More Character Animation inspiration!

Here's "Big Box Mart" from the guys at JibJab!

Personalize funny videos and birthday eCards at JibJab!

A big thanks to Casey for finding this cool tutorial on AETuts.com that shows you how to accomplish this:



Enjoy!

Good MoGfx Inspiration

Sander van Dijk, a MoGfx artist from the Netherlands has created his latest reel. Great stuff!


Sander van Dijk - Reel Dyad from Sander van Dijk on Vimeo.

King & Country is a production house in Santa Monica, CA that does some really amazing work in AE.

More Stuff for Project #3 - Character Animation!

Here are some links and videos to show you some techniques to help you bring a character to life.

If you're looking to do a character that is similar in nature to the "Frankenstein-y" guy I made last semester for the walk-cycle...
check out  this page which has a nice group of tutorials along those lines.

This is a video from Creative Cow dealing with lip-synch. It's a few years old and uses an earlier version of AE, but the concept is essentially the same:



Here's a link to a page with a lot of helpful videos gathered by Pro Video Coalition.

Here's a good, quick tutorial for the Puppet Tool:



Adobe's site has a page for using the Puppet Tool as well.

Hope these are helpful and get you moving in the right direction. Use your imagination and have fun!

Project #3: Character Animation

For our third and final project, I'm looking for you to create a character animation. We've all seen examples of character animation on TV, the internet and in the movies. There are a wide variety of character animations from which to draw inspiration.

There is also a wide variety of what can be deemed an animated character. It's not always a person, a robot or a "Wascally Wabbit." It could be the letter "Q." It could be anything you can think of that you can bring to life. It could even be a simple box:



There's a huge variety of character animation techniques as well. There's lush, extravagant 3D Pixar-style CGI animation and there's photo cut-out Jib-Jab-style animation:



There's cel animation and there's flip-book animation. There's even things like stop-motion King Kong-style or South Park-style* animation to consider.

What I'm looking for you to create initially is a story that runs 30 seconds or more for whatever kind of character you choose. Something that will bring your character and/or it's environment to life. A quick storyline to establish your character and give it life beyond a simple walk cycle. It could be a narrative voiceover, it could be your character(s) talking in English, a music track, a tribal language from the jungles of Papua/New Guinea, the coolest language ever devised... whatever. As long as it tells a story. Then you just need to incorporate your character into a Motion Graphics piece. That's the important part, since... ya know... this is a Motion Graphics course.

FYI: If you're looking to have a traditional character (humans, animals, etc.) for your animation, you can find Character Packs on the internet that will give you pre-created characters to animate in AE. Of course, the good ones you'll have to pay for since they have seperate arms, legs, facial expressions and so on, but there are some freebies out there as well that might work for you.

So to recap what I'm looking for:

• Story
• An animated character or characters (person, anthropomorphic animal, a toaster, triangles... anything, really)
• Motion Graphics in the surrounding environments or on or around the character (a smiley face that radiates more smiley faces - yeah, i know it's hokey, but it fulfills the assignment, 'k?)
• 30 seconds or longer running time

Here's some ideas to get the juices flowing...
You could do something similar to the aforementioned walk-cycle animation we created last semester and integrate that character into a rich, vibrant motion graphics laden environment where things are growing out of the walls or graphics behind the character or to reflect changes in mood or topic in a song or the dialog. You could take existing video from a movie or TV show and add googly eyes and animated mouths to the people then add motion graphics to the environment surrounding them. If you have a project from this or another class that you'd like to expand upon your initial idea by adding or enhancing a character or characters, you can do that too. In that case, I'd like to see the original from which you're starting and see what you plan to do in your storyboards.

Just remember... this is the most heavily
weighted project of the semester!
Integrate ideas you may have had for projects from last semester. Search YouTube and Vimeo for inspiration (there's TONS of examples). Go crazy with it. Do great work. Most important, have fun.

Thanks!

*The creators of South Park started off with a construction paper, stop-motion style for their pilot episode, then changed their workflow to utilize Maya (a 3D program) to create their animations while maintaining the cut-out style since the stop-motion method was way too time-consuming. There's an interesting documentary that shows their entire workflow called "6 Days to Air: The Making of South Park." Here's an article about it if you're interested.
Beware, though... it's definitely R rated, not safe for work material.

Motion Tracking Examples

Here's some examples of what I'm looking for in terms of combining tracking and motion graphics:


Advanced Motion Tracking Workshop: Sample Video from Trey Morgan on Vimeo.

I like how this one has graphics coming from both her footsteps and her headphones. The tracking on the footsteps isn't perfect, but I like the way the graphics fill the block on the sidewalk, so that kinda makes up for the so-so tracking.


Motion Track from FauzanMalek on Vimeo.

This one is very nicely done. The concept was explored a few years back with this series of commercials for HP. My guess is the creator of this spot put small markers on his fingertips that he later removed in post-production.


Motion Tracking - After Effects CS4 with Mocha from Jeff Foster on Vimeo.

Nice replacement of the graphics on the side of the truck. Not necessarily motion graphics -- it would have been really cool to see an animated logo, for instance -- but a job well done.


Motion Track from Zac Shuster on Vimeo.

Nice treatment of a graphic element integrated into a video environment. The vines grow and twist around the text as the girl walks by. She did a good job of looking at the object to make the scene more believable.

Expressions and Scripts for AE

Expressions and Scripts for AE are really handy and powerful tools. Expressions are used for effects and are pieces of code that you can find online or write yourself that you apply to individual properties on layers in your comp. They are fully editable so you can change the code to suit your needs. Scripts let you do things like adjust easing on keyframes with one click or use to quickly and easily adjust the length and framerate of all the comps in your project to have the same parameters. Scripts are very versatile and you may want to use your search engine of choice to look for "After Effects Scripts" to see the wide variety that are available. Keep in mind, however, that unlike expressions which are just integrated into your project file, scripts need to be placed in the appropriate folder within the Adobe folder hierarchy. I have added a handful of links to the Helpful Links bar on the right side of this page for you to check out.

FYI: expressions are usually free since they are more often than not just little bits of code, but it seems most scripts you have to pay for since there is a lot more work having to be put into them. If you like to write code, AE does let you create your own scripts as well by going to File > Scripts > Open Script Editor.

Mocha for After Effects

For motion tracking, there's a relatively new tool available called mocha for After Effects that will give you  more options and ease of use than the Tracker that is within After Effects. mocha is software that comes with the Adobe Creative Suite, but isn't integrated within AE. You'll have to look for it on the computers here at school. Open Finder and click Applications. Then do a search for "mocha." Click on "mocha for After Effects" and the interface will open. I found some tutorials on the AEtuts.com website that will help you get started. You can also find video tutorials on YouTube and Vimeo as well. Have fun!

Additional Details for Project #2

EDITED Friday, March 3

NEW INFO: I just wanted to emphasize that the integral thing about this project is the motion graphics(MoGfx). You don't have to shoot the video if you don't want to or have the time, you could just download something (see the Hollywood Camera Work website) that's able to be motion tracked then create some cool MoGfx to go with it. 

I just want to clarify that with this project, it doesn't have to include green screen footage. You just need footage that will allow you to integrate CG elements into video and has moving points from which to track.

For instance, you could shoot video while walking past a billboard and integrate MoGfx you create in AE -- maybe one that shows flowers shooting up and the words "Spring Is Here!" growing out of the ground -- onto the billboard to make it look like it's a video screen. A final length of around 15-30 seconds is fine, but if you need to go longer, by all means, have at it!

Or you could shoot video of the side of a building and have text or graphic elements draw onto it....

...only please make sure you use video since, ya know, it's a MOTION Tracking project.

Motion Tracking Tutorial

Video CoPilot has a great tutorial for using the Tracker in AE for a variety of uses.

Motion Tracking demonstrated

Here's a short vid describing motion tracking. They are using different software than AE to do the tracking, but I'm sharing this example to show how they set up the shoot with markers so they can integrate the talent with a CG environment. Enjoy!

Free Downloads!

Hey, I saw over at Creative Cow that videoblocks.com is offering 7 days of free downloads! Video tracks, background loops, music tracks and sound effects are offered that you can use in your projects. I don't know how good the quality is or if the subject matter is anything interesting, but it's worth a shot. Just create an account and download away!

Animatic Sample

Here's the sample animatic I created in class. The .aep file is available in the Class folder under the name In_Class_01-27-12 if you need it.
Animatic Sample from M Swanson on Vimeo.
Just a quick example of an animatic.

Project #2 Details

Hi again and welcome to... ah, forget the formal stuff. Here's what you need to know for Project #2 - Motion Tracking and SFX:

We'll be doing Motion Tracking and Special Effects. OK... moving on.

First, you'll need storyboards. These will be due Friday, March 3. Hand 'em in however you'd like... on notebook paper, a napkin, the inside of a pizza box (just clean off the sausage, please). They just need to tell your story and look something like this:

Add any details you feel are necessary (camera movement, voiceover and animated text among other things) so you wind up with a board that not only provides a visual tool to describe your story to others, but it gives you a roadmap toward your finished video.

Next, you'll need an animatic to rough in your timing. These are due Friday, March 9. They don't have to be pretty -- they could literally be your individual storyboard frames scanned in with VO and/or music or video (stuff you've created, stock footage, etc.) included. Remember that really lame one I made in class? If you need to see it again, go to the Class folder and open the In_Class_01-27-12.aep. Yeah, like that.

Finally, you'll need your finished video which will be due Friday, March 23. Go to the Settings page to get the specs for your final comp and render settings.

Reminder: H.264 takes longer than Lossless to render, so be sure to give yourself enough time to render prior to class time.

I'll be creating a quick re-cap in the next few days of the lecture I gave today about using the Tracker in AE. I'll post it here as ASAP so you can use it for reference.

Thanks!

FYI: Rendering

NOTE: This is a post I created for the Intro class, so if anything is redundant here, now you know why. Enjoy!

To hand in your projects, I am requesting that you render it out as an H.264 MP4 file and drop it into the Student Drop folder. To render out of AE, make sure you have the comp you want to render selected in the timeline and use the keyboard shortcut Command+Shift+/ for Mac (Control+Shift+/ for PC) or select "Add To Render Queue" from the Composition menu. You should see this menu (click it to enlarge):

Your settings may be different. To change them to what I have in the image, first click the arrow button to the right of where it says "Render Settings." Select "Best Settings." Then click the arrow button next to "Output Module." Select "H.264" (outputting as H.264 will result in an MP4 file). Now click on the yellow text that reads "Not Yet Specified" to the right of "Output To:." This will let you specify where you want your render to go. The default name of the rendered file will be whatever your comp is named. You can change it if you need to before rendering.

Once you've finished setting all this up, go ahead and click the "Render" button. Now all you have to do is wait for it to finish. When it finishes rendering, AE will play a flourish sound to alert you.

If for some reason you can't recall where you sent the file, you can twist open the "Output Module" and you'll then see a filepath to where the rendered file was sent. Click on the filepath name and it will open Finder in the directory that you specified. Isn't that awesome? You betcha.

Green Screen plates for Keying practice

We covered keying Green Screen footage in class today using the Keylight effect in AE. Keylight, in tandem with some other keying effects like Simple Choker and Refine Matte, are very powerful tools to achieve great results in keying your footage.

You can find lots of good clips to practice keying at Hollywood Camera Work's website.

Before downloading, make sure to check the specs that are listed (for instance, some are shot at 60 frames per second).

And here's a page with a few more links for your keying enjoyment.

Inspiration for Project #1 - Gamefly commercial

Dan and Slaughter are doing a spot that was inspired by the Gamefly commercials. Here's one of their spots so you can see how the Gamefly folks used a split screen technique to deliver video messaging along with Motion Graphics.



I created a quick demo of how to replicate the way the game cover art rotated around and faced the camera. This is done by setting up the images as 3D layers in a circle around a 3D Null object layer. You then select all the images (but not the Null) and go to Layer > Transform > Auto-Orient and select "Orient Toward Camera." This will tell the selected image layers to face the camera no matter where they're placed.

Rotating Cover Art from M Swanson on Vimeo.

Demo showing layers oriented toward camera

FYI: Animatic Example

Here's a really nice example of an animatic. It's a tribute to Joe Ranft, a major contributor to the early success of Pixar. Joe was tragically killed in a car accident in 2005 and a friend of his created this touching tribute in animatic form.

FYI: Storyboarding and Animatics

Here's how the pros do it (you also get a peek at some animatics as well!):



...and here's a comparison from Monsters Inc. between the boards/animatics and the finished film: