[How did they do this?] Cut up paper to create a Snowflake.

[Stafe]

STOPMOTION

[Joey Korenman]

Probably stayed up 20 hours a day for a week making that… keyframes out the ass… better design skills than 99% of the world. Makes me want to quit, haha.

joey

[Justin Productions]

Me too loll ain’t fair. That’s some skills.

Justin Productions
Tangerin01@hotmail.com
Adobe After Effects 6.0 Professional

[Captain Mench]

— Better skills than 99%…

I’m glad to hear that. I thought this was one of the coolest things I’ve seen in a while. And I’m thinking, sheesh, why can’t I do that?

Well — there’s a reason I’m not playing in the philadelphia orchestra even though I’m a rather good trumpet player too.

Hmmm

I’d still love to do stuff like this. My brain just doesn’t see the world this way.

CaptM

[Steve Smith]

Yeah, but still wondering how to do this….is this something that can actually be done in AE, or is it actually Stop Motion photography like Stafe posted?
If it can be done in AE, i’d love to know how.

thanks,
steve

[Steve Roberts]

Nice piece.
Analyze it, step-by-step, and it won’t become so intimidating.

And when you analyze it, don’t think “wow” or “Geez, I could never do this” or “my brain just doesn’t see the world this way”. Think “okay, what happens next?” and “was this part done with a computer or not?”.

Also:
“I can do this with some animated masks”
“I can do this with a gradient wipe.”
“I can do this by cutting the background out of a photo.”
“I can do this with a particle generator.”
“I can do this one by hand, while the rest are handled by a particle generator.”
“I can put these two shots in the same comp, but these two shots have to be separate.”
And so on.

That’s the HOW of it. As for the WHY of it, the story or sequence, break down the shots as if from a brief or a script. “This appears, this turns into a bunch of these, as we pan these appear, smoothly, crudely …” Or “what are the elements of winter? Home, neighbourhood, trees, snow, cards …” Write this down on paper.
And storyboard it by saving stills from the video so you can see how the sequence develops.

Break it down. The sooner you get started, the sooner you can make your own original works which you’ll like better.

Hey, you said you’d love to do stuff like this … 🙂
Steve

[Ryan Hill]

I’d say it looks a little too clean to be stop motion.

If I were to try to emulate the cutting snowflake effect, I’d probably use shatter to make the pieces fall off.

Then fold it open by duplicating the layer and rotating it along the folding edge. Precomp the two layers together and repeat. (Though I’ll admit this approach is asking for trouble if you don’t get the rotation axis lined up absolutely perfect. There may be an easier way to handle folding that I haven’t thought of.)

[Steve Roberts]

Folding an airplane or snowflake is infinitely easier using stop-motion photography than using AE. Go ahead — try it:

Lay out a piece of paper and fold the airplane. Open it up and draw lines where the folds were. Scan it. Bring it into AE. Using masks on 3D solids, create one shape for every unfolded segment of paper. (For instance, a piece of paper folded into quarters would need four solids, one mask each.) Now, because you’re going to need to rotate each piece as it folds, move the anchor point for each solid to a fold line. Which one in the case of pieces with more than one fold? Probably the one closer to the center of the “sheet” of paper. When done, go back and fold the paper again, carefully notating the order in which things fold. Now set up the parenting so, basically, the ancestors are closer to the center. I suppose you should start from the outside, and as you move in, parent each piece to the next one closer to center. Fold the thing in proper order by rotating each solid, and make sure your layers are set to “alpha add” mode. The tricky part can be rotating a piece on a non-orthogonal axis, that is, on a fold which is not straight up/down or across. Let us know how it goes.

Or, you could just shoot yourself as you do the first step. 🙂 Or you could shoot yourself later. 😉

If you want to be a creative motion graphic artist, use any method available to you. Scan theatre tickets. Make crappy photocopies. Pull pages as you scan them. Make little models. Belief does it. Shoot stills. Shoot cutout paper letters. Set up a stills camera, shoot, then import the numbered shots as a sequence. Instant animation.

The computer is a poor tool for inspiration, in my opinion. Its job comes later in the process. It is just one tool in your creative process. Don’t assume you need to use it all the time.

my 2 cents (Canadian)
Steve

[Ron Lindeboom]

Like you, RobotHero, I thought it was too smooth to be stop motion. Like Steve, I felt that it used animated masks and that was my first thought as to how I’d tackle the design myself when I first looked at it. Likely, I’d use animated masks and precomp so that I could duplicate it easily, tweak a few mask shapes in the duplicates and have numerous snowflakes — tweaking the size, placement and rotation. Adding particles for the snowflake “volume” — following a few mask shape tweaks on the precomp layers — and you have the illusion of a winter wonderland

I am curious why you’d use shatter? I guess I am just not getting my head wrapped around your idea. Would you mind trying a shot at a second time of explaining your reasoning? I’d appreciate it.

Best regards,

Ron Lindeboom
creativecow.net

[Steve Roberts]

Hmm … maybe we’re all talking about the same thing. Which motions are too smooth to be stop motion?

I agree that everything after the snowflake cutting looks like it was animated with a computer. The cutting and folding was probably stop-motion done on a blue or black BG, then comped over the background. The flake floating away was probably the last frame of the stop-motion animated in the computer. Shooting the folding on a keyable BG would have allowed repositioning and rotation in an animation app.

Steve