Lecture 1: Introduction to Compositing and Special Effects
27 August, 2018 (Week 1)
On the first week of the class, our lecturer, Mr. Kannan, introduced us about compositing and special effects is all about. He briefly explained about the module, wherein there are 3 projects including the final one. The software that we will be using is after effects. Mr. Kannan also showed us some examples about the work done by the seniors before that are categorized from the top work, middle and low but still been accepted.
After he brief us, Mr. Kannan give us group activity to furthermore enhance the knowledge and understand more about our first project. We were divided into 2 groups wherein I am in group 2. We searched 3 opening titles sequence that looks appealing and we were asked to compare and find the similarity among those 3 opening titles sequence that we chose.
We listed the points that makes a good opening title sequence from our chosen 3 opening titles as well as the other group. They are:
Good camera direction and angles
Good tempo (the transition/ text changes matches with the tempo of the music)
Smooth transition of animation
Strong concept
Balance color scheme
It shows a glimpse of the movie
A good Effects aligns with the movie concept
Good visual storytelling
SFX reflects the movie genre
Typography that tell the movie story
Design elements depending on the movie (simple/ complex)
common time is about 1 minute
Good animation (interactive)
Engaging to the viewers
The element that is showed reflects the movie
Depth of the animation
complimentary elements
These are the list that we need to take note when making an animation. We also learnt that opening title sequence can be 23, 3D, combination of 2D and 3D, or even real human.
Tutorial 1: Exercise using After effects
31 August, 2018 (Week 1) There was no class today since it's Malaysia's Independence Day but we catch up the lesson through Mr. Kannan's post. He posted a lot of articles, reference, and tutorials to get to know more about after effects. We were given an exercise based on the tutorials he posted. This is what I came up with.
First Exercise - First try in using after effect
Playing around with after effects is fun however, I do struggle a bit in the beginning but I know I will get the hang of it.
Lecture 2: Get to know more about After effects
3 September, 2018 (Week 2) On the second week of the class, Mr. Kannan introduced us to all the tools in after effects as well as a few tricks that we can use whenever we deal with animation. He also listed down all the short cut keys to save more time when we are working.
R - rotation
S - scale
P - position
M - mask
T - opacity
A - anchor point/light attribute/camera attribute
Ctrl + S - save
Ctrl + Shift + S - save as
E - efx's
U - on/off applied keyframes
~ - fit to the screen
Y - Change position of the anchor point
N - to make the viewer/ work area smaller
Space bar/ control + 0 - preview or play
Alt + [] - to delete the length frame
Mr. Kannan also showed the steps on how to do a Replacement of object/ Graphic (E.g. background)/ video elements.
Make sure you highlight your layer on timeline
+ Highlight the image on project window
Hold + Alt drag and drop the new object on the layer that you want to change
Before class ended, Mr. Kannan told us to understand about easy ease, easy ease in and easy ease out. For this, I tried to look what are the difference.
Fig. 1. Understanding timing spacing and easing
Fig. 1.1 Starts slow and accelerate
Fig. 1.2. Starts fast and decelerate
EXERCISE getting to know easy ease, easy ease in, easy ease out:
Fig. 2. Ease Ease
Fig. 2. Ease Ease graph
Fig. 2.1. Easy Ease in
Fig. 2.1. Easy Ease in graph
Fig. 2.2. Easy Ease out
Fig. 2.2. Easy Ease out graph
Another thing is that he showed us the 12 principles of animation and asked us to create our own or we can use the video shown as an example to recreate the animation of the 12 principles using a box as the elements.
It is a good exercise. If you can recreate the 12 principles of animation, then it will be easier for us to do our first project.
We were also asked to think about our first project already by having mood boards and sketches so that we can start already with the storyboard by next week. We can either recreate a movie title sequence or make our own using the reference we gathered. The theme set for us is about "Technological Impact".
Tutorial 2: Getting to know After Effect's tools
7 September, 2018 (Week 2) On the second week of tutorial class with Mr. Kannan, he wanted us to update all the exercise that we have done. Starting the class by him giving us some tips on creating a moodboard. Steps in creating correct moodboards:
Save all the reference you have gathered and place it into 1 board
Extract all the elements from the reference that you are going to use
Write down a short description of what are you going to do with the elements you have extracted. (E.g. Art style, Fonts, color palettes)
Mr. Kannan thought us the proper process in creating any design where we need to train ourselves so that later on when we deal with any clients, they will understand what we are trying to do. So, after creating Moodboards, we proceed working on the Thumbnails. Thumbnails are the ideation, representation of how the composition is going to flow and your overall concept. (Presented in a sketch forms) intended to make a better visualization. After doing the thumbnails we proceed in doing the Story boards (polishing all the ideas)then Animatics, then the Final.
For this class, we also did some exercises regarding the tools in after effect such as making Lines in a gradient color form, morphing, repeating, trim paths, wiggle, looping, etc. This is what I came up with in class.
Fig. 4. Week 2 exercise using wiggle, trim path and repeater tool
Before class ended, Mr. Kannan asked us to express our names using After effects when we go back home. He also gave me some ideas expressing our names. Since I like traveling, I came up with this idea.
Fig. 5. Week 2 Practice assignment (Name Expression)
For this exercise, I figure out that I still need to learn how to make the transition even smoother.
On the sixth week, Mr. Kannan posted some tutorial about vanishing point that we should try. This we play around with the camera and green screen video
On the seventh week, we were introduced to our second project which is the matte painting. As an exercise we tryout how to do matte painting with just black and white and play around with the color and the opacity as well as the lighting. As we tried it out, we should know and identify the light coming from and add shadows to pop it up.
Fig. 6. Matte painting tryout
Fig. 6.1. Perspective drawing
In matte painting, we play around with perspective as well as the background, mid ground and fore ground. As a simple research we need to know what is negative space and how do you play it. Negative space is the space that surrounds an object or an image. Just as important as the object itself, negative space helps to define the boundaries of positive space and brings balance to a composition.
Tutorial 8: Matte painting 16 October, 2018 (Week 8)
On the eighth week of class, we continue to practice to do matte painting. I came up with ancient rock desert looking at the city.
Fig. 7. Matte painting task to do in class
For further practice we were asked to come up with 5 theme of matte painting to be shown in class next meeting.
Fig. 8. First matte painting - Rocky Mountain desert
Fig. 8.1. Second matte painting - Cave
Fig. 8.2. Third matte painting - Witch Forest
Fig. 8.3. Forth matte painting - Castle in an island
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