After Effects: Path
Following on from the walk cycle brief, we are concluding this first year with an introduction to Adobe After Effects. I'm glad to be getting a crash course in several programs I'm completely unfamiliar with. Already I can see how learning these basics can set me up for more elaborate projects somewhere down the line.
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This three week project will allow us to incorporate our walk cycle animation into a moving background, pairing our character with a fitting environment. I need to consider where my gorilla will be skipping...
Sketchbook ideas
As usual, I get started jotting ideas down in my sketchbook. I like to get my initial ideas out of my system before either refining them or going in a completely different direction.
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Naturally, I reckon the best environment for my gorilla is some sort of jungle road. These are my first coloured pencil sketches, just figuring out potential naturalistic colour palettes.
I need to think very consciously about colour, as I have spent much of my time doing monochromatic work. Whereas with line and tone I have tons of experience playing around with different approaches, with colour I still struggle to have a natural instinct for it. Sometimes I can think very literally about what colour things are, e.g. 'grass is green, tree trunks are brown', leaving the objects and figures clashing and uninspired. I try instead to assign a somewhat limited palette to the whole piece, so there is a harmonious mood being set.
With the motif of romance for the character of the gorilla, I started to look for areas to merge the jungle environment with a heightened sense of blooming/blossoming love. Reds and pinks suggest that theme, so I looked up red jungle flowers and cherry blossom. At this point, I'm still figuring out how best to suggest the emotion- whether by subtle means or by full fantasy landscape.
Moving into fantasy...
Homer Simpson in 'The Land of Chocolate'
The Simpsons Season 3, Ep. 11: 'Burns Verkaufen der Kraftwerk' (1991)
'Slumberland'
The Simpsons Season 3, Ep. 8: 'Lisa's Pony' (1991)
I want to avoid doing a generic, boring jungle so I think the best route forward is to embrace a more fantastical landscape. Using reality as a foundation for believable foliage, I intend to play with colour to create a dreamlike jungle setting. Certain moments in animation spring to mind for reference. The Simpsons would often denote a dream sequence by playing with colour and surrealism in the landscape. Another example comes in The Lion King, where the young Simba sings 'I Just Can't Wait To Be King', and the surrounding environment takes on a playful colour scheme. It just so happens that my memory of this vivid colour palette actually comes from the old video game; it's interesting how the first time I see something always leaves a deep, lasting impression on me. Recently seeing images from the game again, I can see why the psychedelic visuals would have burned into my young retinas.
The Lion King - movie and video game (1994)
Blossom
One thing I certainly want to include in my landscape is blossom on trees. It fits the theme of love and could potentially be my additional moving element, with petals gently falling at different intervals. It happens to be early spring and there's an abundance of visual reference all around me, so I decided to go out and take pictures of the trees. The walk gave me a chance to study blossom more closely and consider how to communicate it in my scene.
With the assistance of my reference photos, and also general image searches, I began sketching trees for my path scene. I'm using familiar software, Autodesk Sketchbook, to create several separate pieces as PNGs, allowing me to save the drawings separate from a background.
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I started drawing fairly realistically according to the photos, but soon realised it would be more effective if there was more exaggeration in the character of the trees.
Before moving all my pieces into After Effects, I'm practicing compositing on a single image. It helps to see the individual trees and bushes in context. I'm trying to keep a consistency in design with my gorilla and the backdrop, using similar strength of line and flat colour. It's important to keep the background complementary to the gorilla and not too overbearing so maybe I'll ease off the black lines.
I have tried to construct a scene which suits the style of how I have drawn the gorilla, so there isn't a clash. There's something of a sixties vibe, a loose kind of magazine illustration style in how I'm characterising the look of the trees and sun.
Setting the stage...
Once I had all my assets drawn out (trees, bushes, flowers, petals, sun, mountains), I composited them in After Effects. Having learned about how to use the virtual space in a workshop session, I set the stage for my gorilla. It's not too dissimilar to a theatre stage, with the separate elements layered to a specific depth in front and behind each other. It felt exciting to discover the simple potential of this.
I still marvel at the multi-plane camera pioneered at Disney in the golden age, where the illusion of depth was created on separate planes of glass. Being able to do this myself now digitally opens up endless possibilities - this technology has probably been available for a while, I just must not have been paying attention!​
On the right here is a top view of the stage, showing the 2D images stacked around the centre of the stage (the scattered petals are laid on the road). I could move an object further forward or back according to how close I wanted it to be to the camera.
The 'camera' mimics the effect of a real camera, so I was able to set the amount of blur for objects in the foreground and far distance. The one stylistic cheat I made was to keep the illustrative flat effect of the sun spiral rather than blurring it out for the logic of how far away it should appear. It kept some spirit of drawing and unreality that suits the dreamy mindscape of the gorilla.
Bringing it to life
Once I got my head around how to do basic moves i.e. the camera move from left to right, it got easier to figure out how to automate other animations. The additional animated elements here are the falling blossom petals. The way they fall is intended to be fairly random, according to how I observed it on my earlier walk studying the blossom. Therefore it gave me a chance to experiment with rotation and setting different paths for movement. It has been a steep learning curve but I'm beginning to feel comfortable enough with the process. Once I understand how to set the timing of actions, it's like cueing an actor to come onstage at a particular moment.
The final thing was to choose a piece of music. Initially I searched for cheesy romantic music music, akin to Tchiakovsky's Romeo and Juliet (Fantasy Overture), but I kept searching and came to swing/big band jazz. Maybe it's the Jungle Book fan in me, I just thought the swinging sound fit the gorilla character really well.
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I remember thinking at the start of the walk cycle project that whichever character I chose to convey would set my mood for the next several weeks, so I'd better choose something joyous. It's an intense and difficult process to figure out animation so I'm glad I realised early on that I should pick a fun emotion to latch onto. I did almost choose the 'angry chef' character because I thought it would be simpler to draw but I knew it would keep me in a stressed-out headspace. I have recognised over the years the extent to which my work inevitably reflects my personality somehow and it's also true in the other direction- I soak up the emotion of the character I am drawing. Looking back on it all, I'm happy I chose a subject that seems to celebrate all my new discoveries of animation in one giddy clip.
The two sides of the creative process: fury and frustration versus dreamy, passionate devotion.
