Re: After Effects help.

[Steve Roberts]

I’m not sure what you mean about parenting. The basic technique is to simply add the footage to the composition as a layer, and scale and position the footage layer, and keyframe that scale and position until you like what it does.

But … guessing … you could make a wide composition (“call it “wide comp”), and place the boxes within that. Then you drag the wide comp into your main comp, and animate the position of the wide comp to reveal the footage frames within.

Or, you could parent the frames to a null, and animate the null so all the frames move together.

Or, you could make the footage frames 3D, add a camera, switch off its auto-orient, then move the camera around to “find” the footage frames.

Does that help?

[Don Noel]

Thanks a lot Steve. That does help, I’ll try it.

What I meant by parenting was that at the beginning of the film, I wanted the boxes to be fixed together so it looks like a comic page but then separates out into individual boxes as the story begins.

I messed about and tried to do this by parenting the rest of the boxes to one box and moving them individually, keyframing those movements until they separated out.

It didn’t work that well (I’m new to After Effects) but I will try applying the advice you’ve given me.

Did you happen to watch the video I made reference to to? Would you recommend the method you outlined in reference to the effect of the music video?

Someone recommended that I scan a page with boxes drawn out like a comic book into photoshop, cut out the boxes and then import the page into After Effects. I’m not sure about that.

[Steve Roberts]

Sorry Don, the link contained a “malformed ID” so I don’t know which video to see as an example.

You could scan a comic book page, there’s no reason why that wouldn’t work. But i recommend you try the 3D approach:
1. drag all footage items into the main comp
2. make them 3D
3. set camera to custom view. This will be a setup camera — just to use as a “bird’s eye view” when trying to see the whole scene for setup.
4. arrange the footage items into a grid. You can do this by hand, doing the math, or maybe use this script: https://aescripts.com/2006/06/12/layers2grid/
5. add a new camera — this is what you’ll use to render your scene
6. for this camera, select layer>transform>auto-orient off to make the camera behave the way you want
7. animate this camera to start far away, seeing the grid, then move in, move around and such.
8. to easily snap the camera to the position where a layer fills the screen, this might work: https://zaxwerks.com/layertools/index.shtml . You mighthave to do it by hand.

Check the COW for camera tutorials, as well as the AE help on “fine-tuning animation” and 3D animation.

[Don Noel]

Thanks Steve, I’ll give it a go. Here’s the video. If you’ve any more tips from watching this it would really help. Thanks.

[Steve Roberts]

That’s great! Lots of fun. I especially like when you break the frame, or have fun with it. The mix of cuts and pans is also good.

One thing: when you pan diagonally, you might want to insert some dummy panels — it looks as if the start and end panel are the only ones on the page.

[Don Noel]

:0) I hope my film looks half way as descent but this isn’t my film. This is the film I posted as an example because the link I sent you didn’t work.

Are there any tips you can give me from watching this? I’m trying to achieve a different look but this is a really good example.

[Steve Roberts]

Hm. I don’t know what kind of a different look you want, but all I can say is: pump up the colours. The faded, no-red look may be for effect, but to me it looks unfinished.

For the rest, you’ll have to do some experimenting to get the look and process you want.