Author: Raima Sajit

After looking through the photos I had taken for this rotation, I decided that I wanted my initial concept to be slightly dark and have a sense of foreboding. Using a layer mask, I removed the background of the poles located at the back, centre and bottom of my composition. For the poles behind the building, I lowered the opacity to make the shapes seem as though they are further away from the viewer’s perpective, and make them have a slightly ominious, looming feeling over the shorter buildings. Additionally, I overlayed some shadows on the flat background image to create that effect to a larger extent.​

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The shape at the foot of the composition was used the ‘Multiply’ blending mode, which makes it look more like a shadow, and then additionally, a ‘Guassian Blur’ filter was applied for the shadow to blend in with the ground. The same was done to the shape within the reflection, however, I left it a lot more prominent, so the eyes are initally attracted to the centre of the composition. The overall image itself has both the ‘Levels’ and ‘Curves’ adjustment layers in order to manipulate the blacks and whites within the composition and add depth to certain areas (e.g. the buildings in the background).​

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The doorframe in the centre of the composition was also removed from its original image using a layer mask. I thought it would be interesting for the frame to be placed in the middle (where there was originally a staue of a man on a horse) as it has very soft, curved shapes in contrast to the rest of the composition, which has straight-cut, uniform shapes. That way, the viewer’s eyes are focused on the middle of the composition, and then starts to see the more rigid shapes around it. My intention in this is to create a sense that there is freedom in an iron-fisted, dystopian world beyond the reflection, however, the looming shape within it says otherwise. I used the blending option ‘Drop Shadow’ to create a darkness around the centre shape to aide this.​

Overall, I am pleased with the outcome of my composition, however there could be adjustments, predominantly along the bottom of the composition, which feels rather empty. If I could do this rotation again, I would focus my camera higher on the background photo so that there is more in the distance for the poles, which would make them look more threatening. This would also remove some empty, unsused space within the composition.​

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We started this rotation with a ‘straight ahead’ animation. Out of all the animating methods, this one was not too difficult, as there was more creative freedom and flow in the movement of my animation, however it was challenging keeping everything at an even scale. When I line tested, I noticed that certain aspects would grow and shrink. 

Initially, I felt as though pose to pose animation would be rather tough. When I started working on the inbetweens, it was not as difficult, granted that I constantly line tested. Overall, the method is straightforward, but suffered from having a dull process. Next time, I would go for a simpler character to save time.

In the third task, we looked at ‘arcs and motion’ and ‘timing and spacing’. Drawing out the arc shape helped greatly with making sure that both the ball and the character moved in a ‘realistic’ way. Although the animation looks simple, making sure the ball stays consistent in size all the way was quite the task.

This was not mentioned in the pdf, but the tuft of fabric connected to the character was rather difficult to animate as I was not sure how exactly it would move when the ball rolls across the frame. I ended up deciding for that tuft to just hang limpy off the side of the ‘ball’ part of the character.

For this task, the process was almost like ‘pose to pose’, except it required more inbetweens at the beginning and end of the pose. This creates a more natural movement in the character, as opposed to the slight robotic movement in the second task. In that regard, this was a lot harder than ‘pose to pose’ animation.

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During this rotation, I wanted to think carefully about how I interpreted the theme ‘Connection’. I aimed to create a short motion graphics of a coffee bean growing, and eventually transitioning into a mug of coffee, conveying a brief connection between each step. Below is a small storyboard I made when deciding the key scenes.

Before the making process, I wanted to make sure that there were scenes where I could make use of the Bezier curve graph in order to make the animation smoother (for example, in the second act, where the blonde bean becomes ‘roasted’).

I also explored with different features in After Effects, particularly with Motion Blur to create a realistic, natural movement between each sequence.

Overall, exploring with the different tools in After Effects helped me achieve a smoother animation. Experimenting with the curve graphs created interesting movement in some of the transitions, for example, zooming into one of the fruits in the first scene. I am also pleased that I was able to include the three core principles of animation in many of the scenes, and used colours I usually wouldn’t use in my work to create staging for the focal points in the animation.

Areas to improve can be the speed of the animation, as some transitions were too quick which can be very distracting, and leaves no time for a reaction. I believe that this can be improved upon by cutting out scenes that are maybe not as important, and making key scenes more ‘explosive’ which leaves a longer lasting impression on the viewer.

Click the download link below to view the text above in a .pdf form!