Final Animation

So after a week of hard work I've gotten to a decent finishing point in my animation, I think the colours work well, the animation itself flows along with the song, it's not what I originally intended (which was using 3d objects) but it's still a good attempt to follow the story board, some parts of my storyboard would have taken a long time to achieve so I've trimmed the original down. I also added a grain effect to the entire animation to give it an old tv like feel, but it doesn't show properly on the internet version (.mp4 compressed) but is definitely noticeable on the quicktime lossless version (.mov).



Here are some screenshots of my After Effects project showing the timeline (containing the elements of my animation) and my project bin showing files I imported in as part of the animation.

Overall the animation consists of a few shapes made in illustrator (coin and spiral) and then the rest is edited in After Effects, I created the clouds at the beginning of the animation using trapcode particular which is a beefed up version of After Effects' built in partical generator.

After Effects Spiderman Workshop

Puppet Pin Demo

Please do not watch if you have epilepsy, it may cause seizures. Seriously, don't.

Group Animation

Even elevators can animate.

Stop Motion Workshop

Animation so far...

So after finding out I couldn't import 3d objects from Photoshop to After Effects I went to plan b which was to use 2d vector images made in Illustrator and manipulate them in 3d space. I could use the new ray trace 3d option in CS6, but you need a super powerful machine to use it properly.

To achieve the first 2 keyframes of my storyboard I knew I wanted an atmosphere to link with the title of the song, so using a plugin from Trapcode called Particular (a partical generator for After Effects) I looked up how to make some clouds and adjusted them to my liking, I also used CC Particles System II to create a starry sky in the background, this may be too literal of an interpretation but it looks cool so there.

The next stage involved multiple copies of a few coin shapes I made in Illustrator, lining them up and animating a camera (using a Null Object) to follow these coins, I animated them to the song and here's what I have so far:

A useful resource I found for learning After Effects was Andrew Kramer's Video Copilot which has a bunch of tutorials about everything, including camera animation.

I feel the colours are working great so far too.

Here is a screen shot to show how many layers I have so far and my workspace in general, I use the 'shy layers' option for all the coins, as they are only on screen for a short time.

Note to self: Need to add type at the beginning delay.

As my original story board was based on 3d hope, I'm going to need to adjust it to suit my current animating style.

Damn you Adobe.

So my original intention to create my animation was to create 3d object files using Maya and import them into After Effects and animate them.

I got as far as creating a coin and exporting it using Photoshop as a .psd only to find out that you are no longer able to import 3d psd files into After Effects as of CS6. So 3D is a no go.

I'll probably end up using Illustrator to create the elements of my animation and importing them to After Effects and use the camera depth of field to give my animation a 3d space.

I don't think the aesthetics would have been very nice in 3d anyway and it would probably take a long time to get the animation done, using 2d elements from Illustrator will be a faster more convenient way of animating.

Storyboard

I decided to use the colours from the album cover and I think they go together really well, my animation will be digital using vector imagery and after effects mainly.

As for the song I didn't want to fade it out at the end but it's difficult to end it halfway anywhere, I will be doing the first 26 seconds of the Stratosphere Boogie, the first 7 seconds have a lot of cool rhythm that will fit well with my animation.

Colours

Above are some colour ways I grabbed from my research images below, the first is from the album cover for the song and think it may work really well in the animation, high contrast and futuristic for the time the song was released.

Abstract Animations

Abstract Interprations

Below are some abstract line interpretations of my (bloody complicated) song, to get an idea of the tempo, motion and characteristics of my song, using line weight, length and texture to translate my song into lines.

This was mainly an exercise to just get the song clearly into my head and understand how motion could work for my animation to try and relate the moving picture to my song in a clearly understood manner.

More Animation Research

My song has a really fast tempo so I want to animate according to that, to make my animation harmonic throughout and not play like a bad record, below are some animations I found on the internet that I think are something to aim towards with pace and some qualities to match my song.

First is a gif animation, I was listening to the song at the same time as watching it and it made a really good connection, it's only around 8 seconds long but I don't believe the frame rate is too high so I believe I could produce a 20-30 second animation like this, an important thing to note from this is it's looping quality, I could watch it for minutes.

Below isn't a fast paced animation at all but I think it has some neat ideas about how to interpret musical elements into motion graphics, and it's Pokemon, I know.


Another animation I found below has a distorted sound track but incorporates this quality into the animation, flashing shapes and is really well executed, I like the digital vector art style it has too, using isometric grids to give a structural quality (and probably make it easier to animate).