Title sequence

Now for the past couple of weeks, for me, its been all about trying and testing things. As i am no expert in after effects i wanted to be able to understand the fundamentals before i even tried to start putting my actual 50 second title sequence. I have managed to try out loads of different style and approaches to animating my vectored images. So i decided yesterday that i was going to attempt to start pulling all the separate elements i had created into the animation. I am still working with it in bite-size chunks, but this time it will be part of my final title sequence. Even if i just get the basic structure down so that in the future i can just animate and perfect it all. Anyway, below are my attempts at pulling it all together. I had a few technical problems with the rotation of the map.


Title 1 from Robyn Russell on Vimeo.


As i was rotating the map and parenting the layers the whole thing was flipping but not scaling right. and before i even got this far when i had parented them before the whole thing would scale, but i would completely loose the definition within the map. Which is okay but when it just turned into a complete flat colour, that wasn't what i had intended. So, i spoke to mike and he taught me how to use 'expressions'. This meant that i could link the background image with the rotate for island vector using the expression pick wip. Once i had overcome this problem the next was getting the background to scale so that i could get rid of the white space. This was all very frustrating, because when i had originally done this test i had used the basic 3D perspective tool, but doing it the way i have just done means that i have more control over what's going on which is ultimately what i want. I just means a bit more time to be spent on getting the cameras right.


Title 2 from Robyn Russell on Vimeo.


Once i had worked out those kinks, the next thing was to pull in the vectored images i had used for the cannon and the cannon ball. After my crit they told me it would be best to do all the elements animated hand made, so for this i had to re-draw the cannon ball. All of this was quite easy to put together because it was just a combination of nesting comps. The only other problem i had was that for some reason there was a grey spot in the middle of the screen when the cannon fired, so i am going to have to look into that.


Untitled from Robyn Russell on Vimeo.


This next part was pulling together the animation sequence i had just done with blackbeard and the new font. I am not 100% sure this all fits because the contrast between the thick and thin lines of the map and the illustration arn't that great. another problem as well is i think the overall movement of the blackbeard animation is still a little too slow, i had sped it up but clearly not enough. However these are quite easy fixes. So far i am happy. I especially like the zoom in on the map, it looks quite natural.


title 4 from Robyn Russell on Vimeo.


This next video i just added the pan right. Which is where the next animation will start. I need to add in the transfer lines that i will be using the animate it from one side to the other. But for now i am just focusing on getting the camera angles right and the destinations right. I think this is going to be the easiest way to do it. Get the camera zooms and pans right and then at specific points add the assets.


title 5 from Robyn Russell on Vimeo.


With this next video i added the audio. As before i had been working on the crescendos within the songs and how i can use them for timing. the segment i have chosen has quite a few, so it will be a lot easier to time with assets i want to animate at the same time. There is an example of this here, when the animation starts its timed as the first big crescendo starts. And when the next big one happens you will be expecting to see something else happening then, which there will be.

after doing these videos, i know there will be a lot of tweaking i need to do, but i am happy with the progress. I think i need to work on this in layers, so build up on element then another then another and so on. keeping it organised and flowing.