Over the last two weeks I have been exploring the new world of Adobe After Effects and animation. It has been quite the process. 

At the beginning I was tossing around two ideas. First, the idea of the Newton Pendulum and then the idea of having a book open and different stories popping out of the book. Now this being my first run with After Effects the book idea was slightly ambitious, however I ran with the idea at the beginning. 

Here are my sketches:

The sketches above helped me work things through. When I created a rough draft in Adobe Illustrator I came up with two concepts. One was the Newton Pendulum and the other was the book with fish coming out.

Here are my two rough drafts:

When I took the book draft into After Effects it did not work the way I wanted it to, so I decided to go with the pendulum.

Don't get me wrong the pendulum had it's fair share of issues. First, the strings would not move properly. Then I tried making the strings in After Effects with the pen tool and it worked for the most part. However, when I went to loop the keyframes it said there was an error. I then made a whole new Illustrator file and brought it into the After Effects. Then I was about to get it to rotate and loop properly. 

Another issue I faced was the timing of the balls and the movement. I had to watch many Youtube videos to give me an idea of the timing and movement of each individual ball.

The balls also gave me an issue with the changing facial expressions. I could not figure out how to make the transition look good and the work with the timing of the balls. 

I ended up working things through by using trial and error. Also, I made sure to add keyframes at the beginning and end of each cycle so that when it loops it looks natural and not broken. 

Here is what my finished animation looks like:

https://youtu.be/d_kyW7xrnJ8

I still have a ton to learn about Adobe After Effects and animation. However, I feel like this helped me be more creative and problem solve the little details to create the video animation in the end!