Motion Graphics Rotation

Connections

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This weeks rotation is motion graphics and we were set with the task of creating a short motion graphic composition with the theme ‘Connections’. My first idea was something to do with atoms and how due to the negative charge of electrons, atoms repel each other so nothing ever truly touches. There is an unfathomably small space between every object in the universe. My second idea was something to do with the tube and the lengths people go to to avoid eye contact as I think its quite humorous, I decided to go with the tube idea as the atom one seemed a bit too simple. I then spent the majority of the day learning how to use After Effects as I haven’t used it before, thankfully I have experience with Adobe Premiere Pro which isn’t too dissimilar so I don’t think using after effects will be too difficult. I drew a quick storyboard to showcase some of my ideas for the video, its basically the journey of two people getting onto the tube and avoiding eye contact until suddenly! They make eye contact, the obvious meaning is love at first sight but I wanted to leave it open to other meanings such as the world falling apart because two people made eye contact on the tube.

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I used Adobe illustrator to draw the objects I would use for the animation, I don’t really like how the eyes turned out but this was also my first time using illustrator so they are not too bad considering.

I realised pretty quickly that it would be too complicated to animate the eyeballs straight from illustrator so I imported just the eyelids and glasses from illustrator to after effects then created eyeballs in after effects with the ellipse tool. This meant I could move the eyeballs about to create the illusion of looking.

Once I had finished animating in After Effects I used premiere pro to add sounds as I knew my way round the software better than After Effects. I added general tube sounds; the beep of an oyster, the sounds of the trains arriving, the chatter of people, etc. After watching the video back I also sped some parts up as they were too slow.

When I exported the video from Premiere Pro the quality went really bad for some reason, I think its because I cropped it.

Analysis

The concept for this video was connections, my idea for it was the London underground and how hard people try to not connect with others on it. Coming from the northern countryside to London one of the biggest culture shocks is the unfriendliness of people in public, where I grew up it was a regular occurrence to have conversations with friendly strangers so I find it very funny how unfriendly people are here and especially on the tube. I wanted to play on the concept of love at first site as well as alluding to the world collapsing in on itself because (shock horror!) someone made eye contact on the tube. I used illustrator to draw the shapes that I wasn’t going to animate, e.g. the eyelids, glasses and the blinking eyes, then used the shapes tools in after effects to create the objects that I was going to animate. For the video I mostly used the position and scale tools, so going forward I could definitely branch out into more complex animations, I don’t think I utilized After Effects as best as I could. I think my concept for this video was strong but the actual outcome wasn’t as strong, the animation of the video is a bit clunky which came down to my inexperience with after effects and the time constraint. The story is also quite simple so I don’t know if what I am trying to convey comes across, if I had more time I would add more of the oyster card animations and also feet walking about. However I did really enjoy this rotation and motion graphics is definitely something I’m interested in pursuing in the future