Friday, July 30, 2010

KIB105 week two exercise

Spatial montage



Temporal Montage



Reflection
Here is the first weekly exercise I did for KIB105 animation and motion graphics . This is the first time for me to use After Effects. I have used Photoshop and other 3D software for years but I have never used any video editing software before. So I was a bit worry about it. But through the first weekly exercise I felt released. Because I found one of the most important techniques in After Effects is to work with different layers of pictures or videos and then animate or edit them. This is quite like Photoshop which I am familiar with. But there are also huge differences between these two. In Photoshop we only need to deal with layers or effects for still images. But in After Effects, we need to work with not only the still images but also animate them by changing the transforms of the objects such as position, scale, rotation and opacity. I think once the creative work relates to animation it becomes much harder. Sometime it’s very hard to create a smooth animation. There are so many theories about animation. I think the limits of human beings’ eye to accept a moving object is small. It can’t be too quick or slow and the speed of the motion can’t be the same otherwise the animation will become boring and illogical. Although I have studied 3D animation and hand drawing animation during the last couple of semesters, there are still so much more for me to learn in this unit. As a 3D animation student, it is very necessary for me to learn software like After Effects. Every animation project will need to go through the animation editing software. There are so much visual effects that these softwares could provide. So I am very excited about this unit.

Analysis
During the exercise I found the most difficult technique is to control the transform of the objects. The idea about putting different layer together in order is not hard for me to understand because the previous experience of using Photoshop. Cutting the buildings from the background is a time consuming task because some of them are in a complex environment. I could only use the slowest method. I created shadows for the buildings in order to make them look more real in the picture. I also changed the light, level and color for each of them to make them fit into the landscape. But animate the object moving in the scene in not easy. I feel the movement of the buildings in my work is not very logical and smooth because the speeds of the objects are almost the same from the beginning to the end. I really need to work with that in the next few exercises. I also found opacity is a very powerful attribute to control objects. I chose to light up the landscape in the last couple seconds in the animation in order to create more effect.

Understanding and Comprehension
This exercise gave me a basic introduction of After Effect (AE) and the relationship between After Effect and Photoshop (PS). I understand that AE is very much like PS. They all start a project with working on each different layer and then combine them together. I also get the idea about animating the transform of the objects in the scene. This could be the easiest animation in AE, but it’s necessary to learn at the beginning.