Tool: After Effects / Motion Design
I started learning Adobe After Effects from scratch with focusing on motion graphics. It’s a bit tricky, with a learning curve that felt overwhelming at first, even after I got comfortable with the interface. Unlike Photoshop or Illustrator, After Effects needs a deeper understanding of animation principles and video editing, including considering basic physics for specific motions.
To copy I choose to work on a ad by Nike called “Beyond the Court.” I pick a small part of it and tried to redesign it.
Link of the Ad:
I really like the bold colors and cool motions in the project. Started with outline and creating the static versions in Adobe Illustrator.
I move to after effects and create each scene with changing the positions and keyframes.
I create each sequence one by one with just changing the positions of the balls and adding keyframes.
The redesign at the end look almost similar with the original one.
Left: Original Ad / Right: My redesign
Unexpected Insights:
I am used to work mainly with still images and illustrations, loving how a single frame could tell a story at your own pace. But in motion graphics, it’s like dealing with moving pictures, where you follow the flow and match the speed of the piece. Here, artists guide where people look and illustrate complex ideas visually in a short time. What surprised me in my first week of motion graphics was that, while I thought I’d draw every scene, I realized you can tell a longer story in a very short time, which I find exciting. With motion graphics, you can make people look where you want and control the feelings you want to convey.
Proposal:
When we make regular pictures, we focus on two-dimensional things like shapes and colors. Motion graphics build on this by adding time, needing skills in motion expression. To make things more interesting, I plan to use a still image, like a photograph, and add motion to some parts or to the whole image. I have some ideas like adding a new dimension, applying some odd physics to it and hacking the physics of motion.
I started to work on a photo that I took near my house. The houses resembled piano keys. I thought about creating a piano with houses with adding motion.
I cut out each house and other elements in Photoshop.
Then import everything to After Effects and tried some effects.
Then I added some music.
At this point I got bored to work on this photo, so I moved on to another photo from my library.
I wanted to give this image life with adding some motions to the road signs. First deleted out the parts that I want to animate in Photoshop.
Then I inserted everything in to After Effects and start to play with adding different motions.
I elongate the Underground text, tried to give it a metro car feeling.
I struggle a lot in masking the motion into the triangle shaped sign.
I watched like 2 million youtube masking videos, but only this guys technique worked.
The outcome: (Loved it except wanted to work more on the Underground text)
Tried to give it a realistic motion with using kinetic typography effects embeded in After Effects.
Loved the whole process and in love with the outcome.
I love the idea that I know how to use After Effects now.