Tag: after effects

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Daily 365

Tuts+ Minion App Intro Animation


This is the animation I started that I might submit to the tuts+ contest. Might because it clearly is unfinished and I don’t want to submit something partially done. Although sometimes it’s better to have something instead of nothing I don’t want to submit this yet.

We will see the dead line is tomorrow…today. Regardless of if I submit it or not I have had a fun time working on this. My major snags was deciding how I want to set up the character. I think I procrastinated for a but trying to think of the best way.

In the end the body, arms and feet are separate parts. I used the puppet tool in combination with the DuDuF IK script to make the arms and feet IK. using this script makes making IK chains so easy then it use to be using Dan ebberts ik expression where you had to adding the code in your self.

I added few puppet point on the body to add a little more movement which is probably unnoticed because if I push it too far the arms look out-of-place. I also have controls for the eye-ball, eye lids, and the mouth with few poses.

I have another minion that I made so that there are two different ones  but I haven’t rigged it up yet.

One flaw I notice is when the arms switch directions from bending up to bending down. I need to work on making it smoother.

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Starwars Iconoscope Animation Part 3 Final

The final version of the Starwars Iconoscope Animation. Technically I’m late with this post…I feel asleep while waiting to render…but this will count for yesterday’s post. The animation part didn’t take that long but doing the sound took a little bit to do, but too much after I got the flow of using sound booth.

It worked fairly well and it definitely was a lot easier than doing audio in after effects, it does have some odd quirks though which I’m sure you could tweak in the settings. One that was annoying that I didn’t figure out yet is this green line one the side of the video. I’m guessing it’s for audio levels, but I didn’t see an quick obvious way to take it off. I wound up just cropping it out of the frame, which apparently didn’t work on youtube…

My goal with the sound was to have an effect for every “real” motion item that wasn’t associated with a human. So the targets, ships, X’s (on non-humans), and maybe some other items have sounds.

The Background audio transitions from different track that some what go with the movie. I suppose if you’re a true fan you may recognize the songs, although I can say that I would but the listing is below.

2. Main Title/Rebel Blockade Runner
7. The Trash Compactor
9. Ben Kenobi’s Death/Tie Fighter Attack
3. Imperial Attack
11. The Throne Room/End Title
I’m not 100% sure if 03 goes where I put it but it sounded ok.
I can tell some parts need to be worked on a bit more but I have to out put this. I may go back and tweak some audio since I wish I had some better sounds. Well see.
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Daily 365

Starwars Iconoscope Animation Part 2

This is part 2 of the Starwars Iconoscope animation. It’s getting long, 3:11 right now and I’m on scene 23. However the animation went a lot quicker then the previous part, probably because I knew more of what I was doing. I think the timing on some parts still need to be improved though.

The hardest part of this one was first scene for this part, 11. The rope swing was hard to get it to look right and I still think it is off a bit. I looked at the movie for reference, but of course Luke legs are bent up and Leia is horizontal holding on to him. Just a little bit hard to duplicate in Icon format.

I think I’m going to do the sound in sound both so I have some more control. This should allow me to add more little sfx without having a bunch of layers in AE. I’ve only used it once before since it use to freeze up for some reason, so it should be good to learn it again.

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Daily 365

Starwars Iconoscope Animation Part 1

This is the official part one of the Iconosope animation. I did 10 scenes so pretty much 1/3.  I fix some timing in the first two I had done and notice some other areas I need to improve. Although there not to much “actual” animation there is a lot of timing that is involved in it.

I’m trying to have the icons come up in the same patter as a normal speech. So some parts I sped up and other are slow. I also added some cheesy light saber effect for the transitions to the next set of scenes.

I’m thinking for the music I should either mix the whole sound track into one big mix. Maybe 15 or 30 seconds a song or just pick my fav and mix those few. I need to add some more sfx as well.

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Starwars Iconoscope Animation Wip

This is a work in progrss animation for my new weekend/early next week project. Its an animated version of Star Wars IV via Iconoscope. The original design that every linked to is down. Apparently Wayne Dorrington got the lifehacker effect or digg effect or name a big social link site+effect after it when viral and his site went down. But he has a new site, where you can find it. He has a bunch of other cool graphics as well.

I found out about it after the Kickawesomeshow (fun nonsense web, design, music, tech show) talk about it on there show. I thought it would be cool to animate.

I only have the first 10 lines extracted since I wanted to work on this one in parts, unlike the woot animation where I had every thing setup at one. My goal with this animation is basically to tell the story sequentially with some added movement, maybe one or two full animation movements per line.

This whole animation will be about pacing an timing so that it can be read or understood while not being to stale, which I think was an issue in my woot animation. I need to fix some things in this version already.

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Become a Minion Day 3(Finalish)

Day 3 of weekend animation for Woot Minion. The tweaking adjusting of the animation went pretty smoothly. I fixed a bunch of little things that I think bring the animation together well. I didn’t run into any major hiccups like the other day with expressions.  I made all the arrows animated with the tip leading it on the path.  I noticed on some part it creeps ahead of the tip but I adjusted it for most and hopefully the speed makes it unnoticeable to most.

This is the final day of my weekend animation. I plan to work on it some more but not as a daily project. I will post it when it’s official finished. My goal is to time it out so it is almost completely readable. “Almost” because I timed it out to be about 3 1/2 min but my track will only goes to abut 2:25. I though of looping parts but it just sounds odd and monotonous.

I also plan to share it with the people at woot when it’s officially finished to see what they think. Hopefully they don’t try to sue more anything for copyright something since I did do this without permission…

Edit: Damn I notice some things wrong with the ligntning and the light bulb. I will have to remember that for the true final version.

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Become a Minion WIP Day 2

Day 2 weekend animation for Woot Minion. I was able to put just about all of the main animations I wanted to in the in it today.  A lot of it still needs tweaking and some fine tunning but the base is there for most.  Some things I might change that are not just unfinished is the last path arrow. I think I should set it up so that the arrow tip is on the top all ways instead of just masking it up. I also think I need to work on some of my hierarchy of whats important in terms of animation.

The animation as it stands now is way to quick to actually be read. Not sure how I want to deal with that. I could time it out longer, but I doubt anyone would really read. Voice over is another option but I haven’t looked to much into it.  Also it times up perfectly with this track I got from  http://www.danosongs.com/

I’m not sure why but for some reason all of the expression in the project just broke which I thought was just sure target at first but all of my loops stop to as well. This really sucked having to go into each and flip them back on. Even Sure Targets built in switch to fix it didn’t work. I wish I had the script from http://aescripts.com/ that lets you batch edit. I will make sure to have that next time.

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Woot Minions Wip

This is the beginning of my animation for the somewhat recent woot minions design. I saw this design when the sent out there newsletter about there become an minion(affiliate). I thought immediately, as I do with most designs that it could be animate nicely. The minion character is a nice vector design and the designs themselves make the character look pretty animated already so it looked like a good idea.

I took me about and hour or so to break the image apart into pieces that I though would be easy to extract and cool to animate. There is a lot of possibilities but I limited my self to what was easy to break up and could be done quickly. After that I brought it int to After Effects and adjust each main part in 3d space on various angles so when the camera move there would be some apparent depth and camera rotation.

I used vidoe0copilot.com sure target two for the camera movement. That made the camera animation very easy, so easy then it use to be . I was planning on rigging a null to a camera and some other stuff till I remember sure target.  Despite having all of VC’s plugins and presets I tend not to use them a lot or forget about until I need them for some reason…

I’m not exactly sure how long the whole animation will be. I would be nice to have a voice over, which would definitely push it towards a longer animation. Maybe I’ll check out DA for anyone who will do one for me, hopefully for free. Or if any one what to give it a try please do.

Obviously this needs more work, this will be my weekend project so it will have to be done this weekend(minus voice over possibly). Also this is done without permission or commission, so I hope there cool with this.