Z-space animating with Sara
Todays process and production with Sara, but this time were were creating a 3D Z-space animation. Before the lesson we were asked to prep some artwork on illustrator to use in the animation. Sara showed us a video that inspired her for the lesson so I made sure my design would fit to what effects we might be taught to make. For this animation it seemed the best thing to design would be a landscape of some sort because a camera would zoom through the space from far to near. Therefore I decided to design a city scene. I wanted this design to have a strong and dramatic colour scheme and began designing a scene with hills and a sunset. In my head I visioned pinks and purples and even oranges as I was inspired by some work by an artist I had found on Instagram.
I was not initially happy with the colours as it I knew it was not correct to what I had in mind therefore I searched who I follow on Instagram and finally found the artist I was inspired by called Paul Blow (@paulyblow on instagram). I then realised that the colour palette I was thinking of was more pink, blue and purple (not orange!) I love this colour palette and it looks great in his beautiful scenic illustrations, so I decided to design mine in a similar colour palette. I knew that I wanted a sun or moon that rose above some hills but as it zooms out it would reveal a city scene with buildings.
A few weeks before prepping for this lesson I had discovered adobe live streams whilst poorly, where artists would do work on their computer alongside a presenter and live stream it so that viewers can see how they work, discover new ways of designing and how to use adobe software. I
really enjoyed them and watched a couple, but came across a live stream where illustrator Justin Mezzel taught how to create simple geometry with vector art and also using gradients, by designing and building a colourful gradient city in illustrator. I loved how this looked so designed the buildings for this animation using the skills and style I learnt from the live stream! My final art work has two hills with a sun rising over the horizon, casting a shadow on the two skyscrapers I made. I also added a telephone post on the hill and little street lamps for detail. I really liked the final piece and worked hard on it. I have become a big fan of gradients lately and really enjoyed working with them in this piece. The calm colours look cool with the scifi looking skyscrapers anti looks like another world. Sara also asked for us to bring in textures in case we wanted to add some. I brought some but decided not to use them because the artwork looked effective as it was and had gradients so I did not think it was needed.
In the lesson the first thing we did was add the artwork to a composition on aftereffects. However before this I had to make some parts of the artwork like hills and sky bigger on illustrator so that when it zoomed out it still fit the screen. With the layers added we then added a camera facing the work. On this screen shot you can see the camera view on the left. I moved each layer into different positions so that when the camera moved down each layer was revealed. The white lines show each layer in a different position. I positioned the camera to start zoomed in on the sun and to then move back and curve into the centre so that the last frame shows the whole scene. Whilst the camera moves forward I also made the sun rise above the hill.
Sara then showed us a few techniques that we could add to our work. I decided to add a peel on effect to my two skyscrapers. There was a preset that allowed a layer to look like it was peeling on. You set markers on the timeline where it is to start and then move the peel to its final position later down the timeline. I edited the setting so that the two skyscrapers in turn slowly peeled up from the bottom right corner. There were settings to change the back section of the peel so I made it the same colour as the shadow cast from the buildings and also added lighting so that it looked shiny.
After the lesson when I was at home I decided to add music because it would be really effective with the animation. In class Sara said that I could either go with quite scifi music or calming music due to the cool colours. The animation made me think of the sun rising in the morning. I went onto free music archive and looked up ambient music. I find ambient music really calming but also it is quite electronic so it fit both factors. I added the music I chose and rendered and the animation was complete! I am really happy with this animation and think because the graphics were so strong that it made the animation look really nice. Along with the colours, music and the peel effect the finished piece is actually quite relaxing and calming which I like. I enjoyed designing the artwork as well as then animating it and seeing the final outcome.
