Target Audience for my Ident

my Ident is aimed at young film makers ranging from around 16 - 25. my Ident is aimed at passionate filming pioneers who are still learning how to make a proffesioanal cinematic productions, i think I've shown this in my Ident by creating a complicated professional sequence of 3D tracking text onto a wall.

A target audience is a way of defining a market. Target audience is a group of people which fit a specific target at which a product is aimed at. It is important to have a target audience as it is a way of defining who you are aiming at rather than selling your idea to a broader audience, you can also attract more people by targeting a specific market for instance smiths toys advertise their products on TV channels like Cartoon Network, Nikelodeon, boomerang and many more kids channels but they have never advertised on channels like Kerrang, Sky 1,2 or any other channels like them because adults don't want to watch a million barbies fly past the screen. however the kids watching the kid channels will watch the adverts and ask their parents to buy them.

Photoshop

during this lesson we were introduced to the interface of Adobe Photoshop CS6, we were taught how to import files jpegs and other formats into photoshop. we were shown how to send files to other Adobe programs like Bridge , After effects , Illustrator. customising the workspace is much like changing the workspace in After effects as when you first enter photoshop the default workspace is essentials which is pretty much what you will need to touch up photographs and other images. we were also taught how to use some of the tools available like using the stamp tool to mark out odd areas and the magic wand tools to get rid of whole areas of the image.

After Effects Lesson 5 : Rotoscoping

In this lesson we created a composition which involved an illustrator promoting his work by putting himself in his own illustration, producing this composition was a bit more complicated than previous tutorials as we had to incorporate rotoscoping which is where we cut the head of the illustrator from that footage and then masked the head to create a P shape and used the knowledge from previous lessons to animate the background moving with key-frames and then the illustrator zooming in and out near the end to create some form of realism. 

After Effects Lesson 4: puppet tools

During this lesson I was taught how to use the puppet tools in Adobe After Effects CS6. This short animation consists of a man walking through a city and slips over a banana skin. To give our character life we used the puppet pin tool first which helped After Effects define what the body parts are, so we used a very basic five pin puppet which covered his arms, legs and head. however if you were working for Pixar animation you would use a ton more than five pins as they would cover all parts of the body that would be moving including very finger thumb and joints. once i had placed the pins in the appropriate spots i next used another tool in the puppet tab which is called the puppet starch tool which effectively tells After Effects where the shadow parts are so the arms and legs look natural and don't flow in front of the body.

after that we could make a walking cycle motion for the character by using key-frames to animate the character. key-frames are a fundamental part of creating animation on After Effects as they are what starts and ends an animation, when you add an effect or animation preset After Effects automatically displays the keyframes that are within the transition which you can then further edit to either slow, speed up or reverse the effect. when you use the puppet starch tool you will see triangles on certain parts of the character which will define where the body parts can overlap over the torso to make a fluid and life like motion. we then used the key-frames in the position properties to move the character across the screen and also the rotation to give the effect that when the character reaches the banana skin he falls over in a comical way.

After Effects Lesson 3: effects and presets

link to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=052_sdbAiek

During this lesson I learned how to create and animate text, stylise text, use key frames, animate layers using the parenting tool, edit ad animate  Photoshop documents and apply text animation to a graphic object. 

Firstly we had to import the road trip text layer and use the character panel to select a different font and a different typeface. We then continued to edit the text layer by changing the font size. once the text was sorted we had to add a text animation preset which was called evaporate, we added this preset to our text layer and ram previewed it. after that we selected the text layer and pressed U on the keyboard which bought up the animation properties of the layer we then moved the keyframes to different positions to make the preset reverse the animation.

to add realism to the composition we added an effect from the fey frame assistant called easy-ease. the next thing was to give the effect of the virtual  camera zooming away. after this we imported a new layer called compass, using the parent tool we parented the compass to the road trip layer which allows the compass to create the same effect as the road trip layer.

we imported a Photoshop document which contained text, once importing the psd file into after effects, we dragged the psd file into the timeline which opened out into its own timeline so we could  edit the text independently, we then added the fade up characters animation preset to reveal the text gradually we then sped the animation up by one second as we wanted to conserve animation space. 

the next step consisted of  us using a path animation preset which was called pipes, on screen it looks like a giant S but this path allows you to add an image or animation and animate it to fly around the shape, the path also is editable so you can move certain points around to get the desired shape. we then animated the directors name by animating type tracking which makes the words look as if they are expanding onscreen. we then jumped to Adobe Bridge and clicked on the increase tracking preset to apply it in After Effects.

after this we imported an image of a car into After Effects and then dragged it to the top of the layer stack. we then copied the mask path property of the directed by layer property and copied it into the car mask path properties to mimic the directed by layers key frames. after this we had to orientate the car by  clicking into the car layer s transform properties and click auto-orient. we did this to make the car face forward, after this we added motion blur to the car to make it look fast by clicking the little box on the car layer just under the motion blur button to select it.  

Point Tracking

link to point tracking: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lzl559_GO3U

Link to tracking camera example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMFH1wXHY0A

In todays lesson we were taught how to point track, point tracking is very similar to motion tracking but differs in the fact that when point tracking you are given specific tools to help track something like a dot moving across the screen to then add another layer on top which you could "parent" it with the dot to move at the same time. you could also use point tracking to add an image in a picture frame whilst the camera pans around the picture frame but the CG image stays in place giving the effect of the image being realistic.  

you can track things in many different ways in Adobe After Effects throughout the track camera and track motion. you usually use track camera if you wanted to add maybe 3D text to the floor of a track ing shot in which you will need to use the track camera tool to track the shot, you would then be able to create a virtual 3D camera that you can add text to. when you add text to that layer the text will no longer stay static and will give the illusion that its in the background. this is a cool effect for something like a title sequence or if you want to introduce something.

Motion tracking differs slightly from track an entire shot as you can track individual parts for instance if you had a 360 degree pivoting pan shot and you wanted to add a picture to a frame or footage to a blank TV screen you can do this through the track type tab in the motion tracker box called perspective corner pin which will give you four pins which you can scale and position to the desired spot. this type of tracking is effective for adding in extra footage which the actors can "look" at.

After Effects Lesson 2: transform properties

In this lesson I learnt how to use precompose layers apply effects from the effects and presets tab, adjust the transparency of a layer and many more. firstly i had to create a new composition by going into the composition bar and clicking on the new composition button, i the  imported an image of a building into Adobe After Effects which would be the background of the composition. i then imported a folder called destinations folder in which contained a few documents inside which were Adobe Illustrator documents. the destinations folder contains the logo which go's at the top right corner of the composition once the logo had been put in the timeline and in its place we used the selection tool which we then had to click on the text that the logo had around it and change the colour. We then created a text layer which sat next to the logo, we then add an effect called drop shadow which added a soft edged to the text that made the text stand out and look almost 3D, after applying that we used another effect called colour emboss which effectively sharpens the edges around the logo. we then added another effect to the text layer called bullet train which animated the text to slowly fly onto the screen. after this we then precomposed the layer in the destinations folder by going to the composition tab at the top of the screen and clicking on the precompose button mid way down the tab. we then previewed our compositions by hitting the play button in the preview tab. to make the small ident less visible we went into the layer clicked transform to bring a drop down tab and decreased the opacity to around 50 percent we did this so it would be fit for broadcast as if you leave it a 100 percent the ident could leave a mark on the actual TV screen. we then added the finished composition to the render queue which is in the composition tab add to render queue.