1.1, 1.2
Computer animation can basically be described as any kind of moving element on a computer screen. These elements are usually videos which are made up of many pictures shown consecutively to give the illusion of movement. 1960s was the decade that computer animation was first created. It was developed by several people at Bell Telephone Laboratories and it was also being produced at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories. Early uses of animation was being used for film and tv. The sequel to Westworld in 1976 used a method known as 3D wire-frame imagery. Toy Story was the the next groundbreaking example of computer animation as it was a fully animated feature-length film.
As well as early uses in film, animation is also extensively used in some forms of interactive product to invoke a response from an audience. Their purpose can be to entertain, inform or even just to be visually striking and grab the attention of a user. Even simple interactions on a computer show examples of animation. Right from turning a computer on you'll see a loading animation such as the Windows 10 loading dots. This animation is most likely used to show some form of progression to the computer turning on. Most webpages these days will incorporate some form of animation also. They're usually in the form of banners and span across a web page to advertise a product or service and can more often than not, be clicked so you're redirected to the thing it is advertising.
There are many computer animation techniques that can be used to produce an animation. The first example I was ever introduced to was motion tweening when I was asked to create an animation for ICT as GCSE. This is basically where you take something you want to animate, lets say a shape such as a square, keyframe it's first and final position and then choose a motion tween option. The computer will then generate keyframes between the first and final position to give the illusion of movement.
Another method of animation is key framing. This is much like the above example but you set key frames manually to give the illusion of movement. Examples of using this method are in programs like Adobe After Effects. Along the timeline you set keyframes at intervals with different values to give a change in visuals. There are two other example of animating share similar methods. These two methods are frame by frame and onion skinning. Frame by frame is a very basic way of animating and requires someone to makes changes every frame. An example of this could be a picture flip book. A drawing is made on each page of a flip book with very slight changes. When completed, flipping the book will show the movement of whatever was being drawn. Onion skinning is the other method and would be done on the computer. As you create and frame and move on to the next one, the previous one is still shown on screen so the animator can clearly see his progression in the design over time. This is a very useful tool and is something you cannot achieve if you're using basic frame by frame animation.
2.1, 2.2
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| Wire-frame models rendered on a computer |
As well as early uses in film, animation is also extensively used in some forms of interactive product to invoke a response from an audience. Their purpose can be to entertain, inform or even just to be visually striking and grab the attention of a user. Even simple interactions on a computer show examples of animation. Right from turning a computer on you'll see a loading animation such as the Windows 10 loading dots. This animation is most likely used to show some form of progression to the computer turning on. Most webpages these days will incorporate some form of animation also. They're usually in the form of banners and span across a web page to advertise a product or service and can more often than not, be clicked so you're redirected to the thing it is advertising.
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| Examples of advertising banners |
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| Here you can see the initial square and final circle and intermediary shapes to give a smooth transition. |
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| Keyframes in Adobe After Effects |
Another method of animation is key framing. This is much like the above example but you set key frames manually to give the illusion of movement. Examples of using this method are in programs like Adobe After Effects. Along the timeline you set keyframes at intervals with different values to give a change in visuals. There are two other example of animating share similar methods. These two methods are frame by frame and onion skinning. Frame by frame is a very basic way of animating and requires someone to makes changes every frame. An example of this could be a picture flip book. A drawing is made on each page of a flip book with very slight changes. When completed, flipping the book will show the movement of whatever was being drawn. Onion skinning is the other method and would be done on the computer. As you create and frame and move on to the next one, the previous one is still shown on screen so the animator can clearly see his progression in the design over time. This is a very useful tool and is something you cannot achieve if you're using basic frame by frame animation.
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| Example of onion skinning showing 8 previous frames. |
In my workplace we were recently given a job to create a sort of educational video which was kind of PowerPoint-styled. The client we were working for was Buttercups Training and the content of the videos were to do with the pharmacy workplace. Over the course of the video various different pieces of information for show on screen which would accompany a voice over. A PowerPoint was already made for us by the client but because of compatibility issues we had to recreate ~120 slides in Adobe After Effects. All of the text elements then needed to be animated independently to look as interesting as possible while the voice over is playing in the background. There were 10 videos in total that needed to be created and with the voice over and b-roll footage the time lines were ~15 minutes each so this was the total duration of what needed to be animated. There would be no physical interaction with any of the videos other than the view just having to watch and listen. With Adobes dynamic link there was no need to export any of the slides in to a animation-type format. The dynamic link allowed us to connect both the Premiere Pro and After Effects projects together so editing could be done seamlessly and the only think needing to be output was a video file at the end. This would more than likely be either a .MOV, 422 Apple Prores or .MOV, H.264.
The overall purpose of the finished video is to educate so the animation would need to be clear and legible and should be able to retain the viewers attention. Because of this we would have to create smooth animations that were clean, visually stimulating and memorable but didn't take focus away from what was being said in the voice over.
2.3, 2.4, 2.5
The intended audience for the videos we needed to produce would be people that have just finished university and going into the pharmacy and/or people that have been in pharmacy for some time and just need a refresher of how you should conduct yourself in a pharmaceutical workplace. The intended purpose is to be informative so a fairly formal language would be used throughout the video. Being informative, the included animations would need to engage the audience and be memorable. Because they would be be accompanying a voice over also, various pieces of text would need to be on screen for a good amount of time so that the audience can read everything in time. Size and colour of text and images would also be considered. Everything would need to be legibly and clear so a fairly simple and readable font should be used. Images should be of high quality so there's no visible pixelation. The final videos will actually be sold as educational videos so it's very important that everything is proofed and is as high quality as it could be. Like previously mentioned there would be no interaction from the audience other than watching the video or slicking pause at points where the viewer is told. Animations will appear and disappear in conjuncture with the voice over in the video. If however the nature of the video was different and required interaction with a mouse, we could look into designing some sort of selection or multiple choice interaction that gave results at the end of the video. There are other ways that animation that can be used but I wouldn't necessarily use them in this product. And example thought could be if the voice over was giving an analogy that mentioned a ball of some kind. I could incorporate a looping animation of a ball bouncing. This would be quite visually stimulating and could help keep the viewers attention.
Any animation we make needs to be able to fit onto a FHD canvas. After Effects compositions should not be any larger than 1920x1080 pixels so everything is contained within the video and doesn't appear off screen anywhere. The position of animations will match with the slideshow that the client provided e.g. when remaking the slides, text and images should appear in the same position as they do on the example slides.
3.1
In my workplace I've been asked to make intros and outros plates for the videos we produce. I was asked to do this as a showcase to see what I could achieve with my current skills. I was given a verbal brief that was in fact very brief so I had quite a lot of freedom with what I wanted to do. The only constraints I was given is it needed to go along with our brand guidelines so colours needed to be consistent.
The first parameter I decided was that the intro would be no longer than five seconds. I chose this duration because I believed it was a good compromise on being to quick for the viewer to see and being too long that it bores the viewer. Next I went through several ideas on what would appear on screen. I had a variation of just text appearing, our square social media logo appearing and a combination of the both. I also thought about creating different levels of complexity. Some intros could be very minimal while others may be more complicated and visually striking. Deciding on how assets would animate on screen was my next step. I tried a combination of using fades, blurs, lights and camera movement within 3D space. When producing my ideas I had to make sure that colour was consistent with the brand guidelines. I was also able to use graphics that were previously made by someone else in Illustrator. This was especially useful because it saved my time in having to recreate it. The end product would be in the form of a video that would be 10 seconds long. The file format would be our companies usual editing format of Prores 422 in a .MOV container.
3.2
I decided on using Adobe After Effects as it is the GFX software that I am most familiar with. I made my main comp with the settings as follows:
Next I imported the assets I needed like the social media logo and page one font. These assets are vector files from Illustrator so work seamlessly with after effects. Vector files are also good because they scale infinitely.
I wrote my company name and selected our branded font for my first idea. I decided for this one that I would use 3D space to simulate shadow. I made a background layer and moved it back in z space and then animated the 'Page One' text to grow and move toward the camera. The light layer was pointed at the text so that a shadow was simulated on the background layer. Motion blur was added finally to give it a more natural look.
The next idea was to be a bit more exciting. I thought simulating some kind of shatter would be good. The text would slowly fade on and then shatter off screen. I tried this firstly but it wasn't impactful enough. Reversing the shatter was the next idea I had. This shows lots of pieces coming together to form the company name. The final part was to still use the initial shatter after the reversed one. This means that the text will be off screen at the start and the end. The background has a slight radial ramp too so it didn't look too flat.
Fourth and final idea was a bit more visually striking. I used a picture of a flare and used the turbulent displace effect to make it look as if there was some kind of plasma cloud. The Page One text simply fades in as the background moves slightly.
4.1, 4.2
Going back to the project mentioned in section two, all the people that were working on this project were given the same brief so it was easier for us to all work to the same standards. There were three people editing and animating including myself. Over the 10 videos we had to do, one of us did five, the other three, and I did two (mostly because I was ill during final animation stages). Nevertheless we had all verbally agreed on animating in the same kind of format - same font, same colours and fade in for all assets that would appear on screen. There were no need for any special instructions for any third parties because all the footage and animation would be handled by us. If someone else were to have need to edit the project then instructions such as those previously mentioned would have to noted to the third party. Also things like file format and dimensions should be listed also to ensure there are no compatibility issues. Other than providing the final video in a suitable/ universal format so it can be used properly, there were no other special instructions that needed to be provided upon delivery.
Before sending the final product to the client we went through several iterations which was understandable due to the size of the overall project. Each video was proofed by five people, the three editors, creative director and Client Manager. This gives a total of 50 proofs and this was done twice before sending to the client. These proofs were then sent to the client which allowed them to make comments, give feedback and if needed, provide instruction for any changes that needed to be made.
5.1, 5.2
Saving the animations I mentioned in section 3 is a fairly simple job. To keep consistency with our other editing formats the best codec and container would be .MOV and Prores 422. This is very high quality and useful codec for editing with.
All our projects have a standard folder system which has folders for all the different types of assets used. We also have a final output folder which we use to see what versions of videos have been made and what is the most up to date. We generally access the Current Final Video folder when we're making a final proof before sending to the client.Here are some of the backup/storage folders from both the projects that have been previously mentioned.
The overall purpose of the finished video is to educate so the animation would need to be clear and legible and should be able to retain the viewers attention. Because of this we would have to create smooth animations that were clean, visually stimulating and memorable but didn't take focus away from what was being said in the voice over.
 |
| Here are the export settings for Premiere Pro ( Prores 422). |
2.3, 2.4, 2.5
The intended audience for the videos we needed to produce would be people that have just finished university and going into the pharmacy and/or people that have been in pharmacy for some time and just need a refresher of how you should conduct yourself in a pharmaceutical workplace. The intended purpose is to be informative so a fairly formal language would be used throughout the video. Being informative, the included animations would need to engage the audience and be memorable. Because they would be be accompanying a voice over also, various pieces of text would need to be on screen for a good amount of time so that the audience can read everything in time. Size and colour of text and images would also be considered. Everything would need to be legibly and clear so a fairly simple and readable font should be used. Images should be of high quality so there's no visible pixelation. The final videos will actually be sold as educational videos so it's very important that everything is proofed and is as high quality as it could be. Like previously mentioned there would be no interaction from the audience other than watching the video or slicking pause at points where the viewer is told. Animations will appear and disappear in conjuncture with the voice over in the video. If however the nature of the video was different and required interaction with a mouse, we could look into designing some sort of selection or multiple choice interaction that gave results at the end of the video. There are other ways that animation that can be used but I wouldn't necessarily use them in this product. And example thought could be if the voice over was giving an analogy that mentioned a ball of some kind. I could incorporate a looping animation of a ball bouncing. This would be quite visually stimulating and could help keep the viewers attention.
Any animation we make needs to be able to fit onto a FHD canvas. After Effects compositions should not be any larger than 1920x1080 pixels so everything is contained within the video and doesn't appear off screen anywhere. The position of animations will match with the slideshow that the client provided e.g. when remaking the slides, text and images should appear in the same position as they do on the example slides.
 |
| After Effects file showing assets on screen and with keyframing for animation |
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| Here is the Premiere Pro file which has had the After Effects file Dynamically Linked. You can see the pink tile on the timeline is the composition from the previous picture and the green tile is the audio which has been matched up with it. |
3.1
In my workplace I've been asked to make intros and outros plates for the videos we produce. I was asked to do this as a showcase to see what I could achieve with my current skills. I was given a verbal brief that was in fact very brief so I had quite a lot of freedom with what I wanted to do. The only constraints I was given is it needed to go along with our brand guidelines so colours needed to be consistent.
The first parameter I decided was that the intro would be no longer than five seconds. I chose this duration because I believed it was a good compromise on being to quick for the viewer to see and being too long that it bores the viewer. Next I went through several ideas on what would appear on screen. I had a variation of just text appearing, our square social media logo appearing and a combination of the both. I also thought about creating different levels of complexity. Some intros could be very minimal while others may be more complicated and visually striking. Deciding on how assets would animate on screen was my next step. I tried a combination of using fades, blurs, lights and camera movement within 3D space. When producing my ideas I had to make sure that colour was consistent with the brand guidelines. I was also able to use graphics that were previously made by someone else in Illustrator. This was especially useful because it saved my time in having to recreate it. The end product would be in the form of a video that would be 10 seconds long. The file format would be our companies usual editing format of Prores 422 in a .MOV container.
3.2
I decided on using Adobe After Effects as it is the GFX software that I am most familiar with. I made my main comp with the settings as follows:
- Resolution: 1920 x 1080
- Timebase: 25fps
- Duration: 00:00:10:00
Next I imported the assets I needed like the social media logo and page one font. These assets are vector files from Illustrator so work seamlessly with after effects. Vector files are also good because they scale infinitely.
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| Here are the assets I've imported into the After Effects project tab |
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| Here is the main composition and the layers with their respective keyframes which give us the animation |
I wrote my company name and selected our branded font for my first idea. I decided for this one that I would use 3D space to simulate shadow. I made a background layer and moved it back in z space and then animated the 'Page One' text to grow and move toward the camera. The light layer was pointed at the text so that a shadow was simulated on the background layer. Motion blur was added finally to give it a more natural look.
The next idea was to be a bit more exciting. I thought simulating some kind of shatter would be good. The text would slowly fade on and then shatter off screen. I tried this firstly but it wasn't impactful enough. Reversing the shatter was the next idea I had. This shows lots of pieces coming together to form the company name. The final part was to still use the initial shatter after the reversed one. This means that the text will be off screen at the start and the end. The background has a slight radial ramp too so it didn't look too flat.
The next one was another blur styled intro. This one actually has elements that are affected by a a sound clip. The Page One text appears and blurs to match the lower frequencies of a sound clip. We have two parts to our company so the next thing that happens is the appearance of 'Photography' and 'media' which is coloured to match our brand guidelines. A slight feather was used around the edges to a bit more visually to the background.
4.1, 4.2
Going back to the project mentioned in section two, all the people that were working on this project were given the same brief so it was easier for us to all work to the same standards. There were three people editing and animating including myself. Over the 10 videos we had to do, one of us did five, the other three, and I did two (mostly because I was ill during final animation stages). Nevertheless we had all verbally agreed on animating in the same kind of format - same font, same colours and fade in for all assets that would appear on screen. There were no need for any special instructions for any third parties because all the footage and animation would be handled by us. If someone else were to have need to edit the project then instructions such as those previously mentioned would have to noted to the third party. Also things like file format and dimensions should be listed also to ensure there are no compatibility issues. Other than providing the final video in a suitable/ universal format so it can be used properly, there were no other special instructions that needed to be provided upon delivery.
Before sending the final product to the client we went through several iterations which was understandable due to the size of the overall project. Each video was proofed by five people, the three editors, creative director and Client Manager. This gives a total of 50 proofs and this was done twice before sending to the client. These proofs were then sent to the client which allowed them to make comments, give feedback and if needed, provide instruction for any changes that needed to be made.
 |
| Here is one of the pages of slides that we were using to write notes and potential changes on. Although messy looking, each of the people editing were liaising as they were being written so we knew what was what. |
5.1, 5.2
Saving the animations I mentioned in section 3 is a fairly simple job. To keep consistency with our other editing formats the best codec and container would be .MOV and Prores 422. This is very high quality and useful codec for editing with.
 |
| Export settings for animation in After Effects (Prores 422 .MOV) |
All our projects have a standard folder system which has folders for all the different types of assets used. We also have a final output folder which we use to see what versions of videos have been made and what is the most up to date. We generally access the Current Final Video folder when we're making a final proof before sending to the client.Here are some of the backup/storage folders from both the projects that have been previously mentioned.
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| Here is the folder structure for the title plates I was making. |
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| Here is the backup folder with all the assets and final videos backed up on our central NAS. Each computer that was being used to work on the projects also has the folder as a second backup and so that not everyone was accessing the server and putting it under constant load. |
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