Test Drawings

Today i spoke to Mike Flower about getting my vector images to draw themselves. I had been looking at tutorials on the internet for growing elements but it wasn't quite achieving what i wanted it to, and i had previously tested those ideas here. So instead Mike showed me another way of getting the elements to draw themselves and that was by using the pen tool within after effects and creating a mask over the drawing itself. By then adding a stoke to the masked layer and changing the start and end point i could then animate the drawing along the lines i had created with the mask. This ended up working out a lot better than my previous idea. However, it did take me a while to work out how to do this properly because i got confused and thought you would have to draw a stoked mask for each line within the drawing but that wasn't the case.

Above show my idea of how i wanted the faces to be drawn, i wanted them to appear in one fluid motion. I decided to test it out before i went onto after effects to see if i could achieve it and then later work out how to do it. I layered tracing paper over one another to get the effect i wanted. 

This first test i chose a small part of the animation to work with first. Working in baby steps. The timing for the piece wasn't exactly right because i wanted the hair to be drawn first and then the dreadlock. But instead it worked the other way around. I wasn't sure how to change this so i just left it. I do like the detail that you can achieve though and the speed with which it has drawn itself because you can see each detail for what it is.



This second video was about looking at spreading the stroke further and working on getting the outline of the shape first. Then adding the detail within it. However what i was beginning to work out was that i needed to mask the parts that i wanted to animate last, first instead of the other way around.



This is the last test i did which involved adding the detail of the face. I did/do really like this, theres a good amount of detail it doesn't happen too fast so you get to see the level of intricacy as it moves showing the face.


This is defiantly going to be the style i use in order to reveal the mountains and the faces within. It  achieves exactly what i want it to, which is the hand drawn effect. this ties nicely in with the map that i am doing because the maps i have researched are all hand drawn so it stays within the style. I am really happy with this so i am now going to try it out with the vectors i have designed for the map.