52 Weeks of Motion
A year-long, weekly project to deepen my understanding of motion design techniques.
Check back weekly for updates.
Week 1
PROXIMITY INFLUENCE
Using a script, I learned how to automatically animate objects using a controller’s field of influence. As the controller approaches the field of squares, they repel outwards.
Week 2
CHUNKY GRAIN
Following Jake in Motion’s tutorial, I worked on creating a stippled shading effect. The illustration is an adaptation of a ProCreate drawing I made a few weeks prior–inspired by my deep appreciation for Miller High Life.
Week 3
3D IN AFTER EFFECTS (& MORE)
The initial idea for this one began as an attempt to create a faux-3D animation. However, it became clear that using AE’s built-in 3D tools would be much more effective. ANIMOTION by Sharin Y on Youtube provided a great tutorial.
While the point of this exercise was 3D, their tutorial shed light on some very useful techniques for backgrounds and textures as well.
Week 4
FRAME BY FRAME CHARACTERS
Admittedly, frame by frame was not a new technique for me. What was unique in this execution, was using the original vector drawing like a puppet rather than drawing each pose in raster form.
This character was created for a killed freelance concept for a run coaching business.
Week 5
MOSAIC BACKGROUNDS
Ben Marriott had a great tutorial on creating several complex backgrounds with relatively simple techniques. The animated mosaic that fills the computer screen is the result of that lesson. I also picked up some of his tips on animating fire and shadows.
Week 6
CC PAGE TURN
A big inspiration for this entire project was Jake in Motion’s Youtube series explaining every effect in After Effects. CC Page Turn was a prime example of me learning about an effect that I had never considered before. The effect does much of the heavy lifting here to create peeling fruit stickers.
Week 7
WAVY MOTION TRAIL
The most elaborate week yet. The inspiration began with wanting to understand how to make that wavy motion trail you’ve likely seen before. Putting it into action, I took inspiration from my Strava stats UI to create 3 vignettes. It didn’t hurt to dust of my match-cut skills.
Week 8
DISPLACEMENT MAPS
I’ve used displacement maps once before this, but never truly understood the mechanics and power behind them. After seeing an interesting example of warped text on Reddit, I explored using a grainy gradient to displace text. As a bonus, my experimentation led to that gooey, liquidy background.
Week 9
CC PIXEL POLLY
Another example of an effect I had never heard of, but its potential became clear after seeing a tutorial. With some tweaking, this effect can turn anything into a bunch of particles with gravity. Stacking the echo effect on top made for some even wilder results.
Week 10
CC POWER PIN
This week’s video is a highlight thus far. Not only do I love the resulting aesthetic, but my journey to the execution was very gratifying.
I saw a reference animation online and after a quick frame by frame investigation, I knew that the animation must’ve been the result of 1 or 2 techniques I had seen on the fringes through my 10 weeks. This felt like having a successful conversation in a foreign language–the learning was paying off.
Week 11
SHAPE MORPH
A simpler practice that just involved keyframing the paths to morph shapes. Not a revolutionary technique, but good practice in match cuts and illustration.
Week 12
DYNAMIC GRID
Potentially the most buck for the least bang thus far. This took roughly 5 hours with 110+ layers, an insanely tedious process to rig up this grid to respond dynamically with additionally complexity to rig objects to the cells of the grid.
Week 13
3D SCANS & CRT EFFECTS
I stumbled on a CRT-esque tutorial that led me discovering the Polycam app. I scanned in my wife’s Sonny Angel toy and adding in a simple animation before hyper-stylizing it. This was one of my favorites to-date, in large part because of the satisfaction of taking a real object and recreating it in the digital realm.