Motion Design: The Final Version of Wayhaught’s First Kiss
My final product is pretty cool and I am looking forward to diving deeper into other projects.
We’ve come to the end of the motion design assignment and I am very happy with my final work. It was a chance to dive deep into After Effects and really analyze speech and rhetoric, which I have really enjoyed.
Complete Process
Going into the final week I made a lot of final adjustments. I punched up several words to try to emphasize them a bit. A few of the techniques I employed.
Scale
I subtly scaled a few words up and down in an attempt to draw emphasis to them. In some cases, the movement is very subtle. “Wanted” in the first composition is one example, but I also employed it on brazen and the numbers 15,000. My hope was that this would somewhat mimic an inhale or exhale, or an emphasis in tone.
Fade Effects
After weeks of keyframing my own animations, I decided to give the animations panel a try and employed some fade-in and fade-out effects. I found this especially helpful when it came to building anticipation.
I ended up using fade-out by character when Waverly says, “…sitting right in front of you,” letting the moment linger on you as it fades out slowly by letter. I also used the same effect with “to death.”
Then I used the fade-in by word for “I scare you” which gave me the breathy feel that I had been seeking for that moment.
Timing
I slowed down and really focused on the timing for a couple of parts, specifically “sitting right in front of you” which I think now looks a lot better. I also added some fade-ins to my credits because they looked a little jarring.
Improved Audio
After my last class, someone recommended that I try punching up the audio a bit in parts. So I watched this tutorial on Audition and tried to boost the audio lightly. Although, I admit this is an area where I do not know what I am doing so for all I know what I did made just the tiniest difference.
Final Thoughts
I learned a lot with this project and it really forced me to think creatively about how to depict what’s being said on screen. I’ve been working with words and prose for years but this was my first time working with dialogue or recitation and trying to visualize it.
I think this piece came out pretty well and I am honestly starting to look at other audio clips to stretch my skills. If I was to keep practicing this I would keep a few ideas in different phases of production just so that I could constantly be experimenting and trying new things.
Final Video
Next Steps
When I first clipped the audio I saved a longer version too. In order to fit the constraints of the assignment, I cut about 20 seconds from the original clip that I would like to add in the coming weeks. The 20 seconds is a back-and-forth between Waverly and Nicole that I think would be fun to play with.
