Basic Motion

I honestly thought that this first chapter talking about pre-production was very powerful and helpful. Coming from a photography background and looking at things in a photo or graphic design sense, this was very similar but also different in many ways. I had never really dived into animation or motion graphics, so it was very interesting to read about all the pre-production steps like previsualization and doing a creative brief.

Those are two things I don’t think I have done before in my personal or professional lives, so I was very intrigued at read about them and what it takes to make a good animation or motion graphic. Doing an elevator pitch is something that I think everyone in this course has probably heard of in some way but looking at it from the perspective that the textbook portrayed was very different and interesting to understand. It will be interesting just for myself on how I can implement these new pre-production techniques.

I am really interested to see what the rest of this textbook will be like and what I will be able to learn from it regarding animation and motion graphics. I feel like I have already learned a good number of things when it comes to animation pre-production just by reading over this first chapter.

We were tasked with finding gif’s that we found fun, interesting or informative and I selected a few here that are for fun or multipurpose. The one that is the coding one I found can be used for many different reasons and I found it unique and impactful. Some of the other gif’s were mostly just for fun and some that I found could be used for different fun purposes and that people would just laugh at when they look at them, which is exactly what I did.

For the first gif I made I tried to onion skin a stick figure person to walk across the bottom of the frame. It did not really turn out the best, but it was my first true attempt at anything related to motion graphics, so I was excited to watch it over for the first time.

The second gif I made was a cut out one of different traffic lights turning different colors. It was very similar to the tutorial one which helped me a lot since I have not done anything like this before. I took what I learned from our class videos and tried to make the lights turn different colors over a very short time.

For the last gif I created for this week’s module, I tried to re-create a loading bar which I am sure everyone has seen before. I tried to animate different parts of it with various layers to make it as realistic to what I have seen before as possible.

I thought that for all the gif’s I made for module 1 this week that the motion and methodology behind how I created them was accurate and best for what I was hoping to get out of my first attempt at motion graphics. I was able to learn a lot from the videos from our class, and I am hoping to expand to make more interactive and interesting graphics in the future.

Reading the next chapters in our textbook, “Animated Storytelling,” showed me that one of the most important parts of this reading that I took away from chapter 2 was story structure and what it takes to built out a successful story in any animation. This is so powerful and it directly reminds me of the creative writing process that I was taught in elementary and middle school. Building out the plot and the characters of the animation can also be said for that in a creative writing story. Even if when we create motion graphics in this course, we are not creating characters, the same story evolution and structure can be used in how we build out of our motion graphics and what techniques and software we use to animate.

As I kept reading on into chapter 3 of this textbook, I felt as though we were moving more towards telling a story with our animations. I think this is unique and very different that certain projects we may be tasked with completing throughout this course. I know we are going to be making a logo stinger at some point for an assignment, and I felt like I will still be able to take some of the basic animation’s principles from this chapter into that, I just may have to tweak them a little to best suit my needs.

Chapter 4 of this textbook gave me information on the animation and motion graphics subjects that I can see proving to be invaluable. The book talks about building out your storyboard and how that is like your visual script, I found this to be very informative and interesting. It talks about thumbnailing and adding that into the process of storyboarding. I have not made to many storyboards in my professional or personal lives so learning to see how it should be professionally done with this textbook was cool to see and to understand.

There is so much I was able to take out of these 3 chapters and not enough can be said about what can be unpacked from all this reading. I have learned how to produce good storyboards and how to implement the story structure into those same storyboards. I have also been able to learn more about the overall creative process and how it can be related to motion graphics and animation.

The examples linked at the buttons above all show motion graphics being used in combination with animated text elements to exemplify the story or characters of the graphic. Some of these animations or motion graphics are generally extremely cool and feature different characters or things being animated with text. It helps to get the main idea across in so many ways. When looking at this prompt to find creative motion graphics that incorporated text, I tried to find very advanced and unique ones that maybe myself could make one day with significant hours of practice. In the case of the watch animation, it uses text to put on the watch like a regular watch does and then proceeded to animate the various internal components of the watch itself, which I thought was just amazing. For the third example linked at the button above, I thought they used text in a unique and interesting way that greatly supported the overall story they were trying to tell, a main reason why I selected that animation for this analysis.

For this assignment we were given the opportunity to create an intro animation using Adobe After Effects. This was my first time ever using After Effects and it was definitely challenging at times but after a while I felt like I was able to get the hang of it. I used keyframing techniques to fade in certain images and to rotate the text at the beginning. I wish I had more time to enhance this assignment and make it stronger but I hope to learn more about After Effects and it’s various capabilities to continue doing better work in motion graphics. I also used various photos and videos inside this intro that I had already shot in the past which also made it easier for me when I went to put this together. I felt like everything I put in helped to piece it all together and make sense for my personal brand.

When it comes to color science and making sense of colors it is evident that to be a good visual storyteller one must understand color and how to use a good color palette. Chapter 5 of our textbook, “Animated Storytelling,” talks a lot about color science and making the best use of colors for animation. Even if one is using just the grey scale and black and white in their animation, that can still be a creative palette and create a very interesting story.

I had never previously though in detail about color science and using color in my animation and this chapter completely changed that. It made me think about how I can use color more in the future animations that I create and what I want to get out of them. This chapter overall was very powerful especially when the author talked about the concept of “supporting colors” and using those colors on top of the main hue and saturation of the animation.

Looking at chapter 6 of our textbook, the reader can learn more about what the medium of animation really is and how different it can be compared to other platforms like static graphic design or still photography. The imagery that was used in this chapter was also essential to getting the message across to the reader and it really helped me understand what animation is and what it is all about. I also really enjoyed reading about this chapter and how it elaborated on experimentation and why animaters should experiment in various forms of animation to figure out their desired look.

Both chapters helped me as a motion graphics designer and creative person overall. They told me how to better use colors and why understanding color science is so important, as well as talking about how I can use experimentation to create better and improved motion graphics and animated stories.

Motion Graphics

For this assignment linked at the button above, we were told to use storyboarding techniques and create a plan for two different stop motion animation assignments with linear and non-linear storylines. I found this slightly difficult as I have not really done much work like this in the past. If I am going to go through with making one of these animations I will probably go with the linear story as I found that one slightly easier to make. I wanted something straightforward and simple and I thought that my animation ideas were just that. Below you can see my sample stop motion animation video I made as well which was also a part of this assignment. I found it slightly challenging to make something like this just because I am not familiar with doing work like this. I definitely want to learn more about stop motion animation and improve from this first draft on what I did here since it might not be the best that I am ale to produce but if I can train myself and be more creative with it I feel like I can improve from this significantly.

Chapters seven and eight of our textbook “Animated Storytelling,” significantly helped me when it comes to understanding how audio is crucial to animation and how building a creative environment for my animations is also important to being a good motion designer.

Chapter seven helped me to learn more about sound in animation and why it is so important. The author talked about using music and certain sound effects to create a good animation and the significance of how that is crucial to motion design. I found the section about silence very interesting and how the “Music of silence” is also important in animation, it made it clear that not every animation needs a sound effect or music playing in the background. I feel like this has helped me to get a better understanding of the full world of animation. Last chapter talked about color science and why colors are so important in animation and now I have learned the basics of music and sound effects in animation which will help me as I progress onward in this course.

Chapter eight helped me put the final touches on my understanding of animation and motion design as it established what a good environment for an animation looks like. I found both the time and place section and the physical order of the environment sections both very interesting and helpful to understand about the animation world. The “on motion graphics and branding” section was also very interesting to me and seemed to apply a lot to this course and what the end goal for our projects may be.

If I can implement everything from these two chapters and the previous chapters, I do see myself being very proficient in motion graphics. This textbook and especially the past four or so chapters have given me invaluable advice and information regarding animation and motion graphics. The textbook’s vibrant and colorful visuals also have given me so many ideas for future projects in this course.

This week in this course we had to find several animations that either had good text animation or good audio and I was able to find a few that sparked my interest. Examples one and two at the buttons above this text show examples of good audio or sound effects in an animation. Examples three and four both show a good text animation. All of which I found extremely cool and interesting and examine and look at.

Examples three and four come from tutorial videos showing how the creator made the animation, but the animation is shown at either the end or beginning of the video. I liked being able to see how the animation was made and what went in to making it. The text animation was good and helped me realize how in-depth animation can be.

Examples one and two both used either sound effects or background talking to give the animation some sound. Both forms where very interesting to watch and I think they both used audio in good ways that helped the animation be the best it could be.

All these animations that I linked in the buttons above showcase stop motion animation in some way and I found that I really liked all of them. They all showed stop motion in very different and engaging ways that helped show me what stop motion is all about. 

I picked clay made stop mention animations for the first three of my examples as I found those the mount interesting and even possibly something that I can do myself. It seems like doing clay stop motion animation is not super hard and can be an easier for certain stop motion animation or motion graphics.

For the last two animation examples that I linked above, I found some paper cut out animations that were relatively simple in nature and fun. I liked how they used various shapes to get the idea across and to put it all together.