[Richard Herd]

[Jason Brown] “what learning strategies did you use/find helpful? “

The answer to your question is a bit philosophical: “hypothesis formation and confirmation.” You can try and predict what will happen, but you don’t know until you try it out.

A few skills to really figure out:

1. Storytelling — it’s everything;

2. Trigonometry — we work in a Cartesian coordinate system;

3. Track mattes — this is fundamental to making 3D look like elements are passing in front of each other because every thing we do appears on a 2D surface, so anything that passes in front of another thing is an illusion.

[Richard Herd]

Thank you!

[Richard Herd]

Funny! I just did something very similar (if I understand what you mean)! Here’s what I did:

I used a shape layer and made 8 “boxes” that line up exactly to form an entire line across the screen. Then I animated each box up and/or down.

Precomp that.

Apply the polar coordinates effect to the precomp.

[Richard Herd]

Maybe?…nulls are weird because their anchor point is 0,0,0 but their position is 960,540,0 (for example), and solids and every other layer is anchor point 960,540,0 and position is also 960,540,0. Is the expression calculating lookat…anchorPoint as 0,0,0 while all the other layers are different? What happens if you change your null to a solid and set opacity to zero?

[Richard Herd]

Yeah that is definitely bad juju. without your project file, it’s hard for me to figure out what’s up.

I use two expressions for a similar thing. If you want it, here it is:

This one goes on the X rotation and you’ll need to include three Expression Effects:


//USES MARKERS ON THE LAYER TO SWING A LAYER
amp = effect("Pendulum At Marker")("Amplitude");
freq = effect("Pendulum At Marker")("Frequency");
decay = effect("Pendulum At Marker")("Decay");
n = 0;
t = 0;
if (marker.numKeys > 0){
n = marker.nearestKey(time).index;
if (marker.key(n).time > time){
n--;
}
}
if (n > 0) t = time - marker.key(n).time;
a = amp*Math.sin(freq*t*2*Math.PI)/Math.exp(decay*t);
value + a


This one goes on the position layer of the “lower layers” (the original layer stays in its position.


// SCRIPT GLUES LAYERS TOGETHER USING PRECOMP AND SCRIPT
center=thisComp.layer("White Solid 2 Comp 2").transform.anchorPoint;
angle=degreesToRadians(thisComp.layer("White Solid 2 Comp 2").transform.xRotation);
radius= 265;
x=radius*Math.cos(angle);
y=radius*Math.sin(angle);
add(center, [transform.position[0]-center[0],x,y]);


Sources:
The first expression is from Adobe’s Expression Sampler; since you control the decay through an Expression Effect, your key frames go on the X rotation. I wrote the second expression.

[Richard Herd]

[Evan Worsham] “concepting an ad that is new every time”

[Evan Worsham] “it needs to be “Fun”..”

[Evan Worsham] “make something creative and new while still staying within reach of our brand”

[Evan Worsham] “Im feeling like a fraud right about now and could use a pep talk”

You can do it! It’s the hardest part of the job. I struggle with that every single day. I just finished a mograph-thing for a customer. I used color schemes, and I used their brand colors in contrastive pallets. They were all: “We hate this. We know you used our colors, but we want it to be high end.” Haha! What can you do? So I turned everything to a white background with gray text (rgb=150,150,150). They were all: “We love it!”

I feel that in a perfect workflow we need script, moodboard, storyboard, budget, and timeline. If these things are missing as a formal deliverable, the PROCESS by which the millions of decisions get made is still baked into the project timeline. It’s a process of trial and error. Iteration and critique. Contemplation and decision. Regardless if anyone is watching over our shoulder. It may help you, or at least give it a try, to change your deliverable around. Instead of making a “fun” motion graphic piece deliver first a moodboard, storyboard, script, budget, timeline. You might spend a couple of hours on each of these. Imagine, you take a moodboard to your boss. You’re all: “Hey boss, to me this is ‘fun.’ What do you think?” And you hand him a print out of color schemes, typography, graphics. She or he can say: “I hate blue.” or “I hate garamond italics.” Or she or he might say “Use Comic sans and make it bounce because damn it that’s fun!” At least in this way, you’re able to begin a dialogue way before you’ve gone into the weeds on keyframing, and so on.

For me, one big source of inspiration is the world around me. I use the Adobe Color app all the time. I take pictures of stuff (anything) and then “grab” the color scheme, shape, vector path — all kinds of stuff.

I also am a big believer in expanding skills. Sites like cow and lynda have lots of tutorials to wade through and make your own. One thing to really master in AE is the camera layer and some basic expressions — if you haven’t already.

Last but not least: I read read read for inspiration. There is so much out there to be inspired by. I’m reading Marx’s Capital right now. Holy crap that’s a mind-stretching read. I read children’s stories to my kids every day. I pay really close attention to some talented people (IMO) here on the Cow, especially: Dan Ebberts, Walter Soyka, and Mark Suszko (and of course Bob Zelin). For example, Mr. Ebberts ability to script blows my mind. I am starting a series of training videos for my local County and will use Mr. Soyka’s integration between Premiere and AE for titles; his way of organizing and explaining development has helped me organize my workflow. Mr. Suszko has some amazing abilities to craft a clever story. Mr. Zelin is a wise innovator with a particular rhetorical style. I find a lot of very good discussions in the Apple FCPX or Not debate forum that inspire me.

You’re not a fraud!

[Richard Herd]

:42. The images of Selena.

[Richard Herd]

[Bill Davis] “Clip A arriving in as h264 with a single stereo track. Today I sit down to work with clip B arriving as MXF with 16 embedded audio “

Workflow question. I know you use X. Do you proxy or change them all to APR, or just stay native and output a single mp4 (or whatever). (Sorry if this answered elsewhere.)

thanks!

[Richard Herd]

[Susan Lan] “Sorry, I mean, in each one of the “followers layers”
“

Yes.

Also, I was thinking that you may have some issues because the layers will follow the leader, and you may want the images to line up like a V pattern. You can do this by using 2 null layers as your leader layers. Each null would need different motion paths, so their follow layers line up on that path.

[Richard Herd]

The expression uses Expression Control effects. If you copypasta just the expression, then it will return an error.

This part here would have no referent:

delay = effect("Follow")("Delay");
include = effect("Follow")("Position");
basedOnIndex = effect("Follow")("Based On Index");


Moreover, these definitions are used in the expression itself and those operations need to be defined.