Motion Graphics Part 5

Last week we looked at creating an animatic using our styled storyboard and some simple graphics. Now it’s time to bring everything together and develop our animatic into a fully animated motion graphic.

We touched on keyframe animation - or ‘keyframing’- last week. It’s the primary animation method used by Adobe After Effects, and is designed to take a lot of the hard work out of creating animations using traditional techniques.

In short, rather than drawing each frame individually, keyframing involves creating a few images at important locations, then allowing the software to fill in the movement. These automatic sequences between keyframes are called ‘inbetweens’, or ‘tweens’.

For more information on keyframing, take a look at this video from Nils Urbanus:

For more general information about expanding your knowledge of Adobe After Effects, take a look at this Adobe helpx tutorial.

Now watch this interpretation of the 12 principles applied to motion design:

This week’s video lectures from Andrew King are all about diving back into both Adobe Illustrator and Adobe After Effects to develop your animatic into a full motion graphic:

First we need to know how to set up the layer structure in Adobe Illustrator in order to import the graphics into Adobe After Effects:

Now we’ll import our graphics into Adobe After Effects, then explore using basic keyframing techniques to create the illusion of movement:

Finally, in case you need a recap from last week about rendering and exporting an After Effects project: