First Working Progress Write up

Working in After Effects has the same effect on me as working in final cut. I will sit down to work on some basic editing only to look up and discover that what I thought would be a ten minuet snowballed into a three hour session. I love when that happens. It makes the ending render or export that much more gratifying. Overall this weekend has taught me to reconsider the assets I am working with, as I found that some more assets would be needed. Overall After Effects is starting to become more familiar and I dig it.

Midterm Idea Redid

Elevator Line- Two Aliens discuss the destructive tendencies of humans.

Theme- I want to use the aliens to convey a discourse that looks at humanity through a critical eye. Commenting on pollution, over population, and organized religion. I want the aliens to be presented as nearly objective observers with a deffinate opinion on these destructive tendencies.

Synopsis- We introduce a space station, inside we discover an intergalactic wild life preserve.  We introduce Zing, a smaller squid looking alien within a robotic suit who is observing the different habitats from sector 9. He stops at the window labeled Earth. Zing takes a few moments to appreciate the curious creature in the habitat. Soon one of the scientist aliens approaches Zing, Bip ( a larger alien than Zing) enters the space and begins to speak to Zing about humanity. Soon Zing starts to think that they should destroy the horrible creature, but Bip explains that by doing so they would become like the humans. It is up to them to destroy the cycle of death.

-place- Space Station
-time- Space Time
-atmosphere- Erie Space

Tone/Execution- I want the tone of the piece to have two basic feels. I want the aliens world to look very smooth and have the vector art kind of fell to it. Like a standard futuristic sleek chic kind of feel. As for the humans habitat I want to give it a Hand drawn quality. I want the human to look a little sloppy and to have a hand drawn quality to the room he is in. I want these two places to contrast each other, presenting the idea that the aliens are these super sleek intellectual creatures and conveying the naivety of humanity.

Objective- The objective of this piece would be to examine the flaws of humans, comment on said flaws, and finally hope that acknowledging the flaws will result in a dialogue about the problems by the viewers of the piece.

Midterm Idea

Elevator Line- As the captors remove his blinders, Scott has seconds to try and escape.

Theme- I want to make an action short. Utilizing After Effects I will create styilized muzzle flares, explosions, and manipulation of characters on video layers. The short its self will be about a man trying to escape from mysterious captors.

Synopsis- We open in a basement, a man with a hood (Scott) over his head and bound hands is placed on a seat. The hood is removed then he is asked for cooperation, after agreeing his hands are cut free. Once that happens he attacks one of the captors grabbing a gun from his hand and shooting another man across the room in the process. Then he begins to go up the stares and as he is about to reach the top a man opens the door. Scott shoots a propane tank he is carrying down the stares. After a few moments of reaction from Scott he makes his way out the door ending the short.
-place- basement/house
-time- night time
-atmosphere- tense and suspenseful

Tone/Execution- I want the short to look like contemporary films that take notes from film noir masters. Like Brick. I want the aesthetic to be very starkly lit and I also want the composition of the frame to be extremely controlled to the point of it being graphic.

Objective- The goal of this piece would be to create a good looking composited action scene. I have never attempted to create an action scene and I feel that After Effects Lends its self well to this sort of project. Over all I want to gain more experience with video compositing that looks realistic.

Matts and Layer Modes

This assignment I felt called for making a title card. I have this production company that I use with my video work when making shorts. I figured it would be fun to try and make a title card for some other projects. I always feel like I forget the stuff we learn in class when I sit down to work on the assignments. I have been getting better about it though the more we have been working with After Effects. I am ready for the spring break assignment. I figured that a great thing to do would be to use After Effects to composite together some muzzle flashes and flying people. This program is a great tool for student/indie filmmakers who want to create some near Hollywood effects so I figured that I would put together a short action scene. I want to focus on creating some steam assets and to actually work with green screen and other techniques that I have learned doing some side research. I hope things come out as they are in my head movies.

Looping and Transforming Masks

Originally for this project I wanted to make a title card for Beat Brothers, but I soon found out that each letter would create a mask and even the inside of the letters were masks. So things got pretty confusing pretty soon. So I decided to create something more simple. I made a basic loop cycle that I wanted as a back ground for my first idea, but just used it as the back ground for the final concept I made. After Effects is still growing on me because Im not completely confidant in my abilities with it. Again I hope to get familiar with the program so I can use it to the best of my abilities.

Replacement Animation/ Masking

This assignments was especially challenging because I missed the last class. I tried not to make that an excuse for myself when I came in to work on the assignment though. I had some help from others in the class when approaching the project though. A lot of the things that we had to do were pretty strait forward, we did rapid replacement animation in intro to Animation so the notion was not too foreign. Getting used to the program though was another story. It was fun getting to make the animation that I produced, I think the more I use After Effects then I will get it down soon.