I was playing around with a number of basic After Affects tutorials the other day when I came across one for kinetic typography. Kinetic typography is when animation is used to express ideas and emotion via text. Above is an outstanding example. It's eye-catching and entertaining.
Adding movable text to something that's usually static is a great way of capturing attention--especially when the message or topic it might be somewhat boring or standard otherwise. It's a fun way to potentially introduce something... Or someone. All of a sudden I've got this great idea for a "welcome to my personal website" type video. How impressive would that "hello" be?
Here is basic tutorial I think a lot can be learned from:
So a couple weeks ago I shared the Sherlock opening titles, and I realized that I also wanted to do a post on the motion graphics in the show, because I think that they are some of the smartest I've seen on TV. It's hard to find video of this on youtube, above is a reel from the studio in the UK that makes them, however. What is amazing to me is both their simplicity and their effect. The graphics studio has said that their primary effort and inspiration in their designs is trying to get the viewer into the mind of Sherlock Holmes. Keep in mind that in this rendition of Sherlock, Benedict Cumberbatch plays a neurotic, crazed, aloof genius. So the motion graphics in this show display this kind of "stream of consciousness to them" that is really cool. In one of the first ones (The second video on the website), you can see Sherlock sorting through what this writing on the floor of a woman who died means. He rotates through possible options, choosing one but then disregarding it, which is shown by the dictionary term for "Rache" (the word on the ground) being shattered. He then looks on the ground and cycles through letters, coming to the conclusion that what the victim was trying to say was "Rachel".
The show also really smartly handles texts in the show. For me, it has been a problem of shows in the past few years being able to integrate texting, because the visuality to it is only on the phone itself. Some shows do close ups on the phone to show what is going on, but Sherlock, in my opinion, does it better. The graphics studio has the text floating next to the person writing it, and while it might seem to be distracting or too not real for this type of show, it really works in this case
Overall I highly recommend watching Sherlock's graphics for an example of understated, modern style of motion graphics on TV.
Today I decided to write about a tutorial remaking one of the most famous and recognizable title sequences ever. The movie The Matrix is very well known for the green digital rain, much so like Star Wars is for the text crawl through space.
In this tutorial, a text grid is arranged so it appears to rain down, and to show differences in distance rained, there is a mask applied with a varied height across the screen. So while it looks like it stops at a certain point, it is because there is a mask covering up the text. He also uses a gradient ramp to change the color of the text as it falls. This effect can also be done with Trapcode Particular in half the time of this forty minute video, but as not everyone has Particular, this will work just as well. Best of luck!
So as a kid I watched a lot of cartoons. One thing I loved about them were the theme songs. It always got me excited for the show. One title sequence in particular I always though was really cool, the intro to Teen Titans.
So I went back and looked at this sequence again. It impresses me even more now. The use of color is extremely important in the sequence. Each one of the characters has a specific color that is associated with them. The colors get repeated throughout the opening and signal to the audience what characters are being talked about. The thing that I find really cool is how the words Teen Titans are constantly manipulated throughout the open. Every shot is working within the context of one of the letters. The transitions between the shots are matched with the music and are all involving the letters in some way. Making the open one fluid piece that just continually transitions is so cool and must have taken a ton of planning. Not only was Teen Titans a great cartoon, this opening is amazing.
Text, particles, parenting layers, expressions... Why not all at once?
I was browsing through various videos and tutorials on YouTube, Google and Video Copilot searching for something that was both interesting and applicable. Fortunately I stumbled across Speed Particles at Video Copilot. It essentially combines everything we have learned in class so far, and goes into more specific detail on the manipulations that can be done to particles. It provides a good example of the usefulness of parenting layers and also introduces a way of working with expressions that I know we will be working with in class later: an if-then-else formula.
What Andrew Kramer creates in this tutorial is a very cool effect that is not that
difficult to understand or to make. As with anything in After Effects,
it could have countless unique and explosive variations by simply tweaking properties of the
existing layers and effects!
