and the fact that it's pink means they'll look like they're appearing from nowhere" - then I was working from a pink background and couldn't see the first segment, and had to turn it navy blue for the purposes of the build. And then the actual rotation was much easier than I anticipated. I think I forget that After Effects can allow you to move multiple objects alongside each other, and also the that I'm getting pretty good with animating so things like this are very do-able.
Putting these two together worked out very nicely. I realised when I started this section that I had two motions in the same path of the same circle, so I had some fun lining up the two motions to be in sync. I then added a second version of the pink segment so that it could grow out of the rotating shapes and give a nice finality to the loop.
The text flapping down is just a nice wee touch that I felt was necessary so it wasn't just a blunt fade for all of the text.
As I moved forward through the sequence I was considering transitions. I already had the wave and the paper peeling, but thought that putting a hard cut in would also make sense. Watching other showreels showed me that they're not as jarring as I was expecting, and it felt like I should be showcasing the fact I could do them. As well as this, I wanted to utilise some of the learning examples that I had made in the early weeks, and having the pendulums swinging across this white background made sense. When they were in place, I realised that with a few small adjustments one of the pendulums lined up perfectly with the logo. I was lucky in the timing of this, as all I had to do was stop the timeline for the logo as the red circle passed by and it looked as thought it is a well-thought out transition.
As I moved forward through the sequence I was considering transitions. I already had the wave and the paper peeling, but thought that putting a hard cut in would also make sense. Watching other showreels showed me that they're not as jarring as I was expecting, and it felt like I should be showcasing the fact I could do them. As well as this, I wanted to utilise some of the learning examples that I had made in the early weeks, and having the pendulums swinging across this white background made sense. When they were in place, I realised that with a few small adjustments one of the pendulums lined up perfectly with the logo. I was lucky in the timing of this, as all I had to do was stop the timeline for the logo as the red circle passed by and it looked as thought it is a well-thought out transition.
Looking through the list of skills I had to show I was aware that I hadn't applied any 3D assets - and the True Cycles logo lends itself well to a small change from two dimensions into three. It's a short use of 3D, but I'm new to using these effects and didn't want to let myself go overboard in applying them. It has the dual power of introducing the fact that these swinging pendulums can impact whatever is on the screen.
The fact that the pendulums are more than just secondary objects came into play when I showed my animation to my fourth year mentor. He pointed out (among a few other things) that using the pendulums for a screen-wipe would be quite effective. I had considered this much earlier on, but wasn't sure of the technique and was set on using my Edgar Wright-esque hard cut. Thankfully I took his advice, and this sweeping motion not only shaves a few seconds off the overall time (I was aware that my video was dangerously over the 60 second mark) but it leads beautifully into the next scene, keeping the direction of movement the same and giving the viewer's eyes time to sweep across the landscape before the action draws their focus.