Intro to Adobe After Effects Animation, Part 5

Hi, welcome back to educator.com.0000

This next lesson is animation, part five. This is the fun stuff.0002

Before we get started let us check the artwork or prepping the artwork.0006

So, we are basically going to animate the end title sequence of six gun Sally.0010

Let me play it back for you real quick.0019

Basically after she shoots her gun. The gun comes in behind the logo.0024

Here we have got smoke. We have got the western town.0033

I will even play the ending for you here.0038

A little bit of a clip of her, of her hand.0041

Here we go. It is going to render for a second.0047

Bam! So, this is our end title. So, let us jump into it.0056

So here is what was done previously.0063

And I like to open this up and kind of show you what is going on before we get started.0068

So, you know we kind of work from back to front.0072

We have our western town and we have effects applied to that.0074

We have a blur, a contrast, a saturation.0083

If I take these off you have got to write Western town.0087

On top of that, we have a Colt 45.0092

It is a photograph and that just kind of comes in from the right side.0096

And we have transformation keys turned on, position.0102

It has an ease in there. I play that.0107

We have a gun. We have opacity there as well.0111

So, here is the logo. It is just sort of stamps in.0116

And we have a pre-purchased effect, dust blowing.0124

And it is really just 4 layers.0133

So, let me just jump into Photoshop really quick here to give you an idea.0135

Here is our six gun Sally logo.0141

Now, this was created in another program, a 3D program.0142

And I just kind of exported out the actual layers individually.0146

I kind of rebuilt it in Photoshop.0154

Now, we are not really going to animate each layer.0155

But they are there in case we need it to.0159

So, let us jump into After Effects.0165

OK, so here is our composition here.0167

Nothing has really been applied to these layers.0175

You see the original layers of how they are brought into each comp here.0177

And we have got some work to do.0181

So let us start with the background.0184

We do not have to make it exactly like the other comp.0190

But let us give this a little blur. Give it a tent.0192

So, what we are going to do up here is go to effect. We can go to color.0198

Let us go to CC. It is a very handy filter here.0203

And we are going to kind of give it a little more orange or yellow.0208

Go down here. Find something in here.0214

It kind of emulates that kind of a Sepia tone if possible.0220

Give it a little bit more red.0222

It is something in there and it is kind of westernish.0230

Let us lighten this up a little bit.0233

And so now we have one effect applied.0237

Let us apply another effect.0240

Let us go with a blur. Here we go.0241

And you can move your effects around by the way.0249

You can close this effect. You can move it below this effect.0250

Sometimes it changes the actual composition.0254

Let us say we want the blur on the top there.0259

So, let us go to 8.7. That looks OK.0262

And maybe just a little bit more contrast overall.0269

So, I will go back to effects and I will go inside color correction and brightness and contrast.0272

Maybe a little more brightness here.0283

And we had a little bit of a blur so the objects on top that will kind of pop more.0286

OK, that is good for now so let us go to the logo.0294

Now, if you can see down here we have our six gun Sally logo.0297

Now, is it has been pre-comp meaning if we double-click it those individual layers are inside the pre-comp.0304

We could put all 4 these layers into this comp.0313

But I think it will be kind of overkill because we are just going to animate the whole piece.0317

Like this is. It is just kind of stamped in like that.0322

So, let us close that. Let us go back to our composition and let us animate.0326

In fact, let us turn off the gun for now.0335

Let us let the logo dictate the movement of the gun.0338

OK, so what we need is some key frames.0345

So, obviously this logo is too big at the moment.0348

But it is a good starting point to stamp in.0353

So, why do not we just open up our layer.0357

We are going to be using position and scale for now.0360

And let us set those at the beginning of the layer.0364

And let us move in a bit. Page down, set more key frames.0369

And let us just Scale this till it feels right. Put it right there.0375

Now, we are not really worried about colors and blurs.0384

Right now let us just get our positioning set.0387

That looks pretty good. Let us play it back. RAM preview.0391

Why is not playing back? That is because my RAM preview is way over here.0406

So, I can grab that or I can go back to my home key and hit B.0411

It is only going to preview where my render key was set.0419

So, let us go to here. Actually I just want to see the area that I am working in.0423

So let me just hit N and let us preview that.0427

Nice! it is a little low. So, let us go to the endpoint of the key frames here.0435

Let us zoom in a little bit and let us move it up some.0441

It just kind of stamps in there.0451

Now, in the original we did the logo has an ease in key frame.0454

So, what we do for that is we can select both key frames at once here.0463

And we can hold down control. Toggle down to key frame assistance. Then easy ease in.0467

What that does is applies it to the key frames.0476

And gives it that kind of a soft landing, kind of glide effect. There you go.0479

Now, let us get the gun, actually. The gun is kind of fun.0487

So, the gun is way too big.0493

Let us close our logo layer. Open our gun layer and we have position, scale.0495

Before we had any key frames like sometimes we are bringing the layer.0505

I think the reason why this gun is so big is when I originally took the photograph of this gun.0508

I just wanted to make sure in case I want to go closer for close ups I had enough resolution.0517

The pixels were there so that is OK. It is better to have it bigger than smaller.0521

So, what we are going to do is let us scale this down.0525

We do not have to turn the key frames of the stopwatch on just yet.0527

Let us just kind of play with this and size it. Alright, it is a good size.0531

Alright, remember it does not have to be exactly like the other one for this purpose. We are just having fun.0540

Ok, so it is going to come in. It is going to kind of land in this position.0548

So, you can see there is a lot of a contrast conflicting color. We will get to that later.0552

So, right now let us just animate this gun coming in here.0556

So, what we are going to do.0560

Let us lock this back layer over here for now and the logo and the dust and let us work backwards.0561

So, we know that the gun it is going to land in this position.0571

So, let us work backwards and hit position.0573

And let us move back and let us move our gun out to this.0576

Now, if you wanted to move it in a straight line a nice thing is.0584

If you hold down shift you can grab the gun and just locks it straight. It works for up down.0586

Ok, so, there it is. Bam!0595

Now, let us add an ease in key frame to that as well. And there we go.0601

Now, if we want to be more dramatic we can have our gun enter the scene a little bit later.0610

As you can see I am constantly moving in and out.0618

Because I need to see what is going on here. This is where I need to work at times.0623

You know, my key frame, my past over here at my elements. You name it.0627

OK, so let us play this back. Ok, all comes together nice.0632

OK, so let us clean this up a bit in regards to color and contrast.0637

So, the gun is kind of bright.0643

So what we are going to do is we are going to go to effect.0647

We are just going to use brightness and contrast.0651

And let us just darken the gun a little bit because we want that logo to pop.0655

You can even take off some of the contrast. Still make it darker.0659

That looks pretty good. No more mystery in there.0666

Now, on the logo let us select that. Let us give that a drop shadow.0669

We are going to go to perspective, drop shadow and let us adjust our direction first.0678

Bring up the opacity. Give it some distance away from the logo itself and let us soften it.0688

Another cool thing about After Effects is you can set a preset.0697

So, if I had the drop shadow just how I wanted it and I was using that on a regular basis.0701

It would be good to say that is a preset.0708

And what you do is you go up here and you go to save, select those animation preset.0712

And you would basically give it a name. You can call it your initials, drop shadow 1 or drop shadow 2.0717

But it is a nice thing to have there.0723

So, let us try this out. Great!0725

Alright, now let us turn our smoke on.0731

So, we have dust here, smoke, and dust.0735

But again we have our black background.0740

So, we need to get rid of that. How do we do that?0744

We want to make sure we have our modes menu showing. So, how do we get that?0746

We are going to hold down the control. We are going to toggle down here to modes.0751

Similar to Photoshop you can have different blending modes.0757

In this case we want to remove the black.0761

I think green worked the best. Let us try that.0764

Here we go. Alright, it looks pretty good.0768

Then you can keep tweaking this.0775

Let us look at the original. The original has more brown in it.0776

You can even add more contrast to the logo.0781

But all in all that is not about logo.0787

OK, thank you for watching educator.com. I will see you soon.0790