Digital Photography & Imaging: Week 10

5/6/2023 (Week 10)

Seh Zi Qi/ 0355872/ Bachelor of Design(Honours) in Creative Media

Module Name: Digital Photography & Imaging 

Week 10

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LIST

Weekly Lectures & Major Projects

Lecture

Tutorial

Practical

Reflection

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LECTURE

[Week 10 - Lecture]

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Introduction to After Effects

Used for:

• Animation
• Visual Effects
• Motion Picture Compositing

Used in:

• Film
• TV
• Web Video Creation

Works by:

• Manipulating imagery => Combines layers of video and images into the same scene

Motion Graphics Animation: 

• Manipulating vectors and rasterised art to create and tell a story 
• Integrated well in physical-based media like photography & videography

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Composing Layers in Photoshop

• A platform made for composing photos into layers.
• Layers are best arranged and renamed accordingly, making it easier to animate in After Effects.

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Composing Layers in After Effects

• Import elements such as images, videos, vectors and more.
• Layer elements must be organised and synchronised to external programs like Photoshop & Illustrator.
• The files don't embed its media, it links to it.

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TUTORIAL

[Kinetic Typography]

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Tutorial Briefing

• Live demo of After Effects
• Learned about Advanced Keyframes

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PRACTICAL

[Week 10 DEMO: PSD Composition]

[Week 10 DEMO: Exercise Sample]

[Week 10 DEMO: Video Tutorial]

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Practical Briefing

What we needed to do:

1. Download the PSD Composition given by Mr Fauzi
2. Import the composition into After Effects
3. Create a composition with the settings: 1080(Width) x 1920(Height) pixels/px, Duration: 15 sec
4. Create a keyframe animation to the layers using Position(P), Scale(S) & Masking Path.
5. Render Output: Quicktime (.MOV or . MP4)
6. Upload your exercise to your Youtube/YT Channel
7. Update progress and video in your E-portfolio blog
8. Attach your E-portfolio link on submission.

Like the list said, I started by downloading the given PSD composition and made the specific rules to create the composition.

Fig 1.1, PSD composition

I then created keyframes towards the things I wanted to move and things I wanted to interact with each other. The only idea I had at the time was to use sound effects to add more meaning towards the motions that I will add later on.

Mr Fauzi didn't oppose to the idea of having sound effects and encouraged that it was exploration so anything is okay as long as it wasn't inappropriate. So I went and searched 'discord soundboard sounds' and went into the Myinstants website to get some sound effects.

Fig 1.2, Myinstants website

My idea started off with wiggling the typewriter aggressively and adding aggressive typing noises towards it. The ideas started to spew out without a thought and I added different sounds to different things which made the current video shown.

Fig 1.3, 15-second DPI video practice

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Self-tilted (Research)

We were briefed about the final project and the summary of the project is that we have to 

I used the sample portfolio from name to start with what kind of questions I wanted to ask myself and I came up with the concept of indecisiveness.

Fig 2.1, Idea development table

I went to Pinterest to find some ideas of what I wanted and I went ahead and chose 3 types of photography that gave me enough inspiration to work out my sketches. All of them portray contrast in different ways and I want to capitalise on that concept as my own.

Fig 2.2, Idea development mood board

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REFLECTION

I didn't really know what After Effects was before this lesson and now I know what it is and have a basic understanding of it. I really liked where Mr Fauzi gave us permission to explore however we wanted even though it wasn't the normal teaching way you would have with regular lecturers. It's also really nice to have samples and tutorials to better our understanding towards what we wouldn't have known if not for those videos.