After Effects: Session Two

Today we had our second session with Mike where we learnt a little but more about After Effects. I had been practicing with type since wednesday but learnt the correct way to do it today. We were advised to prepare our components in either photoshop or Illustrator and then export the files into after effects. It makes sense because I know much more about these programmes and feel I could make some quite interesting graphics which would then become animated.

The first thing we were taught was how to import a footage file from photoshop. This means that a piece of static type will appear in our composition window. Below is what an imported file looks like in this particular window with the title safe and action safe zones visible. In this instance a photoshop file has been used.

The screen cap below is what it looks like when you open a 'PAL D1/DV Widescreen' document in Illustrator. As you can see it has a pretty different appearance than any other document I have worked with so I was quite taken a back when it first popped up.

Below are two screencaps of what it looks like on screen when you increase the scale of a layer as much as you can. As you can see in the first one the quality of the edges appear blurry and therefore no good if you want a professional looking video.

In this second one the lines are as crisp as can be, something that can be toggled on and off by clicking the 'continuos rasterize'. However note that this option is only available when importing Illustrator files and the video will take slightly longer to render as more work is putting into every frame.

Below is a video of a montage of ideas that I learnt to create in our second taught session. I feel the quality of ideas are slightly better because I now have a greater understanding of the software.