After Effects: Shape Motion

Our first After Effects workshop back with Sara looked at shape, focusing on motion within shape and playing around with the tools after effects could provide. First we were given a canvas in illustrator to create the shapes we wanted - it turned out a lot different in motion than it did flat; I barely touched a lot of the shapes I'd created, but I liked the way it came out like that, a lot more unpredictable and working on the spot.

I really loved this workshop, it was a chance for me to refresh my memory into After Effects after not working on it all summer and to play around with what I'd learned from my final project, Chernobyl, with presets and styles. I'd chosen two colours that were default on illustrator, namely due to the contrast between them and the bright colours standing out between the dark background.

Although we were tasked to create an animated background, I chose to take this one step further as an animation student as well, I played around with transitioning, shape motion, typography and even introducing music at one point to tune it to the beat (using free audio from the Youtube Library) From this workshop I managed to learn a few things about pacing, illustrator (which I'd never touched before prior to this) and getting to grips with compositions. Previously I'd never been one to use compositions, but after starting a side project alongside this, it was something I was becoming more and more fond of. It made editing work a lot easier.

Inspired by this workshop, and Steffen K's 30 second reel that we looked at - I'd also go on to research more into the artist's work outside of the reel, which I found equally as fascinating and captivating I wanted to do something to take my After Effects skills to the max level. I chose, based off the 30 second reel, to do something similar, sort of experimenting and learning how to do motion that I'd always wanted to create and learn about for a side project to add to my portfolio. Working with what I know and want to learn, I'd stick to a similar colour seen in this workshop.

Shape Workshop from Charlotte Wilson on Vimeo.

I was so happy with the outcome, it looked very professional and the feedback from Sara really boosted my confidence. I wanted something that intertwined what we learned last year and experimenting with different shape effects shown in After Effects. The first section of the piece is my favourite, the use of colour is something I'm happy with as well. Overall this was a brilliant first workshop back and it was nice to have a refresh of the software.

Ref:
https://vimeo.com/steffenk