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Luther Lazaro
Community, giving back, and collaboration are so very important to us here at School of Motion. We've been working closely with The Furrow to bring a series of videos highlighting some of our favorite pieces and what went into creating such wonderful animation.
Each breakdown demonstrates the unique way in which the artist approached animation, whether it was setting up the project well upfront to avoid headaches, relying heavily on expressions, or using multiple programs to achieve the right effect.
Alex went beyond just using After Effects by pulling together the use of cel animation in Adobe Animate, some effectors in Cinema 4D, and some wonderful shape layer tricks in After Effects to pull it all together.
We can get you up and running using expressions, teach you how to work with clients starting with pre-production all the way to final delivery and even offer training in illustrating your own work in Illustration for Motion.
Seth Eckert (00:00:18): My name is Seth Eckert and I lead the creative team at the Furrow studio based in Lexington, Kentucky information on how to wash your hands is incredibly important, but we also wanted to supplement that information with taking things a step further. So we gathered information for resources, such as the CDC and the world health organization informed short statements that were either based on general guidance or facts to make this collaboration successful and feel cohesive. We knew we needed a brief to get everyone on the same page. We use the brief to outline the subject matter per shot, outline the deliverable specifications and to build a visual identity for the project. Our hope was that these guardrails would give the artists room to flex their creative muscles. And at the same time, keep us all aligned. We relied on this format and design style to unify everything.
Seth Eckert (00:01:02): So this included the color direction mood and the style frame and building the mood we selected geometric and abstract compositions as the scenes would be grounded by the text per frame, which has a color palette that had enough depth to mold to each concept. And finally, we built out a frame to use as a foundation on how style mood and color could all come together. After we build out all of this, we started to see who might be interested in helping us out. It was really cool to get to hear back from so many artists who genuinely were excited to come onboard and help us out. I'm continually hyped that I get to be a part of this awesome design and animation community. Again, huge shout out to the amazing team that sacrificed their time to come on board and help us with the project in efforts to further impact our community.
Seth Eckert (00:01:45): We wanted to share some insight into how some of this was made. So we're teaming up with the school of motion and the motion designers who built this outstanding work to break down some of what took place and creating these visuals for this video. I've got Alex Deaton joining me and we're going to be digging into his project files. Alex went beyond just using after effects by pulling together the use of cell animation and Adobe animate some effectors and cinema four D in some shape layer tricks and after effects to pull it all together. At first, a multiple program workflow may sound intimidating, but once you see the breakdown, you may be surprised at how simple little workflow improvements like this can stack up to make a truly remarkable end product. Alex covers how he blended these different mediums building and using references for nailing animations, compositing effects, and mini sweet little workflow tips.
Seth Eckert (00:02:33): I highly suggest downloading the project file and following along with Alex and I, you can find the link in the description. So I know Alex with, with us painting all of this stuff off to you, like the mood and, and all of that stuff. I know Marco was the one that designed the piece ultimately, but, uh, I'm curious from my perspective, you know, how all of this landed with you, um, uh, when you receive like the mood and the style frames and the color and all that stuff, and started to see what Marco was putting together. Did that start to spark some, some ideation for some of the emotion that you were going to exhibit in your project?
Alex Deaton (00:03:06): Uh, yes, definitely. When I, when I saw Marco's amazing frames, I was, uh, I was frankly intimidated at first because as most motion designers know any way, the object that you have to animate is, uh, it spells trouble right out of the gate. But, but I knew that this was, uh, this is going to be a great challenge to tackle it. He had designed a couple of really, really good frames. And so my mind immediately started sparking off of what I could do with, with the wings and how we could get them to, to unfurl and, and, and, and do the wave and then eventually how to, how to make the loop happen. So, yeah, I was, I was kind of running wild when I first saw them.
Seth Eckert (00:03:45): Yeah. So as far as, like, I know, like when he, when he built those, um, you know, the, the idea of thinking about how things would loop, um, what were your initial thoughts? Like, I guess, like, as far as your process was concerned, did you just start storyboarding things out or did you just kind of dive in and start animating straight ahead? Uh, what, what was your process there?
Alex Deaton (00:04:06): I think because we were working on a somewhat tight schedule and this is all after hours, I four, I four went, that's a word storyboarding and just kind of, kind of went for it. I saw in my head what I wanted to happen, and it was only about a ten second animation anyway, or seven, seven and a half second animation anyway. So I knew, uh, that, you know, I could, I could sort of plot it out and just, just go straight forward if it were longer, I probably would have storyboarded it. Uh, but yeah, I, I knew that I basically wanted the butterfly's wings to flap off and wipe the screen back to the start from the very get go. And so that's what I ended up building it towards,
Seth Eckert (00:04:42): As far as your, your pipeline for, for execution on that. I know we had, um, uh, I know Marco's original design had, uh, some, like, I think the wings were originally straight and you had like a little bit of a different approach, and then we thought, Hey, what if we added some way to that? Sorry, that was, yeah. That was an additional challenge. Yeah, that was, that was my bad dude, but I think it helped, you know, I mean, it added a little bit of extra excitement to it. Um, and I would kind of like that little, that flowy vibe to it. Um, so yeah. So like what, what was your pipeline like? Cause I know you used, um, when, when we saw the original work come back, we were like, golly, this isn't done just in 2d, you know, you've got kind of multiple layers of programs. It seems like. So what, what software did you use as far as, uh, developing this
Alex Deaton (00:05:31): Okay. Yeah. So, so first my obvious, uh, first, uh, idea was I'm just going to use wave for, I don't want to have to go outside after effects. Maybe I could make this work with wave warp and, uh, uh, so that's how I built it at first. And, and, uh, I'm going to jump inside the, the project file here. Give me just one second. So yeah, I, I, uh, I initially just had the, uh, the wings sort of a shape layer open up, um, and had a wave war along the, the shape layer. And then I just mirrored the top and bottom of it. But what I found is that it wasn't, it didn't look the way I wanted it to look. I want it to look like it was unfurling. And then on top of that, uh, you essentially have no control over a wave war.
Alex Deaton (00:06:15): Uh, you, you have to do all sorts of things on top of it to make it work. You have to, you have to put all sorts of effects like corner pinning or, or other things to get the taper, to look right the way that it was designed in Marco's frames. So eventually I decided, you know what, I'm going to do this in cinema. So I had, um, my friend Preston Gibson, who actually happens to live right next door to me, come over and give me a few pointers on how I can build this out in cinema. And he, he, uh, told me that using formula in a linear field would be the smartest way to build that out. So, so what I did is I actually ended up taking a plane. I'm just going to turn off these layers here so you can see the originals, right?
Alex Deaton (00:06:56): So I ended up making a plane in cinema, and then I used a couple of, uh, of effector shield, like a correction effector tip taper, and a main taper to get the original shape back the way that Marco had designed it. And then I added a formula effector on top of that to, to get the wave going, but in order to get the, a formula effector to look the way I wanted, so that, that would be to have no wave at the beginning of the tip and have a wave kind of maximize to the middle of the wing and then taper off at the end. I had to put a linear field on it. And that, uh, that essentially in this mapping section here inside the cinema, that allowed me to control the shape of the wave a lot more finely than I would have been able to, if I had done it inside of after effects using wave war.
Alex Deaton (00:07:44): So props to Preston for, for walking me through that, it was a huge help. And then, uh, just to get the unfurl, I, I, I got the, the wing itself to, uh, scale up and then I just used a bend deformer that's it I've been, deformer just sorta wraps it around and then it sort of unfurls like that. So, uh, yeah, that's, that's how I built it in cinema. And then the trick after that was going to be how to get that into after effects and, and make it work the way I wanted it to. So I, I did sort of a, a fake puzzle mat, which if you don't know, that is a, it's a type of sin, uh, 3d compositing technique that you can export a 3d with different colors, bring it into after effects and sort of key the colors out to separate them and composite them in aftereffects, how you'd like to.
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