This week, I finished up my After Effects animation piece. The whole process went smoother than I expected (although I did cut out a good portion of my original storyboard). This was also my first time creating an animation with a fully rigged character, since all my previous animation experience was with motion graphics.
Here is the final animation:
Creating this piece took quite a bit of work. Because I wanted to have complete control over the motion of every single character and object, I decided to hand-create all my assets in illustrator. For the apartment scene, I created one giant layout so that I could simply pan throughout the scene to make it seem as if the viewer was moving throughout the building.
Rigging and animating the characters was definitely the hardest part of the whole process. Rigging a humanoid was new to me, and most of my time was spent learning how to properly depict fluid motion in the joints. I had to redesign my characters several times (15 times to be exact) in order to prep them for seamless joint rotation. Here are some screenshots of my characters unwrapped for rigging:
As you can see, each moving piece is separated into its own layer, and then parented within After Effects to achieve the motion. I originally wanted the characters to be outlined just like my background assets, but found that joint rotation with outlined characters is quite difficult to achieve.
As I imported all my assets into the program, the rest was simple motion graphics. I masked different areas of the scene to allow for realistic movement behind and in front of objects, and was careful to time each step that the characters took so that I could align them with the sounds later on.
Here is a shot of me preparing to edit the city sounds after all my animation was complete. To be honest, sound editing was nearly just as difficult as animating the characters, because I had to randomize and align each footstep to the character. Because the characters also engage in repetitive 'banging', it was an absolute nightmare to edit. However, I managed to power through in the end and create a piece that I am quite satisfied with.
'Neighbors' was a great experiment with rigging and character motion, and really pushed the boundaries of my After Effects skills. One thing that I would like to expand upon would be the story for my piece; there was a lot I wanted to accomplish, but due to resource and time constraints, I had to cut down my storyboard. Nevertheless, the piece is inspired by my undergraduate suitemates, and the downsides of having to share tight spaces with other people.