Since my journey at Confetti is already quite underway, It would be nice to reflect on my progress so far. I remember the first week, and how daunting it seemed. I felt that college would be full of new experiences and opportunities but also a big step, which can be difficult. The lessons, however, have been so enjoyable and engaging, that any fears or doubts I had have been blown away completely. So far, we have done a lot in both animation and video editing. I have learned how to navigate After Effects, Premiere Pro, and Illustrator, and I can […]
Author: Tina
Colour Theory
Concept art is the form of illustration used to convey an idea for use in films, video games, comic books, and other media. Colours play an important part in this and in films, they can have an emotional attachment and value (red can mean passion, shock, violence, or anger, whilst yellow generally means happiness.) Some important definitions that I learned are hue (colour/shade), value (brightness/lightness), saturation (intensity of hue), chroma (quality of colour, hue and saturation combined), and mono (one). I also learned that there is more than one set of primary colours – I always thought that there was […]
Motion Tracking
Motion tracking is a technique that involves recording and replicating the motion of objects and cameras in the scene. It’s quite versatile and it can be done in After Effects. A tracker is a tool used to track an object or point in footage. What can usually be seen on the green screen are crosses, which are references or anchor points to put the footage in, called markers. You select a pattern or area of contrast for the tracker to reference (markers help with this) and the tracker looks for that specific pattern in every frame and image, by referencing […]
Squash & Stretch and Overlap
For this lesson, our focus was on principle one and five of animation. We were given a squash rig, which is an asset that is already set up with no controllers and enables use so that we can create squash and stretch. It seemed very simple to me at first – look a the example of the square bouncing up and down, squashing and stretching, and recreate it. However, this proved to be far more difficult than I thought. I can work with the basics in After Effects fairly well now, so I succeeded in making the square bounce, and […]
Narrative Analysis
Narrative often gets confused with plot and story, and honestly, I have made this mistake before as well. Today, I learned about the difference between the three, as well as the proper definitions. Narrative is the way in which we receive a story. It can be watching a film or reading a book. It has also been described as “the art of storytelling”. The plot is what is visibly and audibly presented and in what order. The story is everything that happens in the narrative, as well as what we can infer or are referred to, for example sleeping and […]
Compositing
This masterclass was a lesson on composting, which is the process of combining visual elements from seperate sources into single images, often to create the illusion that all those elements are parts of the same scene. Live-action shooting for compositing is variously called “chroma key”, “blue screen”, “green screen” and other names. Some of the techniques included in compositing are CGI, rotor scoping, 2D/3D mapping, motion tracking, and more. We were to do compositing green screen footage as our lesson. Things I learned: Incrementally saving work is better than saving it in the end. Multiple versions lock the project, create […]
Staggering
Recap: Hold ctrl and double click pan behind – centres anchor point Ctrl + N – new composition Easy ease in – Ease into a destination Interpolation – filling in unknown data between keyframes This time, we learned about staggering keyframes and how to stagger layers. Staggering in terms of animation just means one after another, like steps. In After Effects, we made a basic animation of two squares growing larger and overshooting. I added easy ease and separated the dimensions of the shape layer. In graph editor, like before, I made sure the line was not linear and using […]
Intertextuality & Context
If everything is made already, how do I make something completely original? “The anxiety of influence” – Harold Bloom The truth is, nobody can really make something that is 100% original. Everything is influenced by something, even if just by a little. This worries a lot of people and Harold Bloom described it as the anxiety of influence. You must remember, that when creating something, the world around you, everything you’ve heard of and seen is a part of the idea, and that’s not something bad, or something that can be helped for that matter. So what is intertextuality? […]
Video Editing Techniques – pt.2
There is so much to explore in Adobe Premiere Pro, so we did a second lesson on video editing techniques! The starter included five words, culture, home, travel, energy, and relax. We were asked to think about what those words meant to us, and a lot of images and memories appeared in my mind, as each of the words were linked to personal experiences. For the next task, we were to choose one of the words as a theme, and I chose energy because I was reminded of my trip to Bulgaria, where I went hiking one of the many […]
The 12 Principles of Animation
This lesson began with a quick starter to recap easy ease in and out and overshooting. We hopped onto After effects to create a quick animation and remind ourselves of what we learned last week. I chose to make a star move from one point to another and then applied the easy ease functions and made it overshoot its destination. I found this easy enough and was planning on doing a second star before we ran out of time and had to move on. The 12 principles of animation. This was our topic for the lesson and we […]