After Effects Basic Testing for Sting

I did some very rough drawings in fine liner, scanned these in to Photoshop and arranged them in separate layers like how we learnt in the tutorials with Mike. I had the back layer of the chess pieces tangled up, the middle layer of the oval frame and numerous front layers of individual flowers and leaved which initially would cover up the oval but then move away to reveal what is behind it. 

I imported these into after effects with no problems but then I started to struggle with the different functions. It didn't help that After Effects isn't set up exactly the same on my laptop as it is on the college macs but I am going to try and sort this out so I am more familiar with where all the specific functions are on my screen. 

I got quite into the animating of the individual components and layers but when I got towards the end of my sting, I went to replay it and I had somehow deleted most of the keyframes from near the beginning which is really frustrating as I don't know what it was that made them disappear. I tried (very hard) to stay calm but decided that it was best to start again and abandon these rough sketches - I think the chaotic lifework and scribbles I had done were all confusing me on the screen. 

I drew out some new components on photoshop so they were much cleaner and simpler and I put the individual flowers to one side to focus on the main movements of my sting. I replaced the flowers that are going to cover the oval with solid shapes purely to show the transformations. This worked a lot better for me especially as it has been a while since I have used after effects. 

shape test from Naomi Smith on Vimeo.


This is what I produced today. There are many changes to be made to this. 

• I don't like the panning over the large image of the chess pieces. It looks confusing to the eye and the valuable time this takes could be used a lot more effectively. I am thinking of changing this so it only pans from the bottom to the top of the king in one movement with the other chess pieces just being silhouettes in the background. 
• The ending is too quick. I want Agatha Christie's name to be stationary on the screen for about 1 second so it doesn't give the impression that the sting is ending too abruptly. To do this, I will need to simplify the content of the middle of my sting. What I have suggested in the previous point will hopefully do this. 
• Going against my original plans, I am going to make the flowers that cover the oval in the beginning move all the way out of the frame and disappear like I have done in this test. It will keep things simpler and if I do decide that some movement can go on within the frame, I will just animate the imagery that already exists there but only very subtly. 
• Obviously this was just a very quick drawing on photoshop only using the mousepad, but I do need to put consideration into how the rope/vines tying up the chess pieces lead the eye across the image. At the moment there are some very concentrated and very sparse areas and I want it all to appear quite even. 

Next Steps

• Storyboard again taking these changes into consideration. 
• Draw out some more detailed components, to scale which I can create another test piece with. 
• Music! I haven't found a definite piece of music to use yet but I have a few potential ones. Because there are no sudden movements in my animation I don't think I need to make it fit to specific sounds in the music but I do want to try and have my movements commencing at the start of a new bar if possible.