When we received this assignment I had a narrative in mind that I was very anxious to explore and, not wanting to force my ideas on anyone in the class, I decided to go it alone. This wasn’t necessarily the best choice: I don’t know a thing about After Effects or Photoshop. With that said, I knew I had a little extra time to pursue the project so I figured I’d give it a shot.
Having already had a fully fledged narrative in mind, the first part of the process was quite easy. It was everything thereafter that was a complete nightmare. I knew I wanted to use and old man character but I didn’t want to rely on my non-existent Illustrator skills to create one. Instead I decided to use photos of someone that I knew would be in abundance online: Samuel Beckett. With that solution a new problem arose. How was I going to be able to use photoshop to turn Beckett into the character I needed him to be?
Enter Rebecca’s Photoshop tutorial. Thanks to her screen record of that class I was able to do all the things I needed to do with Beckett and all of my other characters. When it came to learning After Effects however, I stuck to the simple basics: the pin tool, keyframes, etc.
There were definitely sometimes I had to adapt my narrative to limited After Effects ability I had but I think the changes ended up working. While the animation in and of itself is no great shakes to look at, I’m proud that the story is – I think – clear and the message is similar to the one I intended to tell at the assignments outset.