Experiments

At first I started the project with learning the basics of the Adobe programme, After Effects. Thus, I did some try outs following tutorials.

What I have learned?

One of the most important part is that how you arrange the layers within a layer, it matters to how it will be displayed. Playing around with the numbers and trying the different settings eventually either leads you to the imagined outcome, or to a new discovery. You do not need to follow the tutorials entirely 1:1. Understanding the function and applying it to your own settings is when you learn how to use it.
Some of the terms I learned:
- trim paths - used when you want to animate an object to start, end and disappear
- line cap - relates to the edges of the object (rounded, squared, etc.)
- keyframe - used to set the settings to a certain point on the timeline

Making quick animated lines and using the preset effects to animated the text.

Changing the background when exporting into transparent.

Animating lines on a circle around a text.

Adding text to and using cylinder, animating it in order to rotate and playing with the light coming from aside.

Those were some of my initial tryouts where I was playing around with adding shapes and making them moving in the rhythm of the song.

Those two tryouts were when I started giving myself more freedom in what I am doing. I was taking shapes and was trying to twist them, rotate them, stretch them, etc. - in one word I was distorting them. I was just playing with the settings, going to their extremes and sometimes nothing was happening because it was getting to its initial position, however some of them became very interesting outcomes.

Coming from some of the outcomes from above, I tried to make a background pattern. I distorted it and pixelated it to see how it will affect it.

What I have learned?

I have learned how some of the tools are working by simply clicking on what I was seeing and adjusting the settings. I learned how to apply gradients and distort shapes - twisting, enlarging, etc. and eventually I ended up with very interesting ways of creating patterns which can be later on I can try using on, for example, typography as well.

CONCLUSION

I tried to play a little bit with typography and stretch it, making this water-like effect. Also by applying it on a cylindrical shape, I wanted to see if it will be readable. At first it was not readable, but by playing with the settings I tried to adjust it.

It was a journey for me to learn at least on a basic level how to do motion graphics. Initially I started with following tutorials which was interesting, however at some point it gets boring. Coming up with a concept to connect it to music was an important step in my process because it gave me freedom to explore the parameters of the programme and had thought me actually more than simply following tutorials. Even though I usually do not experiment a lot in my process, but rather stick to the outcome I have initially imagined, I definitely found it more valuable to have random tryouts. I was surprised to find interesting outcomes by simply having some inspiration on the back of your mind and experimenting with the tools. Some of the tryouts I find them similar to the inspiration which was new for me because usually I always thought I need to know exactly how this person did it in order to create a similar thing.
Even though I was taking baby steps in experimenting, I will continue developing this way of working and use it more often in my projects. My next steps would be to continue working in this manner and to apply this skill to interactive projects. I would like to try out some textures and 3D, so that it can be, for example projected on a persons body and they can build something or simply dance to it.

Why I chose to highlight 4 of my outcomes is because those were the ones I was not watching tutorials for, but was enjoying the music and was exploring the programme.