After Effects is not my friend...

After attending the tutorials with Johnny for the After Effects session I know it was going to be a struggle like it always is in Mac session, however I have to admit that I am learning a lot more quickly than expected seen as I am a PC and surely but slowly I am being converted to Mac just for the pure fact that it is much more effecient that a PC.

The most simpliest things to do on a Mac like finding a programme (or in Mac language 'Application') is a bit of a challenge. However I was glad that I attended these session because I would have been CLUELESS. With photoshop, you can sit there for hours twiddling with settings to an image and 9 times out of 10 it's stroke of luck that something comes across that looks good. Anywho, I learnt these main things in the session which was very more relevant to my animation.

The Basics///

When you compose a new animation, you have some very important pieces of information to remember to ensure that your animation will play proper for different purposes also, to make sure that you save it in the correct format and ensure the size doesn't become to larger. This lesson helped me learn what different file formats were and which ones to use and when.

1. Remember to save the animation with a clear name, something you can remember that you can differentiate  which one because you may have different trials on the go, and getting them mixed up can become very messy and confusing (even more confused I could get by using this unfamiliar software! :D) 

2. Make sure the animation is set to a size of a 6 x 4 photograph and the images that you are going to use are of a 72dpi because this is best resolution the create an animation without it becoming pixelated or the files too big that it will grind down your laptop to a hault.

3. Make sure you insert the frame rate to whatever, in this case 12fps, anything higher or for television needs to be 24fps and in other countries for example China it's 36fps.

4. Another IMPORTANT thing I had to consider was what the pixel aspect ratio - this is universal settings at which things are used so they can be made abroad and are able to be broadcasted in other countries so they are compatiable. For the animation we have to use, squarepixels.

5. Then setting up the duration of the animation however both the fps and time amount can be edited during the making if needs be....

During making....

1. Insert files ,you need to make sure images are of 72 dpi which is better for web and you add these in frame order is you are using cell animtion or stopmotion but FILE>IMPORT>MULTIPLE FILES> ''select files'' > tick 'JPEG SEQUENCE'' - Then the files will be placed in order of the frames in the animation.

Then to make them start making an animation, you have to insert them into the timeline which is at the bottom of the screen. By highlighting them all and simply drag and drop them into the timeline in the desired sequence. Then it's just a matter of fiddling about with the slides appearing time so you can ovelap and make transititions from one image to another. I will go into more detail about this when I am showing you the making of my animation.

The making of the animation.... like above I imported all of the frames into AE5. Then copied them to the timeline.

(Below) I had to change the length of the duration at which the sequence played seen as I wanted some of them slightly longer than others and just for added effect or to play slightly quicker (referring back to the key frames at certain parts of the music)

I then added the music which was alot more easier to sort out than first expect by importing the music in the exact same way as the images, I had to shorten the green bar (indication of the audio file in AE5) from 03:25:00 to 00:22:00. Then align to which frame I wanted for the music start and end. 

It's always good practice to have the music at the bottom of the timeline so it's easy to compare with every other component in the timeline.