Dococom

Once you have introduced yourself to the stopwatch feature in After Effects, you are ready to begin learning about some of the other related features and ‘assistants’ that are built into this application. The stopwatch is fundamental to everything. Every setting you animate will be set using that attribute’s stop watch, creating keyframes along the timeline. Our first tutorials have been about position because this may be the most basic of all attributes to animate.

If you are animating position a favorite keyframe assistant is the ‘motion sketch’ tool. This is a very simple, clever tool that literally animates one of our earliest artistic expressions … scribbling on a tablet! Who hasn’t been inspired, tapped their thoughts, used a scribbling pad to connect idea and imagery?

The motion sketch tool lets you sketch a path producing keyframes along the way. Like all the assistants, the best way to learn is to get your feet wet working along with me as we describe how to access and define the motion sketch tool.

Create a new project and go with the Web Video preset for your stage dimensions. We’re going to animate a ball moving around your stage as you define it’s ‘flight’ with motion sketch. Create new shape layer, choose ellipse from your drawing tools, and draw a small circle (holding ‘shift’ while defining your ellipse with make it a true circle). Position your circle in the upper left hand area of the stage so you’ll have plenty of room to fly!

Be sure you have the motion sketch panel available (click under Window menu if it is not visible). Now, before we begin flight, note the default settings of motion sketch, ‘Capture speed’ at 100%, ‘Smoothing’ set to 1, ‘Show wireframe’ checkbox selected. Simply click on ‘start capture’ and begin moving your circle on your stage. This is the ‘inner child’ part where your simply draw a sweeping arc or an ‘S’ curve, something easy to define.

As you are moving your circle about on the stage, the motion sketch is recording your positions, creating keyframes just as you would if you clicked each new position yourself clicking on the stopwatch, only this is much faster and much more freeform. When you have completed your ‘sketch’, releasing the mouse will stop ‘Motion Sketch’. Enter ‘Home’ to return to the beginning of your timeline and review your work! Or is it After Effect’s work ?

This is a great technique to produce an animated path by simply drawing it. It does create quite a number of keyframes and there are other parameters that will help you tune your path and apply it to other objects in your composition. Try it out !

3D animation deals with electronically produced computer-generated 3D imagery used in motion graphics and digital special effects. In this case, the animator creates a design style or concept that tries to visually interpret and convey the required information using both new and traditional animation techniques.

The 3D animator will have to be well-acquainted with 3D animation applications and software, film and video production techniques, production processes, digital special effects, art and design movements and methodology, typography, styles of performance and dramatization, film and broadcast genres, technical scripting, health and safety regulations for the film and broadcast industry, and an understanding of budgeting and scheduling processes.

The job of the 3D animator is to design and realize original concepts, character and content creation. The animator, therefore, is responsible for devising and communicating creative ideas and accurate technical information. They have to provide the client with detailed estimates of costs, and work within the budget and schedule.

Each assignment will have different demands. So it is imperative that the animator should have a good knowledge and experience of animation software and broadcast processes, as well as a broad knowledge of technical scripting and digital technology used in broadcasting. The designer must be able to respond with innovative concepts and practical solutions for each assignment. The assignments may be of any kind, from designing a spinning top to re-creating mythical weapons.

To succeed in 3D animation, one must have a thorough understanding of computer-generated processes and applications to be able to achieve creative responses to design briefs within the restrictions of budget and deadline. He/she will be required to possess a passion for design, good communication skills and a good understanding of broadcast, special effects and character animation. Last but not least, he or she must enjoy working as a team member under pressure.

In addition to being able to demonstrate high standards of computer-generated imagery and animation techniques you will need to have a good knowledge of art and design movements and imagery, creative problem solving and innovation, and the understanding of how to deliver design concepts and processes.

Alongside the basics of animation that are easy to implement in After Effects, ‘assistants’ are provided to help you with the next stage of your animation development. This is a great time to learn about and begin implementing layers too.

Layers are just what they sound like and if you use other graphic products such as Photoshop or Fireworks, you will be familiar with the layer concept. Layers allow you to place different objects on your stage, on their own ‘layer’.

This gives you the freedom to treat them differently, to give these different ‘actors’ their own personality. We think of backdrops and mattes that provide a background color or setting for your stage.The action of your animation may very well involve different players.

Even a simple logo unfolding on the stage might play with a waterfall or sunrise, a motorcycle zooming into center stage or an instructor walking into your tutorial to address the audience. All of these ‘players’ will be placed on their own layer and each layer has it’s own definition including what may be the most fundamental, and that is where it appears on the timeline, where this object enters into your animation.

Because we are blending layers and assistants in this tutorial let’s return to assistants for a moment. We learned about the Motion Sketch assistant in our last article, how to record the movement and animation of your object by simply tracing the path as you would on a piece of paper. This method is very easy to use, very easy to visualize but it lacks a bit of finesse. This is where two assistants appear: the ‘smoother’ and ‘auto-orient’.

The ‘smoother’, much like it’s name implies, smooths out the velocity and distance of the keyframes you created by tracing with motion sketch. In the same way it is practically impossible to hold your camera perfectly still when you take a photograph, it is nearly impossible to trace a motion path without a bit of ‘gittery’ hand motion. Once you have drawn and reviewed your motion sketch, choose the smoother, under Window>Smoother. Select all your position keyframes by simply selecting the position property under your animated objects and click ‘apply’ under the smoother options. That’s it. You will see the number of keyframes reduced, and your path will be ‘smoothed out’. If you increase the tolerance setting on the smoother, it will further reduce the number of keyframes. Like most After Effects settings, the best way to determine what works best for you and this particular animation is to try some different settings. Play with it a little bit then execute your movie and observe how this assistant has refined your animation.

Another assistant that belongs to this lesson is the ‘auto-orient’ rotation assistant. This too is a pretty intuitive tool. Imagine a bird or a plane flying, an automobile cruising along a curvy country road. Animating the motion only would appear comical if your automobile wasn’t always oriented along the path ahead. Auto-orient (choose under Layer>Transform>Auto-Orient) offers an ‘Orient Along Path’ option which will keep your object aligned to it’s forward motion. Your car will appear to be oriented along the path it follows, as will your bird or plane.

These simple assistants help your refine your animation, save you time, and help create control that would be very difficult to create manually by setting each keyframe yourself. Experiment with the animation assistants and you will appreciate their ease of use and simple contributions.

The hackers, sploggers, spammers, and now the splotchers are all part of the new digital age. So, you’ve probably heard of the Captcha Codes, those are the questions they ask prior to posting a comment on blog, Internet forum, or a news article that you wish to comment on. Well, it appears that all the artificial intelligent software programmers have figured a way to beat those systems.

According to an interesting article in New Scientist Tech on Nov 3, 2009 titled; “Animated ink-blot images keep unwanted bots at bay,” the article stated that now that you’re using these inkblots, which are animated, and keep changing as Captcha Codes. Interestingly enough, someone from India, who teaches future animation students who will be working on projects of outsourced animation from US studios, came up with the idea at the Indian Institute of technology in Delhi.

This might be the answer to stop all the sploggers and spammers and turn us all into a bunch of splatter splotchers, as we take a visual look at the ever changing inkblot images on the page, prior to posting our user information. Personally, I can tell you this having run blogs, and Internet forums with tens of thousands of posts, if this works, it could revolutionize interactive websites online.

After all, it pays to stay one step ahead of those who would go out of their way to ruin our online communication, merely to post their garbage and trash all over our society’s digital written record. Indeed, I hope you will please consider this, and if it gets to be widespread use, I hope you will use this on your website as well, because I believe it to be a great idea. Please think on this.