Friday, July 22, 2011

I AM ANIMATOR! (flash & after effects experiment)



It feels like it has been ages since I animated anything! 

It's just a little experiment using Flash and After Effects.  What I was really interested in was coloring  and visually finishing the animation (even though the animation itself could use some work). In that aspect I feel I was successful.

Here is how I finished and colored it:

I animated this in Flash.  I turned the whole animation into a black silhouette on a white background.

Black and white layer, its perfect for pulling an alpha channel

In After Effects I made my Layer Style "silhouette luma".  This makes a mask out of the layer allowing me to put shape layers underneath it to color the character.

Then I just masked out that back leg and made a bit of a darker blue to separate the legs. And added a shadow under the character. I also added the shadow.

I made a pre comp of him and put him in my scene that I had painted in photoshop.
Here is just a shot showing my After Effects Layers and such. 
I was pretty proud how the Gem Field turned out.  It is just two gem shapes squished and stretched to look different.
 


What do you use to digitally clean up and paint your animation?  I am always looking for new ways.

5 comments:

  1. That's really nicely done. The "how it's done" part is very interesting as well; I've been wanting to learn a little bit about After Effects, and it's amazing that most of this is done there rather than in Flash. Looks like I better get moving to learn that program! Sigh... Too much to study, since I'm trying to move over to Toon Boom from Flash at the same time.

    How did you learn After Effects? Any useful tips or tutorials you've discovered that you want to share with another animator? :)

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  2. Wow, nice animation...and I really like your website! It's got a clean feel to it. Love your work. Do you have deviant art or anything similar?

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