POPSICLE'S GRAND ADVENTURE- THE INCHWORM ANIMATION

Ahoy there!

I've finished my second project in Exploring Animation! It was once again done in After Effects, but this time I used a strange, foreign new tool- The Puppet Pin!

The project was to create a little inchworm along with an environment for them to crawl across, and then subsequently make the inchworm scrunch up and scoot across the screen through use of After Effects's Puppet Pin. The worm and background were once again created in Photoshop, and then animated in After Effects. The Puppet Pin was a little weird to work with at first, but it's proven to be an essential part in the animation toolbox. It can make something move with just a click and a drag- fascinating! After the worm was fully animated, I made it actually move using a sub composition, and gave it a shadow by copying the worm itself, flipping it, darkening it, and lowering the opacity.

I learned a lot about the puppet pins, how they're used in animating things like inchworms and limbs, and apparently how much they don't like being copied for me. (-_-); I also learned about subcompositions, parent layers, and making simple shadows.

Here's the animation itself-



Overall, I think it went very well! The worm could have used a bit more TLC (and puppet starch) to look more natural, but I think the animation is smooth and appealing. I actually managed to get most of the animation done in one day, thanks to the helpful and in-depth videos and actually staying on task rather than goofing off every three seconds.

Next up is a project I'm SUPER excited about- making a character walk cycle! For me, this will be a big step forward in my Animation life... the only problem is, I have to choose one character out of the dozens I have to animate!

Thanks for reading,
Tate (^^)

BOUNCING BALL 3- THE BOUNCENING

I'm back again.

With another bouncing ball.

please send help

So my first project in my sophomore year of animation was, surprise surprise, a bouncing ball. I walked into class expecting the same hullabaloo from last year, except with maybe a bit more of that sophomore polish. Sit down at a computer, spend hours upon hours perfecting frame placement in Photoshop, export and upload, profit. Except my teacher had something else in mind. A different trick up his sleeve that I previously had no experience in, but I'll get to that in a bit. To sum it up, this bouncing ball project was a lot more fluid that what I had made before- truly making me feel like I'd improved!

First of all, we didn't animate in Photoshop. We made the layers in Photoshop, but we actually animated in After Effects! It was much smoother and easier to work with, seeing as how it was mostly arranging arcs and squash/stretch stuff through keyframes on a timeline. In Photoshop, you had to manage each separate layer and each separate layer was its own frame, making everything a nightmare to work with. Animating in After Effects was both a lot easier and produced smoother results. I really only learned the ins and outs of After Effects, how arcs/keyframes/everything else works in AE, and some stuff about rendering. Everything else was really just a refresher on what I learned last year.

How did it go, you may ask? Well, before I say anything, I'll let you guys see it.

I think it went alright, actually! It's a lot smoother and more aesthetically pleasing than my previous bouncy ball animations, with no weird jumpy frames and the occasional continuity error. Everything feels more detailed, from the shading on the ball to the background, along with the grass being ACTUAL GRASS rather than a green rectangle with a gradient along the bottom of the screen. If I did it again, I'd try to pay more attention to the speed at which the ball travels in order to properly ease it in and out. Other than that, I think I did pretty well!

Thanks for reading,
Tate

PROCEDURES VIDEO- THE ALMIGHTY RETURN

It's been three thousand years...

And by 3,000 years I meant around 4 months.

I'm back and better than ever, with the first video project of my sophomore year! It's more or less a conglomeration of techniques we already know, sort of a make-this-to-prove-that-you-haven't-forgotten-everything-we-taught-you-last-year kind of thing. The video was about school procedures, which is a fairly broad topic to cover- so my partner and I chose to make our video about lab safety procedures.

Here it is if you want to watch it...

Funnily enough, it took us a whole day just to figure out how to work the camera only to realize at the end of the day that we weren't using the SD card properly. Ooooops. But once we figured that out we were able to finish recording and move on to editing!

We planned for the video to have spoken dialogue, mostly consisting of instructions from the teacher that were either followed or ignored due to the consumption of monochromatic paper bread. Unfortunately, the audio wasn't recorded, so any spoken parts were done in post-production. I also wanted some part with a slow zoom transition (such as during the hot objects part, where the video would zoom up on my partner's hand and then cut to the low-effort explosion) or something similar, but I guess I'm not advanced enough for that kind of stuff. But I'll get there... soon enough...

I didn't learn much new stuff technically, but I did learn a thing or two about team work- such as staying calm if things don't work, and while a collaborative editing effort is nice it's best to produce two videos each, both being edited by their respective team member.

If I did this project again, I'd try to add more variety to the shots, alongside actually capturing the audio properly and making sure everything is in place and even. I'd also try and add the complex effects I wanted and possibly make the video just a little more clean and professional.

Overall, I enjoyed this project. It was a good transition into my second year of video, and I can't wait to make more like it.

Thanks for reading,

Tate