Adobe After Effects CS5 animation and motion graphics is your gateway to media.
Motion makes the difference as we have fun exploring and designing animation.
Cartoons may be among our oldest art form as we portray our lives, with larger than life and comical meanings.
Creating compositions is fun and so is exploring all the tools but let's face it, animation and motion is where the Life comes from and it is the Life that tells the story.
Now your story may be a five second sequence with a guy slipping on a wet floor, only to be saved by...
Delilah who is running for Mayor.
All our stories have certain things in common and even satire seeks to be seamless.
Animation starts with simple changes and motion is a favorite.
We also see meaning in color changes, in atmosphere, mood music and what of course, what isn't seen.
Perhaps the greatest challenge of animation is to say much...
with so little.
Cartoonists are masters.
A simple gesture or facial expression might be all that is necessary to convey their message.
A smile with the wrong clothing for a politician may say more than a speech.
As you introduce yourself to animation in After Effects CS5 it is useful to find 'common ground' and that is, which attributes all your objects will share.
When you create a shape or text, a camera or new light, all will always have a 'transform' property.
When you open the 'twirly arrow' for transform, you will always see the following attributes: 'Anchor Point, Position, Scale, Rotation, Opacity'.
There's nothing more fundamental to animation than an object's position.
When you see a cartoon sports car buzzing across the screen, it is its position that is being animated.
When it swerves around a corner however, you are using rotation.
In fact, After Effects has a 'orient along path' tool that will align your object to the path it follows and the path curvature, just as you would on a road, just as you would if you were flying...
if you were a butterfly.
This addition of partial rotation to adjust alignment makes the portrayal more lifelike.
The anchor point for any object is the source of these other adjustments.
If you add new text, its anchor point will be the lower left of the first character.
If you add a new shape, its anchor will be the center of the stage.
A simple change of your anchor point would have a shape or text rotate about itself with its anchor point at the center of its location.
Scaling and rotating are popular effects and if you picture most of the advertisements we see, having an object appear from a distance, or appear from a haze, or having text or objects rotate as they coalesce while forming the media message are all widely used techniques to 'mold the message'.
How do you make them animate? Coming up next.
Motion makes the difference as we have fun exploring and designing animation.
Cartoons may be among our oldest art form as we portray our lives, with larger than life and comical meanings.
Creating compositions is fun and so is exploring all the tools but let's face it, animation and motion is where the Life comes from and it is the Life that tells the story.
Now your story may be a five second sequence with a guy slipping on a wet floor, only to be saved by...
Delilah who is running for Mayor.
All our stories have certain things in common and even satire seeks to be seamless.
Animation starts with simple changes and motion is a favorite.
We also see meaning in color changes, in atmosphere, mood music and what of course, what isn't seen.
Perhaps the greatest challenge of animation is to say much...
with so little.
Cartoonists are masters.
A simple gesture or facial expression might be all that is necessary to convey their message.
A smile with the wrong clothing for a politician may say more than a speech.
As you introduce yourself to animation in After Effects CS5 it is useful to find 'common ground' and that is, which attributes all your objects will share.
When you create a shape or text, a camera or new light, all will always have a 'transform' property.
When you open the 'twirly arrow' for transform, you will always see the following attributes: 'Anchor Point, Position, Scale, Rotation, Opacity'.
There's nothing more fundamental to animation than an object's position.
When you see a cartoon sports car buzzing across the screen, it is its position that is being animated.
When it swerves around a corner however, you are using rotation.
In fact, After Effects has a 'orient along path' tool that will align your object to the path it follows and the path curvature, just as you would on a road, just as you would if you were flying...
if you were a butterfly.
This addition of partial rotation to adjust alignment makes the portrayal more lifelike.
The anchor point for any object is the source of these other adjustments.
If you add new text, its anchor point will be the lower left of the first character.
If you add a new shape, its anchor will be the center of the stage.
A simple change of your anchor point would have a shape or text rotate about itself with its anchor point at the center of its location.
Scaling and rotating are popular effects and if you picture most of the advertisements we see, having an object appear from a distance, or appear from a haze, or having text or objects rotate as they coalesce while forming the media message are all widely used techniques to 'mold the message'.
How do you make them animate? Coming up next.
SHARE
