After Effect Multi Screen: Screen 2
I came a cross a piece that depicted a person swimming through space and towards what the artist called 'Eternal Light'. This piece really stuck with me as I really liked the idea of looping a series of animation. This would make the animation a lot easier with the short time frame as I found that it can become very time consuming. When I first came across this piece, I felt like this was a perfect representation of some one being consumed in the digital world, as if they are in an endless loop. I really liked the simple style of this and wanted to add some pixelated specs around it to emphasise being sucked in to technology.
I began by trying to make the rings which move horizontally and get bigger and smaller. I achieved this on After Effects. I made sure to have no fill in the circular shape to ensure that when I create a character they can be seen once placed in the middle. It took me quite a while to figure out how to move things and change multiple things at the same time, but after some experimenting, I achieved this through creating key frames with the position scale and opacity:
When creating each ring, I realised that they had to move at the same speed so it looked as if it was one movement. To achieve this I had to transform furthermore, I wanted to create an eternal effect as there is no going back in terms of technology. We are now in a world where people become reliant on technology, we medically rely on new machinery and we share and store masses of data. To reflect this I created a loop with this composition. I also ensured that all the layers had the same anchor point which meant that they would all move from the same point. The change of opacity created the effect of each ring getting stronger at the centre and then slowly disappearing and then reappearing at the top again to repeat the cycle:
I then went on Animate and created the character that would swim in the centre of the moving circles. for this. I wanted it to be plain and white to resemble the circular movement. Much like the first character design, I made sure that all body parts were on separate layers and were all labeled. I wanted to create the effect of the figure being in the circular animation. For this I made the opacity of the character 50%. However, doing this meant that you could see the overlapping layers more prominently, but I thought that because the character would be under the circular rings and would be quite small, it would not be too visible. After this, I then transferred the composition from Animate to After Effects.
At first creating the animated swimming movement was very difficult. I couldn't figure out how to link all the limbs together so they could move as one. However, after a lot of googling and watching YouTube videos, I found that if you linked each layer through the 'Parent & Link' section all shapes would move together. From here, I adjusted the anchor point to where the joints in a real body would be so when I rotated, movement would be realistic to a real human. The actual swimming movement was created through the use of key frames with the rotation and movements of each body part. I learned how to make the whole body move as one. However, I really wanted to make the figure look more accurate in the swimming movements but thought it looked realistic enough and needed to focus on other aspects of the project in order to keep to the time schedule. The video of just the swimmer is shown below:
At first creating the animated swimming movement was very difficult. I couldn't figure out how to link all the limbs together so they could move as one. However, after a lot of googling and watching YouTube videos, I found that if you linked each layer through the 'Parent & Link' section all shapes would move together. From here, I adjusted the anchor point to where the joints in a real body would be so when I rotated, movement would be realistic to a real human. The actual swimming movement was created through the use of key frames with the rotation and movements of each body part. I learned how to make the whole body move as one. However, I really wanted to make the figure look more accurate in the swimming movements but thought it looked realistic enough and needed to focus on other aspects of the project in order to keep to the time schedule. The video of just the swimmer is shown below:
I wanted to depict the digital world within the style of my animation/VFX. This could be achieved by making some pixelated specs that or animating the inside of a motherboard. As I couldn't really decide or imagine what I wanted I created a mood board of different ways the digital world and coding of it has been depicted in films and photography so I could understand how it is depicted.
The images I was really drawn to were the ones from the Wachowski brother's feature film The Matrix (1999). The film was big on popularising visual effects. A scene that really got my attention is the Matrix Digital Rain. This is the Green computer coding that appears in the matrix. The code highlights all the activity that occurs in the digital world. It starts from the top and looks as if it is raining code to the bottom, each character changes as it does this. I thought it would be a very cool to try to incorporate and recreate this.
The coding was designed by Simon Whiteley and comprises of Western latin letters and numbers. The choice of the neon green resembles that of the green screen colour. I really liked this representation of online activity and really wanted to push this idea of having human activity represented like this further. I also think that it would be really interesting to find a way to show that humans are controlled by technology and are so reliant on it.
I begun by finding the the Matrix font and then downloading that on to my computer. To begin this process of making a Matrix raining code effect, I used the 'decoder' effect on a character which made it change on the spot. I also changed the opacity from the top and the bottom so they disappear from the top the further the line goes down. On top of this, I changed the colour throughout as well through key frames. After this I then duplicated the layer and just moved the position of it to create a horizontal line :
From here I created a new composition and then put the singular line composition in there. Next I duplicated this many many times and changed its position. This created 1 layer of Matrix raining code. I moved the position on the timeline of each layer so each line came in and out at different times across the screen as shown below:
I wanted to make the raining last longer so I made a new composition which I then took the last Matrix comp and copied it on to the new one. I duplicated the layer and changed its position on the timeline and on the screen. This made it seem as if something was turning on or activity on the screen was increasing due to the increase coding appearing on the screen.
I then put the green circular ring composition on the current comp that had the matrix raining code on it. Originally the rings were just white but it didn't look right once it was on the same screen as the matrix text. So I made it go from white>green>white much like the matrix text which is what is shown above in the video.
On a separate composition, I put together the circle ring files, matrix raining code and the swimmer. in this order. I duplicated all files a few times and lined them up to create a looping effect, I also took a single line of code and aligned the ending position of it to the middle of the circle rings. From here I made sure that the last character would remain longer on the screen through using key frames with the opacity. I also made this character turn white. I did this because I wanted to create the effect of the swimmer originating from the character as if that code was them. They were being transformed back in to their human form within the digital world. The character would become bigger from this anchor point and would remain in the circular rings. I wanted to create the illusion of the character struggling to swim in this eternal loop as if they are trying to escape but the I want them to disappear back into the code as if they are permanently apart of the system. Furthermore, I think that having the figure within the moving rings highlights that we are surrounded by technology.
I was really pleased with the outcome of this first screen as I was able to have three main elements which I put together. I think I captured the digital world by stripping it down to coding which symbolises the whole system. I also think that by having simple symbols and a simple figure it represents everybody.
I wanted to make the raining last longer so I made a new composition which I then took the last Matrix comp and copied it on to the new one. I duplicated the layer and changed its position on the timeline and on the screen. This made it seem as if something was turning on or activity on the screen was increasing due to the increase coding appearing on the screen.
I then put the green circular ring composition on the current comp that had the matrix raining code on it. Originally the rings were just white but it didn't look right once it was on the same screen as the matrix text. So I made it go from white>green>white much like the matrix text which is what is shown above in the video.
On a separate composition, I put together the circle ring files, matrix raining code and the swimmer. in this order. I duplicated all files a few times and lined them up to create a looping effect, I also took a single line of code and aligned the ending position of it to the middle of the circle rings. From here I made sure that the last character would remain longer on the screen through using key frames with the opacity. I also made this character turn white. I did this because I wanted to create the effect of the swimmer originating from the character as if that code was them. They were being transformed back in to their human form within the digital world. The character would become bigger from this anchor point and would remain in the circular rings. I wanted to create the illusion of the character struggling to swim in this eternal loop as if they are trying to escape but the I want them to disappear back into the code as if they are permanently apart of the system. Furthermore, I think that having the figure within the moving rings highlights that we are surrounded by technology.
I was really pleased with the outcome of this first screen as I was able to have three main elements which I put together. I think I captured the digital world by stripping it down to coding which symbolises the whole system. I also think that by having simple symbols and a simple figure it represents everybody.
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