After going to the After Effects Workshop I learnt that After Effects is a digital visual effects, motion graphics and compositing app for PC and Mac. We were taught how to use the programme and short cuts within the app. We learnt what all of the main tools do within the app and how to use them properly. Because this workshop was aimed at the animation side of the course, we were taught about key frames and how to edit our animations correctly.
For me the most interesting part was learning about motion blur. Motion blur is essential to creating a realistic looking animation. Using this can transform an animation from unprofessional looking and wrong, to looking smooth and realistic. This was something I wasn’t aware of until we had this workshop.
For our first task we had to create a ping pong gi from scratch in the After Effects app. To do this we had to draw out each individual shape and then animate it. To do this you press the stopwatch icon and position the play head where ever you want to start animating from. You need to keep moving the play head but each time also moving the shapes to have drawn. By the end of this you will have the animation.
for this animation we learnt all about the pinning process of a character. To create movement from a character pinning the joints give them the ability to be manipulated into positions to create realistic movements. Motion blur was also added to this one, for the cupcake to look like its moving realistically, it needs to have some blur as its flying through the air. If it didn’t have this then it would just be a flat shape being placed through the air and wouldn’t look believable.
Sapphire's Animation yr2 