This week I have been looking into ways in which I can turn my concept drawings (shown my previous blog - www.filmannex.com/posts/blog_show_post/shine-creating-a-style/61410 ) into a moving animation. This posed a few questions -
- How did I want the characters move?
- What program was I going to use to animate?
- How am I going to learn to use this program?
- Will I be able to pull off a good looking animation?
All daunting questions at first, but I got excited at the prospect of facing these challenges.
My first approach was to scan through youtube tutorials on various different animation programs to see which one I felt I would be able to learn and would create the effect I most wanted. To my surprise, I stumbled across a video which detailed ways in which you can use After Effects to animate still images. I don't have much experience with After Effects but it is a program I feel reasonably comfortable using and it transitions to and from Photoshop very easily.
I have since spent most of my time practicing and testing out lots of different methods of animation and 3d camera projection in After Effects. After a lot of trial and error, mostly error, I now feel comfortable using the program and animating the style I have previously created. Here is a still image of the process -
My next aim is to focus a lot of my time on developing the story. Now that I am comfortable in knowing what I am able to do with my animation, I can have a clearer vision in what to create and know what will work and what won't.
This has all been a new learning experience for me and I have been able to learn it all using the internet. The internet is proving to be a great source of education for me and I am looking forward to learning more!
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