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.

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Abercrombie Kids