The Environment Project
It's a personal project that demonstrates the use of After Effects' 3D layers and camera motion. It also goes on to show how colors can be manipulated to fit a certain style or scheme.
The Butterfly
This was the most difficult process in the whole project, the rigging that is. It's actually a flat PNG image, that was brought into Photoshop and dissected into 3 parts; the body and 2 wings.
Each Layer was then imported into After Effects and made 3D. I wish that was it, but the anchor points of these layers had to be placed at specific points, so that the rotation would occur from that axis.
Once that was done, I had to linearize their flap movement, so that when one wing flaps from 0 to 70 degrees, the opposite wing would go from 0 to -70 degrees. This was not possible with key frames, as I would have had to animate each wing separately and that's not efficient enough. So I had to fiddle with some Expressions to get the job done.
The color scheme I was going for, was complimentary. I wanted a splash of blue and yellow, but the flowers were pink as can be seen above. Some color grading led to success.
The Chameleon
I love chameleons! I think they represent the characteristics of a designer in a profound way. When I decided to go with it, I knew it had to be a jungle environment. I wanted to depict vastness and freedom, thus the jungle scene.
Animating the chameleon was not that difficult, except it was a bit tedious. I had to hop back and forth from Photoshop to After Effects. I quickly got away with the use of Puppet Pin Tool and a subtle motion on it's front limb.
While it was a green theme, the chameleon had some colors that were way too much for the scene. A lens flare seemed to wave off that issue.
The Polar Bear
This was the fastest part of them all, as it didn't involve me fiddling in Photoshop. The whole scene was put together just inside After Effects, though it required some masking, color grading and, particles. And of course, the Puppet Pin Tool again, for some subtle motion.
North Pole has to be blue, you know that. The first scene was a bit warm, so the opposite was inevitable to take place. I always advise my students to base their design on reality, in my humble opinion, this practice allows the brain to move to the next logical idea very quickly.
The Egg Thief
This scene involves an eagle stealing some blue eggs, a lens flare and again... the Puppet Pin Tool. That's it.
Bonus
There was an underwater scene as well, but the dolphin images had ragged edges and that was just unacceptable, speaking from a quality assurance stand point. So the eagle replaced the dolphins.
Lastly, finished it off with a cool calming instrumental music, that complimented the motion of the entire video. Had it been some other track, you wouldn't have felt the way you did now.
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Thank you for taking the time to read this novel.
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