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Qistina Nuralya Maria Binti Azly / 0354180
Motion Graphics and Compositing / Bachelors of Design (Honours) in Creative Media / Taylor's University
PROJECT 1: MOTION GRAPHICS EXERCISES
Table of contents
1. MODULE INFORMATION BOOKLET (MIB)
Week 1 - Week 2 - Week 3 - Week 4 - Week 5
3.3 Remade Movie Title Sequence
1. MODULE INFORMATION BOOKLET (MIB)
This is the Module Information Booklet for this module:
2. LECTURES & ACTIVITIES
Week 1
To start off our module, we of course got a briefing for the module like what assignments we had to look forward to and prepare for. Immediately after the lecture, we went into warming ourselves up with an exercise that contributed to our Project 1. The exercise was of a mosaic tile-like pattern that we took inspiration from a motion graphic on Pinterest.
Video 2.1 Mosaic Animation.
Week 2
We learnt about composition during this week's lecture and it was mostly what I'd already learnt previously about overall design principles except this time it included the motion in it as well which includes:
- Direction
- Timing
- Rhythm
- Transitions
- Continuity
After the lecture, we started working on our exercise which was for our Font Animation/Kinetic Typography. We had to take one of our own letterforms we created during our Typography/Advanced Typography and use it in the exercise as placement for the inspiration.
Video 2.2 Kinetic Typography Animation First Attempt.
We encountered some problems during the demo/working on our individual files so the final product of this week wasn't final as seen in Video 2.2. Mr. Martin told us that he'd create a slides tutorial for next week so that we'd be on more of a same page.
Week 3
As stated last week, we'd continue/restart our work from last week so I decided to do a sort of redo of mine and created a new file for it. I followed the slides tutorial almost to a tee but ran into some troubles. I felt a bit fatigued though trying to figure out the solution to it so I'd shelf it for next week for me to do. Below is the second attempt of sorts for the exercise.
Week 4
We'd move on from our exercise 2 and started to work on our third exercise which was to remake a motion graphic title sequence by Adam Kenneth on YouTube. Mr. Martin had split the sequence into 3 main parts: City/Stairs, House and Car/Rain.
I'd thought the Rain part would be the hardest to do but my classmates brought up that the City/Stairs part has that transition with the stairs that seem really hard to work on and I agreed. To my dismay though, I got randomly assigned to that part and I sat with my teammates to work on it.
The job for me this week was to help animate the bug walks for our team so that they'd be able to use it for their parts.
Week 5
We continued our title sequence animation exercise in class. This time though, I'd work at my own seat and just communicated with my teammates via group chat so that I'd be able to focus better. Mr. Martin tried showing how to do the transition but I got quite confused; I worked on trying to make the stairs scene work but kept failing and looking off. I decided to leave it off for a bit to take a rest from the fatigue.
After we finished/felt done with our work, Mr. Martin asked some of us to help prepare footage for next week where we'd be playing around with rotoscoping. I helped with recording a simple pose video. Mr. Martin reminded us to prepare a rough idea for our final project for next week's class.
3. PROGRESSION
3.1 Mosaic Motion
The start of this exercise had us creating four different square compositions for us to compile later. The square I started on first was the top right one where it was a simple animation of different coloured squares coming from the top left of the composition. I did feel I may have overcomplicated this composition with how I tried to loop it.
Moving to the bottom right composition, I took almost the same approach as the previous comp but again I think there was something off with the animation; I continued on anyways and completed a couple of loops of the animation.
For the left side of the entire composition, I'd followed the demo Mr. Martin had given in class to achieve a smoother outcome.
YouTube Link: https://youtube.com/shorts/ehsabR5Eci0?feature=share
3.2 Kinetic Typography
The first two attempts of this exercise was sort of a fail as they were done in class whilst I was feeling tired and was fatigued by the errors I encountered. The first attempt was sort of a way for me to get used to using distortion in After Effects.
For the second attempt, it was almost a complete version of the exercise but there were still tweaks to be done so I had to change it afterwards.
Onto the third attempt, I'd evidently base it off of the second attempt. I focused more on the tiny details like the rotating square graphic and the text next to it. In the previous attempt, it was a bit choppy so I tried to fix it slightly here.
The transition to the white background had me creating a separate composition for it and timed it with the movement of the camera/screen.
Moving the elements, I played around with the graph editor to achieve a smoother motion between the keyframes. However, I did feel that despite the editing of the graphs, that the motion still felt very sudden in some parts. But at this point, I'd feel done with the distortion part of the animation and just wanted it to be over with.
YouTube Link: https://youtu.be/inithrFku4k
3.3 Remade Title Sequence
Mr. Martin had split the sequence into 3 main parts: City/Stairs, House and Car/Rain.
I'd thought the Rain part would be the hardest to do but my classmates brought up that the City/Stairs part has that transition with the stairs that seem really hard to work on and I agreed. To my dismay though, I got randomly assigned to that part and I sat with my teammates to work on it. As we'd gotten into our teams, we sort of delegated the tasks of the title sequence. I'd decided to help with animating the roaches' walks.
Afterwards, I worked on my specific part of the sequence by recreating the city scene from the video in Illustrator. For some reason, I had the most fun working on this because it just felt fun to draw out the city without worrying about mess (as seen from the overlapping of shapes in Fig 3.3.2).
Then for the stairs, I initially went to use the same technique as the city and draw the stairs out using Illustrator; but the thing felt very stiff so I went and used the 'repeater' function on a line to recreate the stairs instead. I applied the same technique to the grey stairs behind the white stairs.
I then added the animation of the roach jumping up the stairs which started robotic at first but when I adjusted the curves, it felt more natural.
I'd struggle quite a bit with the transition of the stairs to the differing perspective'd stairs towards the house but I made a sort of compromise and made the slant be smooth instead of jagged like in the original video.
The animation for the door opening was quite simple since I just used the scale tool with a changed anchor point.
Then after finishing up my scene, I'd ask my team to send in their parts for compiling. However, I realised a bit late that each of our typographies and credits content were different from each other which created an inconsistency but I continued editing anyways because at this point everyone was focused with other stuff.
Finally, I also added in the music and some sound effects to make it more like the original.
YouTube Link: https://youtu.be/6zPJPrB7PJk
Google Drive View Link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1TRnQz2DT5SPY4XqVuZ42b_6LgYZvGr9Z/view?usp=drive_link
4. FINAL
4.1 Mosaic Motion
YouTube Link: https://youtube.com/shorts/ehsabR5Eci0?feature=share
4.2 Kinetic Typography
YouTube Link: https://youtu.be/inithrFku4k
4.3 Remade Title Sequence
YouTube Link: https://youtu.be/6zPJPrB7PJk
Google Drive View Link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1TRnQz2DT5SPY4XqVuZ42b_6LgYZvGr9Z/view?usp=drive_link
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For the full project files of the project, you can view in the link below.
Google Drive Folder Link: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1EpvJOF64Xpct-nH8qwT8I0QNwSgWxzA7?usp=drive_link
5. REFLECTION
The exercises within this project felt like a good warm-up to the module as a whole because I felt very rusty from not really using After Effects in quite a while. I did learn some new things like using 3D for the movement of some objects, though I feel I definitely have to get used to it more because right now anything 3D I work on feels a bit choppy. Somewhat similar to my experience with distortion/warp tools in AE too.
However, I actually quite liked working on the title sequence exercise despite having a rough time figuring out the transitions of my part. If I had free time, I'd definitely want to create a similarly styled motion graphic video for my favourite games/movies.
Overall, this was a good stepping stone for moving into the module's next projects! I look forward to our upcoming compositing exercises and final project too.
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