Initial Idea
I used the album artwork to come up with a colour scheme again, and came up with this lovely retro combination of warm orange, a greyish blue, a washed out yellow, and a pale peachy grey. I wrote out the lyrics for the section that I want to create my piece around, it’s 30 seconds in total from 00:00:20 to 00:00:50 and includes the second verse and the chorus.
Drawings
I then used Procreate to create some ideas for some of the lyrics. I am finding the new animation assist tool really helpful; it’s helping me to sketch out ideas without having to use After Effects, and is really inspiring me to keep a hand drawn style within my work.
In After Effects
I then decided to take my frame by frame animations and recreate them in After Effects.
Steps I took:
-Draw the main word and import and image trace to get the hand drawn style.
-Simplify the vector, fix any points that don’t look right, straighten the letters and fix the kerning.
-Add the vector to my library (along with the swatches for the project) and open in After Effects.
-Add in a new composition and use the alpha matt tool to cut out the vector from it.
-In the new composition, keyframe some strips to look like a weaving pattern.
-Check it looks right in the original composition and tweak it accordingly.
-Add a slight camera shake by adding a camera, making the vector 3D and then using the wiggle expression on the position of the camera.
I love how this has turned out and I think I have found a really successful workflow here. I will definitely be using it to create all of my other pieces.
I think the camera shake on this piece might be a bit too intense at times, so I will need to experiment some more with the settings on the wiggle expression, however I will probably add this at the end anyway over the whole piece.
I think, to create the full 30 second video, I will create many compositions like this one, and then will find a way to cut between them (instead of making one huge long composition).
I found this free paper texture and I think this will give my piece a really nice paper feel if I use it as an overlay.
Bibliography
Violet, T., 2019. Wishful Drinking. [online] YouTube. Available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAj-Xo5-NXU&feature=youtu.be> [Accessed 24 March 2020].
Wild Textures. 2015. Just A Seamless Retro Paper – Wild Textures. [online] Available at: <https://www.wildtextures.com/free-textures/just-a-seamless-retro-paper/> [Accessed 30 March 2020].
Jennie Hawkes 