This week I didn’t have a session with Tim Mills to talk about my project for the Illuminate festival but attended an animation workshop with Andy Banks. Most of the students in our class (including me) used Adobe After Effects for the first time that day.
Andy walked us through all the basic steps of the software: We created a new composition and used all the settings he recommended. Afterwards he provided visual footage that we could use for our first animation: an image of an eyeball, a video of moving stars and another photograph of a young woman. We learned how to use keyframes to transform and edit the visual elements and even though it seemed confusing and complicated at first, I quickly understood the basic workflow.
Furthermore, Andy showed us how to use different layer modes, layer masks and even the text tool to create effects in our composition. Finally, we were taught how to export our project and add it to the render queue.
Even though my final animation has no real story or narrative I am still proud of it. I never used After Effects before and found it incredibly hard to follow Andy’s instructions at the beginning of the workshop. When I tried the software myself, I was astonished how easy it was to create amazing-looking animation effects. I can not wait to work with After Effects again and learn more new techniques.
Documentation of MEDI512 "Experiment" 