Last month I completed an online class with School of Motion: After Effects Kickstart. I decided to take it on a whim, since January/February is the slow season in the Event Production industry, and I had wanted to get into Motion Design for a while. The four week class was definitely challenging, but I still learned a lot in a very short time. While I know I still need plenty of practice to grow my skills, I’m proud to share some of my favorite class projects.
10 Second Countdown
This countdown video for social media was my final project, and I needed to have every element move continuously and use match cuts between each shot. Most class assignments had Easy, Medium, and Hard difficulty compositions we could choose between depending on our skill level and how much time we had to work on it before the deadline. I chose the hardest level composition for my final, as I wanted an additional challenge that would show off all the skills I’d learned so far.
Lamps Love
This project was one of three logo design options to create a five second animation. I initially picked the “Mugs and Kisses” option, but after I finished my choice, I decided to go back and try to animate another logo, “Lamps Love.” I changed the background color from black to yellow to make the “lights on” animation, and added simple movements to the rest of the elements.
Week in Review
Our course teacher, Nol Honig, really likes animating collages of images, and this exercise involved animating collages of the days of the week. Not only did I need to animate each piece of the collage sliding offscreen, I also had to change the speed of these transitions to create match cuts, seamless transitions between shots using matching animations. I also added a few small touches to some of the collage parts, like getting the dancing couple image in one shot to “dance” onscreen.
No Copilot
This assignment required animating onscreen lyrics in sync to a music track, which was much harder than it seemed. Even when I used the Easy project it was hard to get the timings right, and scrubbing the audio track to find the “start” and “end” of syllables was quite a pain. On top of that, I had to make sure all the other elements in the composition moved separately and continuously in each frame. While I tried my best with my class submission, I wanted to go back and try to complete the full animation with the full length song. After importing the Easy shots I’d already completed to the Hard version, I synced the remaining lyrics to the rest of the song and animated as many of the background shapes and lines as I could. I’m much happier with the new results, and redoing the project has inspired me to create my own lyric animation video in the future.
No Copilot: Easy Version
No Copilot: Hard Version
Thinking about the future, I’m considering taking another School of Motion class in the Summer or Fall. I’m interested in Cinema 4D Basecamp to improve my 3D skills, and MoGrt Mania so I can create Motion Design Templates that I can sell online. Whatever opportunities come my way next, I’m glad I chose to jump into Motion Design.
Sources:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/nol-honig-710266/