Level

 As mentioned in my last post and documented in a couple of storyboards, I want to start my animation off with a level scene from dig dug.
I've been re-creating the level almost picture perfectly, simplyfying a few elements but trying to keep the original aesthetic in mind.
In my title experiments, I've spoke about how the aspect ratio of the initial part will stick to that of original arcade machines.

The dug out part of the level that goes off the screen is hopefully where I'll be able to make dig dug dig it up and make it look as though it is being removed as he is. Speaking to mike he said it's a fairly simple approach to achieve this effect and once all the artowrk is done to have a look with him and he'll talk me through the process.

pixelate

As I've been using the Dave logo to appear as though it were a spinning coin as in old classic gmaes, I thought it appropriate to maybe create a pixelated version of the logo to accompany the theme. I tried to find a filter to gain the effect in a quicker manor than tediosly duplicating squares to achieve an otherwise disgusting quality line.

I couldn't so it was a case of manually recreating the logo form a copy on a lower layer. The text itself looked really good, untill I tried to apply it to a massively oversized pixelated circle, which almost made the text look a decent quality, definiely back to that circle to make all proportional.

Intro

With the title coding experimented with, I wanted to start stringing together some of the visuals I've been gathering for the introduction of my 60 second sequence. After the title coding the 'arcade clasics' start screen rises up slowly from the bottom, the reasoning behind such a simple block transition is purely due to the nature of the games, this is how title screens would commonly appear.




It looks alot more professional when I look back on it, I was a bit sceptical when mocking it up in photoshop, but when it pops up, particularly when the < press start >starts flashing, it really does feel as though it could've been taken straight from one of these classic machines.

TV Pixel

I was finding it particularly hard to create a constantly moving glitchy screen, and although I'm sure it's frowned upon, I found a plugin by the name of TV Pixel. The website offered it as a free trial download, so I thought I'd give it a try and knowing that a big red cross would be constantly visible due to the nature of its freeness, it was purely experimental.

This kind of aesthetic is almost exactly what I'm trying to create, I just need to find a way round the plugin and get it sorted myself...

Typeface

Working on the title sequence logo to import into after effects. I found quite a few fitting typefaces to use, but decided I wanted to keep it as true to the 8-bit style as possible.

Although some quite experimental typefaces were used, I think the classic, 8-bit pixelated font [below and right] is very iconic and immediately associated with the topic, often even out of context.

Titles

Using some simple techniques courtesy of one of Mikes sessions, working with text in After Effects, I had a little play around with title sequences/ideas. This video is only a 5 second example of what could easily be extended to 15-20 with a few more experiments included. I also started working with the 'noise' effect, a preset on the software. - As relevant as it is, I'm really looking for a much less detailed pixel count, with the colours becoming more prominent opposed to blending into a dull multicoloured background.

Swutits

Much like the video and screen caps of the 'dig dug' start up sequence above, I want to achieve this aesthetic into the intro of my longer ident. I've been experimenting with static imagery techniques I've discovered and further came across this...

 


A custom built programme designed for the sole purpose of glitching images. It almost takes a bit of the fun out of messing around with the coding and seein what the results are. Nonetheless its another means of getting the desired aesthetics I'm looking for.

In terms of putting these images into practice with After Effects, I think I might take an image ie. the arcade room, and distort it using one of the methods I've found, so it sequentially becomes less identifiable, untill the screen is filled with flickering pixels with the title popping up, or somthing along those lines...

Gl!†ch

In a presentation some time ago from Joe Gilmore (I think) at Qubik design, he spoke of a technique that took a file, any file and saved it as a .raw then opened the file in photoshop. The examples he chose to show were pretty awesome, achieving quite a glitchy effect with mad colours and random, eccentric compositions. I tried the technique and it didn't quite achieve the same results, for example....

The image above is the result of taking a .gif file and saving it as .raw, the technique works with .mp3, .wav, .pdf, the list is endless. A problem I encountered was a distinct lack of colour, which I genuinely have only just figured out whilst writing this post.

It is such a simple case of changing the 'count' value in channels - quite an obvious answer I overlooked on so many occasions. So I played around with this variable, using the same image and dimensions (turns more than 5 in the count value doesn't open due to the file size being to large, and 4 + 5 achieve practically the exact same result)...

I need to find a way of incorporating this into After Effects, whilst being able to animate it to give a pixelated 'noise' effect. Ive tried playing around with the 'noise' values in the After effect settings but they are no where near as glitchy and exaggerated as I'd like.

Arcade sound

Once I had the general movement of the arcade machines sorted, appearing as and when I wanted. I started to intergrate sound, keeping it simple I worked with a simple 'arcade bleep' downloaded from the web. [surprising the amount of sources that try and charge between $2 and $5 for sounds less than a second long!]

As the first two or three machines pop up into the visible boundaries I wanted the sounds to correlate exactly with their appearance, after that the sounds become alot more prolific, repeated quite randomly to give the feel that multiple are popping up all over the place.

Here I've only exported the first 4 seconds to get a feel of how it would run in real time. I noticed that after the first 3 or 4 beeps, it feels slightly too overloaded with sound too quickly. Although I want to give the impression that loads are popping up outside the visible boundaries, too many 'bleeps' could sound a bit sloppy and not considered enough.

The overall composition of sound and visual works well, apart from the slight overload at the begining that needs a bit of tweaking.

As a finished resolution it's not near completion yet, but getting there. As seen in the storyboards, the word 'classics' will pop up after the 'arcade', soon followed by programme info etc..

Arcade type

Importing all the individual layers from illustrator took its time but went quite smoothly once loaded. Naming all the layers appropriately definitely kept me sane and made it easy to colour code what layer belonged to what letter.

As I wanted the initial frames to start of with a close up of a couple of the machines I had to import the illustrator files pretty large, with only the tips of the 'C' and 'A' visible at first.

I highlighted the first few machine icons I wanted to pop up and the style in which they did. Once I specified these values it was a simple case of copy and pasting the actions over every layer, and in turn positioning the layers to pop up at random intervals.

The imported illustrator art work was particularly big, and in order to get all the letters zooming out in sync, I created a null object the same size, and made it the parent to each layer. This worked perfectly well, the only problem I had was with the anchor point, initially when I scaled everything down it went off the visible area but it was easily rectified and ran smoothly...

Vectors

I wanted to exploit the arcade machine vectors I made in some way. I've had another idea since experimenting here which I shall go on to explore.
The idea here, reflected in the storyboard is for the arcade machines to pop up eventually spelling the word ARCADE.

I went through seperating each machine to its own layer, half way through realising the 'release to layers' option lost in the depths of my technical knowledge, making life a bit easier!

Experimenting with stroke [above and to the left] trying to achieve a more pixelated effect through stroke settings.
Below I messed around with the 3D options, extrude and bevel to see how the vectors reacted, however because the vectors give a 3d impression of the machines in a 2d style it didnt work too well. Getting a side profile vector and adding the effect would work a lot better im sure.

Quite a few visualy exciting things going on amongst the letters below, but I decided to roll with the white vectors on a black background for my first experimental after effects video. I do particularly like the effect on the second 'D' down, giving the arcade machines a bit more texture and life, although I need to think about encorporating colour at some point!

.gif

4x4

Accumilating a fair few experiments in the session with Mike, I opened a few of them up all together on the screen and set them to 'loop'. With the four videos together, it almost looks like they're all doing the same actions, untill further scrutiny its evident each one is working to its own composition.
I filmed the four in action as it imidiately spoke out to me as a screensaver/promotional ident we could use as content for our enterprise group work. - Once refined, I want to set them all up in AfterEffects/Final cut to all play alongside each other, maybe abstracting one into the next or all together...



Analysing this video a little more when I looked back it it later today, I noticed the two left hand side experiments almost merge into the same movement, acting as one. An idea that could be played aound with.

∆ 4 kinetic type videos arranged in the same way as above - that all appear to interact with each other at given points over half a minute or so

Pong

One of my first tests with regards to the top ten brief, a quick 5 second ident that could hopefully work quite fluently with a bit of refining.

However, there are a number of elements that need improving straight away;
∆ The name needs to be more informed
∆ The quality of the pong animation is slightly too blurred
∆ There is a horrible black line down the left hand side which I didnt notice untill importing it to VImeo
∆ The two pong cursors are left in random places at the end (could merge to form and underline?)



On the whole I'm pleased with the concept and the effect it has, the next step is to encorporate sound, the relevant pong sounds, also the bleep sound when a gmae starts or ends. Hopefully attaining such sounds shouldn't be difficult, I'll be back shortly with a post of my findings.

FL º AT

Another resolution to the silent movie brief. Working from one of my more favoured storyboard/time lines I started working with the word float.
I wanted to give the letters a white stroke with background colour fill to almost give the effect that they could be glass cube letter forms, and as the water rises each letter only floats when there is enough pressure...



I felt this example had no natural flow to it at all, the letters moving in a very sterile way, very misrepresentative of how objects would react in water. I wanted to attain a more free flowing element to each letter so I came back to it and added some individual movement

- After parenting the 5 letters to the blue rising fill, the letter manipulation was quite straight forward from there on creating a much better resolution...

Void

I reopened one of my first experiments with after effects to find that I have infact payed nowhere near enough ettention to collating my files and keeping them organized. That said it was a result of cleaning up my desktop and trying to be more organzied that this very problem occured.

So basically AE couldnt find the file that I was originally working with, and in its place presented me with some coloured blocks, which although not what i was looking for quite appealed to me...

Instantly reminding me of the BBC screen they used to run at stupid o'clock in the morning, which turns out to be called a 'test card'. I used to be so intrigued by it as a child, almost slightly scared by the little girl and probably more so the wierd little clown...

A random post this may be, but it really got me thinking about retro graphics and how this rather garish auray of colours somehow have instant reminicent qualities, not just to me but to others my age and older im sure.

3/6

A couple of todays experiments in After effects, the first using simple masks, while the second explores the 'Track Matte' option...

002

Further experiments with the word 'collide', working from one of my earlier ideas but with a considerably more technical approach to what I initially planned. Rather than the letter just bouncing around the screen and colliding together, I wanted to add a bit more complexity.



Still only a working draft, but maybe a start towards one of the resolutions to the silent movie brief. There are a few areas I'd want to tweak before even considering colour or any other elements;

∆ A more natural speed when moving around the screen, maybe speeding up slightly as they collide with the wall?

∆ Also whilst the letters are moving around the frame, instead of zooming past and through each other, it would be an idea for them to collide and go off in their separate directions until they arrange in the correct order.

∆ I feel that they move around the screen for slightly too long, an element to take back to the time line to decide how long they move until coming together.

∆ A more fluid reaction from the main body of the word when the 'e' hits it's right hand side, maybe separating quicker?

Timelines

Commence

After today's sessions from Fred and Mike, it got me really enthused to start getting myself fully immersed in a motion orientated mindset. Learning the more technical side of After Effects, although at this stage still primitive, is such an eye opener of the capabilities, its put the complexities (in both design and execution) of even the most simply appearing videos into a lot more context.

Working with the word collide and based on one of my sequences, I started experimenting with the new skills acquired from the session. It's naturally been easier to experiment with depth and perspective more expressively than hand rendering, but without the idea process before