For my second project I have mentioned that I am looking into working on a motion infographic. The creation of the elements many be time consuming but I think it will be very worth it. I am currently working with a local design firm that is promoting a new cause called Pledge 4 Ithaca, which is about providing children in secondary schools a safe place or person to talk to if they are being sexual assaulted and then allows them to receive proper attention. I thought the launch of this program would be a perfect match for an infographic video.
I have begun to story board and think of effects and transitions, but am having trouble putting them into action. This is a tutorial that really helped me with navigating my way through After Effects.
 

Help with Expressions

So while I've been becoming more comfortable with After Effects, one aspect that just doesn't seem to come easy to me is the adding of expressions and their outcomes. Maybe because I have no experience with coding or I'm just not familiar with them yet setting a "wiggle" expression is about all I can do. So after watching some youtube videos and searching out links, the adobe site helped me the most. I will definitely be bookmarking that site for later use.

Adobe has many other pages that will not doubt help as our projects become more and more complex, including pages about techniques and new features, just to name a few.

One video I enjoyed watching is about the wiggle expression and a lot of fine details about what it can do.

25 Things Motion Graphics Artists Use

This video showcases the various techniques and finishing touches motion graphics artists commonly use to make their work look more professional. As a class, we know how to use most of these already. This was made by Derek Lieu on Vimeo. Here is his blog post breaking down all the techniques in the video so they are easier to follow by reading instead of watching.
http://www.derek-lieu.com/2014/04/26/25-simple-tricks-for-better-motion-graphics/


25 Simple Tricks for Better Motion Graphics from Derek Lieu on Vimeo.

Useful Links

Over the summer I worked a lot on scripting and expressions. So I thought I would provide everyone with some of the links I found most useful.


This link is for scripting basics and the author gets into some cool aspects of sine and cosine.

This one goes more into expressions and when they are useful, and when not to use them. It also provides some basic expressions that can help you to understand what they do.

I would suggest practicing expressions earlier as they can save you a lot of time and headaches. Scripting is a bit more complicated and you will probably have to read through it a few times to fully grasp what's going on.

Circular Motion in After Effects

image source

For my name project, I needed a way to constrain a point to the perimeter of a circle, so I searched for a good way to do it with expressions.  I found a couple of neat expressions that were very useful on Motion Graphics Exchange.  Here's what they posted:

The expression can be applied to anything in After Effects with a 'position' property to create a variety of effects. Here it's used with a light and Trapcode Particular.

For Circular:
radius=300 angle=time*200 x=radius*Math.cos(degreesToRadians(angle))
y=radius*Math.sin(degreesToRadians(angle)) z=0 centre=[640,360,0] add(centre,[x,y,z]) 

For Spiral:
shrink=time+1 radius=1000/shrink angle=time*200 x=radius*Math.cos(degreesToRadians(angle)) y=radius*Math.sin(degreesToRadians(angle))//z=0 // no depth z=time*time // with depth centre=[640,360,0]add(centre,[x,y,z])

[source]

These are very useful expressions that are really easy to use, because they are set up with variables that you can change to fit your specific circumstance.  Here's an example where they used the spiral expression, and by animating both the "z" position and the radius, they were able to get a neat animation of a christmas tree.

The Checkbox Effect

My last few posts have been related to movies or to music, so I feel it's time to change it up.  So today, I have decided to share a tutorial with you.  I stumbled upon this tutorial when trying to make something for my music video, and it helped a ton with what I used it for.

The tutorial is all about on and off expression combined with an expression control called checkbox.  In the tutorial they apply it to opacity to make it turn wholly off and on again.  However this will work with any kind of parameter, the possibilities are wide open here.

Ryan Boyle has many other tutorials, not just for After Effects but a few other programs as well like Maya.



After Effects On and Off Expression from Ryan Boyle on Vimeo.

Expressions

Hey guys! So I was looking up expressions this week because from what I can tell they are pretty important. It is almost like writing computer code, in that you need to be exact with what you are coding and very specific. I feel like once I know how to write expressions it will make a lot of things easier in terms of connecting layers and controlling their properties.

From some of the tutorials that I've looked at, it seems like particle systems can be very powerful/important and using expressions to control them is a necessity. What I found was another blog about Motion Graphics. http://ideastocreations.blogspot.com/2011/02/understanding-expression-in-after.html

On this blog there are free programs and tutorials. What I think will be most useful is a free eBook about the basics of After Effects expressions. It is in the "Free Stuff" tab and can be downloaded from there (It is called "After Effects Expressions Basics").  I haven't had the chance to look through the book yet, but I will keep y'all updated on how useful it is and what I learn from it.

After Effects Expressions Simplified

I came across this really interesting article on Creative Cow called AFter Effects Expressions Simplified. It explains how to write and use expressions in a way that's easy to follow. It's especially good for our class because the author builds on things we've already learned.  He explains wiggle and also how you can make it even more powerful than it already is. One thing he describes is how to write expressions that are dependent on each other, so you only have to change one to change all of them.

The article says: "Imagine linking multiple layers to one control layer so that you could globally make adjustments to entire compositions with variables and various expression controllers." When we get into more advanced work, this could really come in handy.

He goes through the process step by step so even if you don't know exactly what you're doing, by following his instructions you could still apply it to your animation. Probably the best way to use this information is to follow this article's tips until you understand how to use them by yourself.

Expressions

I've been trying to learn more about expressions and writing codes for After Effects. I looked up some tutorials online and I thought that these two were pretty helpful. This site also has other tutorials for after effects on it too if you want to search through it.

http://library.creativecow.net/articles/ebberts_dan/ae6_exp.php

http://library.creativecow.net/articles/mylenium/grid.php