DES 251 Digital Media Design III / Spring '24
DES 251 Digital Media Design III

Assignment 1: e-motion

Due: January 19 (VIMEO clip(s) uploaded to VIMEO and added to the class website by the beginning of class)

This first assignment is a simple intro to motion graphics. The goal is to visualize two contrasting emotions with the means of motion. These simple animations give you the opportunity to use and apply the elemental building blocks of animation as well as to learn the basics of Adobe After Effects. At the same time you need to visualize and idea on an abstract level without the support of images. So it's about timing, rhythm, visual contrast (big/small, transparent/opaque...), and motion contrast (fast/slow, steady/unsteady, linear/non-linear...).

Goals

After Effects Online Tutorial (Adobe)

Do these tutorials on your own time as soon as you can. It's important to get familiar with the AE basics before you start animating your composition. Together they're around 1 hour of video in total.

After Effects Workspace:


Essential tasks:


More After Effects Tutorials

Assignment Task

Pick two opposites (you own choice or from the list below). Try to visualize these opposites as clear as possible with the means of motion and appearance of the letter "e".

Create two consecutive animations, each about 5 seconds long. Each animation should start and end with a plain, black background. Have a 2 second time gap between the first and the second animation (so that we can identify the end and the beginning of an emotion). The exception would be if the two animations interact (chase each other, collide, etc.). The position of the "e" in the last frame of the second sequence should match the position of its template. After the letter reaches its final position, introduce the word "motion" so that the combination reads "emotion". In the end fade out all elements so that you end up with a plain black background. There are, of course, different ways to introduce the word "emotion", but the final size and position should be in the center and match the position in the template. Below is an example that should make that clear.


Emotion Opposites

happy/sad, ecstatic/depressed, energetic/lethargic, free/restrained, active/passive, excited/bored, joyful/desperate, love/hate, alert/tired, still/irritated, shy/bold, confident/insecure, peaceful/agressive, hesitant/certain, calm/angry, week/strong, surprised/aware afraid/brave, nervous/relaxed,

Motion/Time based Opposites

Motion opposites often relate to emotion opposites so think about time based opposites also and what they could represent. Combinations can enhance or clarify meaning: fast/slow, grow/shrink, horizontal/vertical, straight/curved, opaque/transparent, visible/invisible (short/long), steady/unsteady (irregular), accelerate/decelerate, rotate/stay...

The 27 Human Emotions

According to the latest research conducted by the University of California, Berkeley, 27 distinct categories of emotions have been identified:

Admiration
Adoration
Aesthetic appreciation
Amusement
Anxiety
Awe
Awkwardness
Boredom
Calmness
Confusion
Craving
Disgust
Empathetic pain
Entrancement
Envy
Excitement
Fear
Horror
Interest
Joy
Nostalgia
Romance
Sadness
Satisfaction
Sexual desire
Sympathy
Triumph

Preparation: Illustrator

Download the following Illustrator file EMOTION template. I created the templates so they already match the dimensions of the movie you'll create (1920 x 1080px). The document has 3 layers: A black background, the letter "e" and the word "motion". You'll import these layers including the position of the elements into After Effects.

Preparation: After Effects

1. Open After Effects, go to the top menu and select File > New > New Project.

2. Go to File > Import > File, browse to your Illustrator file, select it and "Open" it with the following settings: Import Kind: Composition, Footage Dimensions: Layer Size. Depending on which version of After Effects you have installed this dialog window may look slightly different than the one shown here. Make sure you select Composition and something that says "retain layer size" before you import.

3. Composition settings will match the size of the Illustrator document. You can check by selecting the (automatically created) composition from the project window and go to Composition > Composition Settings. Below an example for the HD "1080" version. Here you can adjust the duration of the clip. Choose a black background.


If you double-click the composition icon in the Files panel (upper left) you see the finished layout in the composition window and all the layers inside the timeline window. If the layers aren't in the right order you can simply drag them vertically to a different place. If you used the Illustrator template to prepare your file the layout is already correctly centered in the format and all elements are placed in their final location. So you basically see the end-frame of your animation sequence (the word "emotion" in the center of the screen).

In order for After Effect to display vector graphics at the best possible quality, please check the "Continuously Rasterize" icon for the e-layer (looks like a small snowflake).

Rendering the Movie

Once you finished the animation in the timeline you need to render the animation in order to get a movie file you can share.

From the top menu in After Effects go to COMPOSITION > ADD TO RENDER QUEUE. At the bottom Panel you see three things you can adjust: Render Settings, Output Module, and Output To.

The Render Settings are by default set to "Best Settings". You probably don't need to adjust much here. One thing to pay attention to is the "Time Span". You may want to choose "Work Area Only" if you defined a Work Area in you Timeline. This can be done by dragging the beginning and end of the time span (blue arrow shapenall the way at the top of your Timeline) to the desired length. The time span of you Timeline is most likely longer then the actual animation and you only want to Render the "action" and not additional time in the end.

Here are the Settings for the Output Module (optimized for VIMEO) Click "Lossless" to get there:

Output To: Choose a location on your drive where you want to save the movie.

Here a link to a Tutorial/Example

The Adobe Media Encoder Alternative

There's an alternative to render/make a movie clip out of your composition. People on PC may not have the render options mentioned above. An alternative for Mac and PC is the Adobe Media Encoder. It's directly connected to After Effects so after installation it'll appear as an option to render a clip.



Submitting the Assignment

Please refer to this this post.