Day 8 - More Masking

I have finally started getting really into the work placement, and I am getting over the 'culture-shock' of it all.

I have started asking for a little bit more help, and am picking things up a lot quicker. I am starting to get the feeling that if I could simply continue the placement I'd learn lots of tricks and would maybe be just about good enough in 6 to 12 months time to be able to get work at the most basic, entry level. This isn't possible, so I am now on a mission to pick up as many techniques as possible in the remaining 7 working days I have left.

I have been working on some transitions and menu / end pages for GTV in Africa. The idea is to make small pages (similar to the kind of things Channel 4 have with the '4' shape, used as a matte, with VT footage showing through). The GTV package covers all aspects of the on air branding, and there is a system of connected circles utilised on the main idents.

I have been working on some simple, short animations which will be used for mattes (the video will show through the large circles). I have a test movie here.

I had previously only designed in Illustrator and Photoshop, and then animated in After Effects, but this process involves working directly in AFX. Multiple solid layers are created, then masked with paths. This is a a bit like Illustrator or Photoshop, and every path can be animated over time. These solids and masks can transformed in any of the usual ways, and grouped, parented to Null objects and so on.

This example is very simple, but I think the same processes are utilised for complex work.