Bus Animation

Mind Map:

Animation/Advert Research:

I liked this advert for the Adam Smith College, because it shows that anyone can apply for the college no matter what they want to study as it's shown by what the people in the animation are wearing and holding. I like the way they use the name of the college as a selling point within the video by basically saying anyone could be "Adam Smith" which is the name of the college. They also use a little typography at the end of the animation that links people to main point of the animation and fully describes what its about in a short simple animation.

Questionnaire: 
I went around the college and asked the following questions.

- What do you prefer smart and professional design or ruff creative design? P/ 5 R/ 5

- What does Game Arts mean to you? S/ 2 N/ 8

- What comes to mind when it comes to Interactive Media? AL/ 2  AB/ 3  N/ 5

- Do you travel on a bus? Y/ 5 N/ 2 S/3

- Do you prefer straight to the point ads or full story? S/ 6 F/ 4

- Do you pay attention to Adverts? Y/ 4 N/ 3 S/ 3

From my results the animation/advert is going to have to be a professional design which ties in with the college as the colleges design on the website and the building itself is quite clean and professional. I'm also going to have to get the advert to cut to the point but still catching the eye of the audience.

Idea Generation:
As our college is an Art college, the design will have to be creative, unique and stand out from other advertisements as are college specialises in stuff to do with animation. So first of all I checked out the college website for inspiration and a few other college advertisements.

Idea One:
A kinetic typography animation, where it describes the course with cool animated text and designs.

Idea Two:
A text animation where it does an Q/A sort of thing asking questions like 'Do you want a course that's perfect for you?'

Idea Three:
A text pad animation where it advertises the college by an animation where it looks as though a person is drawing on the pad.

Design Plan:
I decided to go with my 2nd idea and start the animation with a question (Do you want a college that specialises in Computer Aided Design?) and make the animation more like the 1st idea as it goes along, describing all about the Art and Design course. Then I'm going to end the animation with statistics about the college. From my questionnaire research I've got to keep it clean and professional getting to straight to the point within my animation.


Design Process:

Each scene I made for the final design I put into different compositions to make it more manageable during the design process. In my compositions I used the text tool and various effects to try and portray a message clearly without using sound.

Composition 1

Composition 2

Composition 3

Composition 4

Composition 5

My Final Design:

Evaluation:

Overall I am very pleased with how my final design went, I believe it's very smooth, sleek and professional looking portraying the message I wanted it to without the use of sound. During my design there was one minor flaw I couldn't get the "plymouth college of art" bit to do what I wanted it to do, so I improvised by creating an abbreviation to word to animation which went well. All in all I think the animation went very especially the words that describe the course part, I thought the effects were very nice and I'm pleased with how I managed to get all the words to fit in the 1280/720 pixel space. Although I'm extremely pleased with the outcome of my design I think it would of benefited me if I had used some sound effects, but due to the assessment criteria of it being a bus animation I was not allowed to use sound effects but I'm still happy with how it has turned out.

Final Advert Animation:

Research and Analysis

Animation Analysis:


Overall I found this animation as all the typography is in sync with the background sound, the artist has also done little animations of the characters from family guy that are involved in this particular scene of family guy. The artist has also used sound effects from the background to correspond with the animation that is happening in the video which adds to comedy of the backing sound. Another thing that makes this animation very good is the way the video transitions throughout; like when the white text is on the green and the white background appears from the bottom to blend with the text and move onto the next scene. The only thing I do find bad about the animation is when the speech bubbles are being used the words seem to far apart from each other. Another thing the artist could do to improve the overall animation in my eyes is having the a different colour of text corresponding to which family guy character is talking. But overall this animation has executed very well with minor mistakes.

Motion Graphic Artist Research:
TrooperFx (http://www.youtube.com/TrooperFx):

This has been made by a YouTube motion graphic designer, he creates Introduction videos for people to place before their videos or to promote there page. In this motion I like the way he has used the a space like backing animation that slowly moves throughout the video making it look as though the viewer is travelling through space. Another thing that makes this motion design good is the colouring in the space background the blend of colours within the background really go, although the colouring is really nice in the background it doesn't really blend with the 3D text animation as it's red and silvery. I also like the way the artist has used a flare to goes across the top of the text and fade out which is a really sleek, professional effect to use in the animation. The final plus side to this animation would be the sound effects they're in sync and go with the animations effects. This animation been perfectly executed in the fact that there is no real errors within the video, but I do think the animation with the spin and zoom in effect has been overused in the motion design community.


Alex Donne Johnson (Ident) Adidas Advert:

I like this advert because there is a lot going on within it, it keeps the viewer hooked all the way through by using various effects e.g. the camera follow of the lines at the beginning that seems to be leading you somewhere in the animation. The artist then adds in the "3 athletes" "6 artists" with blacked out pictures of people around the word animation which gives the video something unique within it. It then has the words "words about to blow" which leads on to a burst effect which leads on to the next transition of animation which is what appear to be shards with images of people on them which I reckon is the blacked out people at the beginning of the animation which is a really creative thing to do as it links the beginning of the animation to the end.  

Guinness 'Spoken Word':

I n this advert I like the way the designer has created a build up feel the video piece, the guys voice starts off slowly along with the backing music and then ups the tempo as the advert plays on through which really gets the viewer hooked. I also like the use of the creative script in this advert like the guy in the video portrays an inspiring message in the video saying that you go can far in life and that the journey to greatness isn't an easy road, he's saying that you can achieve greatness but's not easy. The guys also refer back to the first line of the script by counting after each speech telling the viewer that every second of life counts so make the most of it. Another thing I love about this piece is the animation behind the man of a tree and then a road extending on and then the clock animation which is all in sync with what the guy is saying in the video making this piece really inspiring and hard hitting for the viewer. It then ends the advert with a little typography piece saying "reach for greatness" and then a little animation of a Guinness can indicating that the people who created Guinness went through a lot to get where they are now.

Durex 'Get It On':

This animation was made by the Fitzgerald and co. This is a really simple but so creative animation to get across the message of using condom durex condoms, I like the way they've used a plain bright background and bright inviting colours on the Durex animals to help catch the viewers. I like they way they have portrayed the condoms as animals having sex in different positions which makes the advert humorous but still getting the important message across.


Santander Advert Message:

Tronic Grows a CG Tree for Santander Bank
This advert basically represents a tree growing, reaching out to more people indicating that the bank itself is in fact the one who is reaching out to more people therefore the tree represents the bank itself. In the advert they have a man to talk over the advert giving facts and he relates the ''branches'' to the tree in the advert and the actual branches of the bank saying that they're branching out to loads more countries, cities, towns etc.

Tips In After Effects

The standard workspace.

I created a workspace that would make using the program easier for me.

I then created a composition and imported a file.

I then imported a picture and used the hue/saturation effect to to change the colour throughout the clip using the  colorize option. I also used the curves and exposure effect to give the image some depth in colour.

Final Outcome

First of I imported a picture into my composition and resized it and created a fade in and fade out effect using the opacity transformation.

I then added text to the composition applying the same opacity transformation and adding a rotation to  it at the beginning and end of composition.

I added a arrow movie scene which was created using masks in a different project and turned one of them into a 3D Layer and rotated to look as though it was coming over the middle text. Then finally I added it to render queue and saved it as a .mp4 for a small file size.

Final Outcome

First of all I created a black solid layer and added the lens flare effect.

I then changed the type of lens flare and added a text layer putting  a rectangle mask over it changing the  mask type to subtract.

I then added the keyframed path of the lens flare and the brightness to swoosh around the text. I also keyframed the mask so it would move off the text as the flare travelled over it.

Final Outcome

Variation

First of all I took a picture from Google of the assassins creed character and imported it to Photoshop deleted it as a background and saved it as a .tif file and imported to after effects. I then used the puppet pin tool and marked the joints in the body of the character so I was able to move the character around.

I then realised the assassins creed character wasn't good enough of animate to manipulate and move around as both of it legs weren't fully showing and the character was becoming warped, so I took a picture of Toad from Mario because it was easier to do the animation with and wouldn't as warped so I used the same technique to create a short animation to experiment in after effects.

Final Outcome:

In this I drew my own character in Photoshop and used the puppet tool to manipulate it just as I did with the toad image in the example above.

Evidence of character drawing.

Camera Animation:

First of all I made a Composition with a flower background, and then made another with a picture of what I wanted to be in the animation.

I then put my other composition in the main composition and duplicated it 4 times, positioning them as I wanted it to be, by using the 3D Layer function. 

I then changed each of the pictures to something different and used the camera to zoom in through the images to make them look as though they're flying past the camera.

Final Outcome:

Variation: