after effects geometry test

In this process and production session we were developing after effects skills by making a short ten second animation which contained 10 one second compositions of fast paced motion. The overall finish is to resemble that of an ident or of a visual introduction to a video.

Firstly we needed shapes that would form the main animations in the piece. These were advised to work best when they were more simplistic.  These on the left were quickly formed in adobe illustrator, just using the pre-set shapes and creating a simple triangle.

However on further reflection of the source material, I thought the striking factor of the designs was due to the restricted colour pallet.

Therefore I chose to remove the orange coloured shape and just have a pallet of four colours; teal, pink, purple and white. These are seen above.


In this planning stage we were also encouraged to design how we would want stripes to look if these were incorporated in to the project. And we also had to set the canvas sizes to ones which would be suitable for the after effects screen dimensions of HD TV. 1080p by 920p.

Here is the full composition set up. While the whole project would be 10 seconds, each part would just be one second. The frame rate was set at 25, and the dimensions also adjusted accordingly. 

After this I started the visual elements of this design. To do this the file containing geometric shapes was imported on to the window and as each shape was on a new layer, on this software to they were all manipulatable due to being isolated form one another.

 Above is the creation of the venitican blind effect, which would create something similar to the effect planned. I had never used this effect before so this was something I needed to understand as there was a few one second compositions that I would like to have this effect. 2 layers of coloured solids were added, and then using the tools bar of options on the right hand side this could be edited and manipulated to vary the stripe effect. 

Above are the other examples of where this feature was used. To stimulate high visual interest I wanted each of the stripe effects to be different. For example in rotation or in width or in speed and direction of transitional movement. These could be edited on the timeline at the foot of the page, by using the timer icon to set the edit, move it and then re set when the effect was to end. 

Next I was experimenting with an effect than can be seen on the right.
Here the circle from the geometry illustrator file was added to a new composition.
To create the spread out starring effect seen below, a wiggle was added to the shape.
This was then magnified and emphasised by smoothing out and extending the points.

However this look doesn't fit with the shapes I had intended to use, so while this was a skill to learn, it isn't seen in the final render.
A smaller wiggle effect was used later on in the edit with a fast paced composition solid colour changing in the background.

Here is the wiggle effect being used still on a circle, but on a composition which is incorporated in the final output.

Firstly I significantly stretched the circle in the teal colour, to cover majority of the screen area. In doing this it means that when the shape wiggle is activated it's effect is suitable just towards the corners.

I thought this would appear better as it was less distracting than the other outcome to using this feature.

The 'wiggler' was set on the right tool bar to 'smooth' and to a frequency of 12 per second. The higher the frequency, the quicker the movement appears.

This circle is placed on a pink solid behind, and I think the unusual contrast works well and still in keeping with the colour scheme.

Following on from this I chose to use the same pink colour on the triangle shape. 

I really liked the effect that could be generated here, as the selected shape could be edited to flick through the different colour ranges. As seen on the screenshot above, this is done by going to effect, colour correction and the hue and saturation can be edited.  I think the end effect looks great, but It would be good if there was a way to specifically pick the colours that would be displayed. As in this video it would look most effective for the colours to be the ones also contained within the colour scheme. 

To end the stream of compositions I wanted to do something similar to how the piece opened. So i returned to a similar stripe animation and colours seen firstly, and used the triangle to anchor this composition to the previous.

In the timeline below, I moved and rearranged each of the second clips to an order which meant each transitioned in to the next quite seamlessly. This could be done by colours being consistent, shapes being the same or background colours.

The type was added lastly to add some context to what the animation was about. The typeface had to be consistent to the theme without the animation alongside being able to work on each composition in the corner. 

In the opening of the piece this is large and the main focus, before gradually reducing the scale and position in order to lock in to a footer position suitable throughout. 

The overall composition can be seen below, and also on my vimeosite.

https://vimeo.com/188650785

If i was to develop this further however, I could add a sound clip to accompany the graphics, or practice further by changing the colours and animation styles to demonstrate the possibilities available.