Grid City

I would like to share a helpful hint when it comes to creating motion graphics. Simple is often better. Too many times I have found myself building something ‘fantabulous’ only to cut it right back till I like it. So why not start simple and build from there? I recently worked on a motion graphics animation for Projectmanager.com, this is a perfect example of starting simple and building from there.

Firstly it might help if you watch the finished product below

To create that I used

• Photoshop CS4
• After Effect CS4

Side note: It doesn’t matter what ‘CS’ is used, just like it doesn’t matter what car you drive or what hand bag you wear. It still gets you from A to B and carries all your stuff.

I was given

• A Projectmanager.com logo
• Various icons they currently use on their website
• A script

With those things, I went into Photoshop a did this:

• Placed a two tone blue gradient down for a background
• Placed the logo and 3 of the icons I was given on the page

Done! Simple. I now have an opening to the video “welcome to project manager.com” Now to ‘build from there’.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This looks cool right? But it’s a bit flat, not a lot of oomph! At this point I have no idea what I want to improve. So I find things I already like and see if I can make them a wee bit better. I like the gradient background, so Ill change the blues and see what happens. I like the icons so I make them look a little bit more three-dimensional by adding reflections. And I like the logo how it is. In retrospect my design decisions are primarily based around the logo, it’s one of the most important references I have for my overall style decisions. After those few changes are made this is what I’m left with.

I’m stuck now; I want a busier background because I know it’s the only part of the animation viewers will see for the entire time. At this point I need some inspiration. Luckily I’m really awesome and came up with an idea in minutes. What did I use for inspiration?

The default desktop from Mac OS X Tiger

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So my current design plus inspiration equals

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It may not look like much of an improvement but trust me, some flowy lines that move ever so slightly can make the difference between the client saying “I don’t like it” to “great, send me the invoice”.

Now all that’s left is to animate. I’m not going to go into detail but instead give a few pieces of advice. If you view the opening of the video all you will see is the logo and icons moving on and off screen, nothing special, some scale and position key frames is all. The trick is to make it flow, and keep the timing right. I can’t teach timing but I can let you in on a couple of secrets to help make it flow.

Technique #1
I am going to assume you know a little bit about After Effects, and know what key frames are used for. A setting I use regularly when animating key frames is the ‘Easy Ease’ option. This means to ease speed coming both into and out of selected key frames. So rather than a constant speed from one key frame to another the change begins slowly, speeds up and then slows before stopping at the second key frame. This provides a more smooth transition. You can make your key frames Easy Ease by selecting them and hitting ‘F9’ or by right clicking and under ‘key frame assistant’ hit ‘Easy Ease’

Technique #2
Lets say you are animating that bar graph icon on the right. You want it to enter the screen and stop where it is, you know easy ease key frames will help it look better, but what else could you do? Make it more realistic maybe? Find a ruler. Hold it still. Now give it a flick like your trying to catapult something at the guy or girl you didn’t like very much at school. See how it doesn’t just go from one point to the other? But it flexes many times before coming to a stop. Try and incorporate that kind of realism when animating. I’ve provided two examples here. The first using easy ease key frames as well as the ‘realism’ technique and the second with standard A to B key frames. You can decide which flows best.

Example 1

Example 2

 

Small things make all the difference

Tags: Animating Graphics, Animation, Grid City, Internet Videos, Motion GFX, Motion Graphics, Motion Grapics Videos, Online Video Production, Online Videos, Product Video, Video Production, Videos for Web, Web Videos

This entry was posted on Friday, May 27th, 2011 at 10:01 am and is filed under Motion Graphics, Video. You can follow any comments to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.