I believe that I acquired new skills over the duration of this project and pushed myself out of my comfort zone to achieve a project that exhibits both primary and secondary motion throughout each sequence. I personally feel as though I accomplished what I had set out to do, in terms of developing a set of animated explainer videos for the brewing company I work at.
However, I’m slightly disappointed in the aesthetic style and appearance of the clips, I was hoping to better match the style of the clips with the company’s brand identity more than I was able to. It was due to some constraints including my ability with After Effects and the time available, that lead me to believe I wouldn’t have been able to reach my set goal if I spent more time trying to construct and match illustrations to the aesthetic of the company. Although with that being said, I was happy with the end result, as all videos come together to form a cohesive set which was my main goal in mind when developing several separate clips in what would become a series.
Initially, I had planned to curate 4 separate clips, not including the animated logo, however, I was only able to complete three in the time I had allocated myself. This was due to the complexity of my initial designs and my lack of knowledge of Adobe After Effects as a whole. Once I become more knowledgeable and capable of the more basic elements of After Effects, the time to develop and produce one clip shortened. The first clip took several hours over a few days to complete, whilst the later videos I was able to complete within a day.
Firstly, I was unsure of how I could develop complex shapes such as planes and solar panels in Adobe After Effects itself, therefore I decided to move into Adobe Illustrator to curate my illustrations, then later import them into Adobe After Effects. By doing this I solved one problem, yet developed another as I was unaware of how to properly import my Illustrator components into After Effects, however after some research and testing I was able to effectively import my Illustrator files into After Effects, this was a key moment within the development of my project, as if I were to try and develop these components in After Effects itself, the whole process would have been much more tedious and harder overall.
Initially, I had developed several more complex illustrations in Adobe Illustrator that I had intended on doing over the several clips, however, once importing a few into After Effects as a test, I found that the complex objects were much more time-consuming to animate than I was initially expecting, therefore I decided to develop simpler illustrations that I could animate in a shorter period, in order to reach my desired number by the deadline. As well as trying to be efficient with my time, it was also a key factor in running a smoother operation, as the more complex the illustrations were, the slower my computer ran and the more issue I encountered with crashing and just overall difficulty to work and animate my illustrations.
Throughout the duration of this project, I acquired certain skills that I can take into future projects, these projects could include anything from animating logos for companies or developing small, animated stories. Whilst doing some research around animations I discovered some really fun and unique animations that I’d love to be able to achieve one day.
As I’m quite fond of brand identity development and logo iteration, I was really intrigued by the thought of animating logos in the future. Below are some notable examples of animated logos, which I have defiantly taken inspiration from for future projects.
Along with logo animation, I would love to experiment with some more intricate and realistic animations such as this push-pull animation below.
WHAT AM I DOING? 