using AS for Motion Graphics constructive criticism wanted!

[mtbuck24]

Hey guys!

So I have been pretty busy lately doing some work, for an agronomic company that makes mobile apps for their industry, using "motion graphics" or at least what I would consider to be motion graphics. Right now I only know of a few others (selgin, jayfaker..) that have been taking advantage of Anime studio and making motion graphics with it. I have only done this twice and these are the finished results (I found on their channel) I got with my first ever client!

Please note: extremely new to motion graphics and somewhat to Anime Studio. That's me doing the voice over, I did that in hopes they would use that for the timing of the video and hire a real 'voice' but it's cool...I guess




So is there anyone else that does this and would like to share tips, tricks, and techniques? These videos are the finished products and I have already been paid for my work but I would really like to improve! I have tried to learn After Effects not only for post production but for the actual animating of characters because AE is the 'flagship' of motion graphics but...that was a pretty much waste of time, only so much you can do when it comes to animation in that program.

Let me know what you think!

Thanks!

McCoy

[Danimal]

Looked good! The guy slowly slumping as he enters the data looked particularly nice.

[mtbuck24]

Looked good! The guy slowly slumping as he enters the data looked particularly nice.

Thanks Danimal for always replying! Much appreciated sir!

[3deeguy]

slowtiger does it also. You can find a lot of information if you search "explainer video". I recently found out about it myself. I even started researching HTML5.
I'm studying the portfolios of the professionals. I want that same professional look in my work.

[mtbuck24]

slowtiger does it also. You can find a lot of information if you search "explainer video". I recently found out about it myself. I even started researching HTML5.
I'm studying the portfolios of the professionals. I want that same professional look in my work.

Yeah 3deeguy I hear ya. I looked up Demo Duck's blog, which if you haven't you should it's amazing. I was more hoping to find people here on the forum that use Anime Studio for Motion Graphics and have success with it. If not, I guess in a way I am sharing my success that I had with it, it was my first video so I don't know how many others I will have but it's a lot of fun!

What are you hoping to do with HTML5?

[3deeguy]

HTML5, I think, is an improvement over Flash. It allows you to scale text, images and video on your smartphone, for example. I only want a broad understanding of HTML5. I believe exporting as mp4 and 'ogg' may be the preferred formats for embedding video in websites. I'm also studying Wordpress.
Motion graphics, the way I see it, should not require any rigging but I'm not an expert so I hope some of the pro's jump in.

[mtbuck24]

HTML5, I think, is an improvement over Flash. It allows you to scale text, images and video on your smartphone, for example. I only want a broad understanding of HTML5. I believe exporting as mp4 and 'ogg' may be the preferred formats for embedding video in websites. I'm also studying Wordpress.
Motion graphics, the way I see it, should not require any rigging but I'm not an expert so I hope some of the pro's jump in.

Oh okay gotcha. Yeah I am currently learning HTML5 and CSS3 but more for web design. Good thing to know I also want to learn word press.

Yeah motion graphics doesn't really require rigging but just for the slight motions that I use for head nods and writing on the clipboard and such the bones came in handy.

I'm hoping more people join in on the convo as well

thanks 3deeguy!

[slowtiger]

Nice work so far, but with room for improvement ...

Mind your timing. Especially in the first video there are some scenes much too short. You need to give your audience some time to recognise stuff. Also there are several moments where elements seem to move unnecessarily when the camera pans. Always move whole scenes, unless single objects need to move separately because of another reason.

Rushing stuff in and out is standard. You don't need anticipation for that, AS' smooth interpolation takes care of that. Rushing stuff in needs a bit of squash and stretch, butu only a very basic one. Try this: set the point of origin to the base of the object. Create a scale key on the frame before impact, another one just 3 frames later, to maintain original size. On the impact frame, grab the corner and drag while pressing alt. This creates a proportional squash. Don't let parts of your object go in different directions, like that machine in the first spot.

Take care of direction of movement. Those white lines going down, then the 3 devices going up - that's confusing.

Spend some thinking about your transitions. If possible, connect objects to a bigger scene - like the 3 patches of grass, they could easily be patches of lighter green on a continuous darker green field.

If your head moves, the thinking bubbles and other effects must move as well - or just vanish.

[mtbuck24]

Nice work so far, but with room for improvement ...

Hey! Thanks so much slowtiger for taking a look at my videos and giving me some constructive criticism! This is perfect!

Mind your timing. Especially in the first video there are some scenes much too short. You need to give your audience some time to recognise stuff.

I figured my timing was off, I first went through and recorded just the audio, than went and animated the timing of animations to the audio. As far as scenes being too short, could you give me an example of a scene that you saw and how many frames/sec you would have extended it?

Also there are several moments where elements seem to move unnecessarily when the camera pans. Always move whole scenes, unless single objects need to move separately because of another reason.

So my camera I think I only had it pan once. And that was when panned to the right and zoomed in on the cloud with the guy typing at the computer, was that the unnecessary element movement. A lot of the other movement that I have been doing is what I think or thought was popular with most motion graphics (again these videos are the only experience I have with MG) where they have things move in and out in a scene quickly. If it looks bad I will remember just to move whole scenes.

Rushing stuff in and out is standard. You don't need anticipation for that, AS' smooth interpolation takes care of that. Rushing stuff in needs a bit of squash and stretch, but only a very basic one.

That is very good to know. I noticed I was doing a lot of anticipation with my second video and took a lot of it out because I noticed it was a little too much.

Try this: set the point of origin to the base of the object. Create a scale key on the frame before impact, another one just 3 frames later, to maintain original size. On the impact frame, grab the corner and drag while pressing alt. This creates a proportional squash. Don't let parts of your object go in different directions, like that machine in the first spot.

Haha that is very good to know! Thanks so much for providing the info, I figured the machine looked pretty bad but my client liked it so I left it

Take care of direction of movement. Those white lines going down, then the 3 devices going up - that's confusing

.

Thank you, I honestly didn't know if that was a little too much as well that is definitely good to know.

Again thank you so much SlowTiger and anyone else that can provide feedback of what they liked didn't like. I am very serious to learn how to get better and honestly need all the constructive criticism I can get. I really want to be at a professional level one day!

-McCoy

[slowtiger]

I'm a bit at odds with the term "motion graphics" here - better would be something like "infomercial" to nail the context. Motion graphics just means moving stuff in limited animation, it's a technique, not a narrative device.

Here's some more general thoughts.

Overall you need to set a general movement for the whole spot. The basic movements are:
- standing still (with stuff dropping in and out)
- moving in one direction (and passing objects)
- moving on a map (but preferably in a steady movement like a circle or spiral)

Because our spots are short you must provide as much context as possible as a guide for your audience. If your presenter moves about, create a background with enough elements so to indicate movement clearly. This could be a landscape with some distant trees and clouds, or just a texture.

Transitions need this context badly! So you either move 1 scene out, 1 scene in - but without 3D effects, think of rendered images, or you have your presenter standing still and objects move behind him, or the presenter walks from one object to the next. If your audience has to figure out "where are we now? what has happened?", you've already lost their attention.

I tend to plan my spots mostly in 2D, or 2.5D (just for parallax scrolling background stuff). This way I can reserve 3D movements for more important points of my script. Imagine yourself explaining stuff and talking with your hands: these spatial relations are the ones you need to explain complex stuff, so use them in AS only where needed, not as fancy eye candy. (But this is my personal taste.)

Design your elements by syntax. One design for presenter or other people, and the objects they interact with. One design for thoughts. One design for claims. Be consistent with this. But don't do too many different levels, everything needs to work together. Think of "reserved movements" for some layers, like the claim title cards always come in and out the same way and speed. (This also saves time as you can easily animate a group layer once, then duplicate it and put different content in.)

[3deeguy]

Slowtiger! That advice is big. I didn't know why so much 'professional' work looked amateurish even though I could tell there was a difference. I'm going to go back through my current project, already about six minutes long, and correct a lot of my mistakes.

[mtbuck24]

I'm a bit at odds with the term "motion graphics" here - better would be something like "infomercial" to nail the context. Motion graphics just means moving stuff in limited animation, it's a technique, not a narrative device.

I guess that shows how little I know of.... everything! lol. I thought it was motion graphics because I wasn't animating the walk cycles and just sliding animations in and out. Yeah I guess it would be more so an explainer video rather than a motion graphic.

moving on a map (but preferably in a steady movement like a circle or spiral

What did you mean here? Sorry I read all this like 20x thinking I could pick up on a lot of what's being said like 3deeguy but a lot of it goes over my head.

Because our spots are short you must provide as much context as possible as a guide for your audience. If your presenter moves about, create a background with enough elements so to indicate movement clearly. This could be a landscape with some distant trees and clouds, or just a texture.

That is good to know! I was hoping that is what I could accomplish with the vignette that I had but I guess it wasn't very visible now that I take a second look.

Transitions need this context badly! So you either move 1 scene out, 1 scene in - but without 3D effects, think of rendered images, or you have your presenter standing still and objects move behind him, or the presenter walks from one object to the next.

Good point, so the zoom in on the computer with the 3D turn was a bit too much?

If your audience has to figure out "where are we now? what has happened?", you've already lost their attention

I thought about that and showed the video to a few people in the industry and they didn't know what was going on and gave me some pointers on how to improve.

Design your elements by syntax. One design for presenter or other people, and the objects they interact with. One design for thoughts. One design for claims. Be consistent with this. But don't do too many different levels, everything needs to work together. Think of "reserved movements" for some layers, like the claim title cards always come in and out the same way and speed. (This also saves time as you can easily animate a group layer once, then duplicate it and put different content in.)

that is very good advice there. Overall thanks a ton slowtiger for all the info. If you could, could you send me a link to your own video do what you explained here or a link to a video that you think applies what you explained to me?