Final definite stills

Although I have decided to now use a lot of video I am still going to use a fair few found images in my sequence. Here are the final ones.

Late Storyboard

Here's my storyboard to my title sequence, sorry it's a little late.

First attempt

The first attempt corrupted a little. None of my tutors or any of the tech support people could see what the problem was. For some strange reason the lines start to fracture about half way through. I'll start afresh.

A few more still replacements

Following on from the post entitled "our race in motion" here are a handful more snippets of footage that I'm considering for the final sequence.

Font issues

Slight problem, the font that I had in mind, Rebound X light (above) will cost me 50 dollars. So I've had to find an alternative.

I found it on Da Font.com. It's called Duepuntozero.

Our race in motion

I went and searched Youtube for a few good representations of various aspects of life as we know it. In some of these videos you may have to look hard for the kind of footage that I'm referring to.

What humans do

After our interim crit one of my classmates suggested that I check out this little bit in the movie the fifth element, thankfully it's on Youtube. The footage that the character (Leeloo) watches is more what I had in mind for depicting the human race within the context of explaining what the meaning of life is. Now I need to find some good war footage...

My Boards

Here are my two mood boards. They show two different design aspects. One, of the images I will use and one of the graphics I will use.

My Fonts

This is my shortlist of fonts that take my fancy. I'll probably go for the font made up from "l o e"

My Graphics

Here are a few drawings of the graphical techniques and text arrangement techniques I like the look of.

Font Ideas

You will be of course recognising some of these images again, there are some designers featured in this book who seem to be encapsulating everything I like!

I'm pretty sure I'll go for a font similar to the image titled "Clone" as it has nice simple contemplative qualities.

Text Arrangement Ideas

These are all the ways I'm considering of arranging and animating my font. A lot of these ideas are rather more extreme to what I've got in mind (I don't plan on having letters falling from all angles) but they still have certain qualities I fancy emulating.

Graphic Ideas

So for a little more research I thought I would consult a typography text; Type in Motion 2 by Matt Woolman. The book is quite easy to just dip into and every page or sometimes double page we are shown a new project where moving type has been used.


These scanned images from the book are the ideas for the graphics that appeal to me. The posts following on are of font ideas and text arrangement ideas.

The picture made up of red and white dots is quite similar to cliched microscope images, thus fitting with a possible evolution theme.




The images containing small black letters floating on a cloudy background I particularly like as it has rather relaxed dreamy qualities, yet at the same time it remains a little academic and serious.

The images with the red backgrounds and military silhouettes have a rather nice scratchy feel to them.

After Effects Day 2

Today we went a little deeper....

* To combine compositions you drag the compositions down into another empty one. You'll then see that composition as one layer. This is known as nesting.

* For working with 3D space you click on the 3D layer icon. Now the transform properties change to add a 3rd dimension.

* I can view through different angles and add different viewers. Only the active camera will do the final render and layers will only show up in a view other than the front view if their 3D is on.

* In 3D the concept of "one layer over another isn't in place anymore as they are in 3D space.

* To add a camera go to layer & select new -> camera. That then appears as a new layer. I can then keyframe the movement of the camera just like other layers' properties.

* Then select the camera, go to layer, -> transform, auto orient. This lets you choose between the camera orienting along a path, point of interest or no orientation.

* A lot of animations work can be done simply by animating the camera.

* To switch to another shot add a camera and the one on the top will be active when the cameras are overlapping. Trim the cameras' lengths so that the camera you want is giving the right angle at the right time.

* Original compositions when changed are still mirrored in nested compositions. Collapse transformations makes 3D properties viewable and in nested compositions lets you see layers outside the frame & groups the layers together.

* A useful way of saving is by using collect files option. This makes a copy of everything you're working on and puts it together.

* Adding lights is lust like working with cameras, it is possible to set lights so they cast shadows.

* Lights can be parallel, spot, ambient e.t.c & a few other settings. The light then appears in the layers.

* Then other layers acquire material options that determine how the layer reacts to light.

Expressions....

* Select a property and go to animation and add expression.

* A little field then appears.

* To link say opacity of a red solid to change opacity of another use the pig whip and click & drag the whip to another property.

* Modify Expressions; I can change things by a fixed relationship by changing the percentage on the pig whipped property.

* When working with 2 different scales one would need to do a little maths to make sure that the change of one property changes the same proportion of another. E.g 100% of opacity vs 360 degrees.

* For random movement type "wiggle(2,10)" into the expression field.

* For writing code in general alt click on the stop-watch of an attribute and hit the play button for the dictionary code terms.