Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Assignment #2 After Effects Introduction

I present to you, Earthquake Granny.  Can she escape the quake?  

Layers:
1. Photo Frame
2. Granny in a tire
3. Wasteland background picture in photo frame
4. Wallpaper and hardwood floor

The granny and her tire (layer two) along with the wasteland background photo (layer three) are parented by the photo frame (layer one).  This was done so that they could move together as the frame swung from side to side during the earthquake.  I also created a motion path for the tire to roll to the side and then to the foreground while I scaled her and the tire to size.  After all the scaling, rotation, and positioning was completed, I applied the "quaker" effect to all the layers for that earthquake visual.  This was an effect that I downloaded offline and inserted into the Effects and Preset folder in After Effects.  

All in all, I enjoyed navigating around After Effects for my first project even though I felt that the interface was a bit intimidating at first.  After playing around with all the settings and controls through trial and error, I'm beginning to see how powerful this software can be.  

Question: How can you apply an effect over a certain period of time with a start and end?  I initially wanted to apply the "quaker" effect to all the layers from the beginning up until the frame fell.  Is this where an adjustment layer comes in?  

2 comments:

  1. An adjustment layer applies an effect (like blur or color correction) to all the layers underneath it in the time line. You would not use that to do what you are talking about. If the "quaker" effect (which looks quite good) is created like the "wiggler", you could simply delete all the position keyframes it generates before and after your quake. If thew quaker effect does NOT generate a bunch of keyframes, youy duplicate the layer, apply quaker to one (but not the other), then turn the opacity of the quaking layer on and off very quickly. Does that make sense? In any case, the animation looks great. I love it.

    ReplyDelete