It's summer time in Seattle and I have a great new idea: I'm going to spend it in doors creating animations. Just kidding... well, partially kidding. The past two weekends I created new animations and I already have another idea for a third which I will work on THIS weekend. So unless something irresistible comes up, I'll just keep making them on a weekly basis. Today I'll show you two that I have done so far, and go into the details of the second one. (I make another blog to talk about the first animation, but since I just completed the second animation I'm more excited to talk about that.)
Ok!! So I was sitting there one day thinking about my portfolio and that I really needed several animations made purely in After Effects. So I was brainstorming about a good animation that uses a lot of layers and has a bunch of moving parts when I had the idea to create an animation to simulate the inside of a clock. Now when you watch it obviously isn't designed from the blueprints of an actual clock, but it does have several key elements: A) an enclosed environment, B) moving gears, and C) the shadow of a clock face.
A) This effect was created by importing a wood texture that I found online. I tried to find the most evenly lighted picture so that all the edges were the same brightness and there wasn't a repeating hot spot on each wall. After I imported the picture I turned it into a 3D layer, changed the rotation to create the floor, duplicated it, changed the rotation again to turn it into a wall, and repeated the process till I had my little wooden room. Doing this created a feeling of being in a space (or hopefully being in a clock).
B) The moving gears were also found online in one illustrator file that someone put up for others to use. I went through and picked the gears I liked, then precomposed them. I brought them all in individually and placed them within the clock compositon. For the rotation animation I Alt+Clicked on the Z rotation and added the expression "time*X." Then I would duplicate the gears line up the teeth and change duplicate's expression to "time*-X" so that they would rotate in the opposite direction.
C) The Shadow of the clock face was pretty straight forward. I imported a png file of the clock face (thus preserving it's transparency) and put it into my comp. Then I turned it into a 3D layer and placed it behind the camera. Then I created a spotlight and placed it behind the clock face and pointed it at the rear wall. Then I opened the clock face's Transform Properties and enabled "Cast Shadows." Viola! Instant shadow!
After I created the animation, I found some simple sound effects on Youtube and laid them on the track in Final Cut Pro. Finally I put the animation on repeat. And that's that! I will admit that I am not 100% happy with the lighting in the scene, but it lighting is not an area that I have worked a lot in yet, so maybe that will be my next project!.
After I created the animation, I found some simple sound effects on Youtube and laid them on the track in Final Cut Pro. Finally I put the animation on repeat. And that's that! I will admit that I am not 100% happy with the lighting in the scene, but it lighting is not an area that I have worked a lot in yet, so maybe that will be my next project!.
