Creating an Animated Music Video in After Effects

During grade 10, I had to do a personal project which is a recorded independent project that contributes to my IB diploma and can also be used as a portfolio for my college application. For my personal project, I have decided that I want to use this opportunity to create an animated music video in “after-effect” or AE. This was mostly because I always wanted to learn how to animate and create animations inspired by Japanese music videos that needed both drawing skills and editing skills. To achieve this, I had to learn how to edit videos and create special effects or 3D motions and combine them with my ability to draw digitally and do basic animation. I choose this complex editing software called “after-effects” that is famously used to make raw edits, music videos, and complex movie scenes.

The goal that I was trying to achieve is to learn and refine my skills in "Adobe AEs" to create a series of animations and music videos about stories of self-exploration. I do not have any previous experiences with the software and learning this software from scratch. As proof of my later advancements and understanding of the software, With this goal, I had to create a small edit that test my skills in using the mechanics of the software and one big animation video that will be the highlight of this project and also combine my drawing skills with my new editing skills.

The motivation and reasoning for learning more about video editing is because I wanted tobe able to create music videos and further my animation and also video making skills. Music and music videos, mostly Japanese music, are very important for me and it has inspired me with its themes and ideas, like depictions of the effects of society and peer pressure towards kids or expressing how it feels to lose someone you love. I was heavily inspired by Wooma and Avogado6’s works and they’re really admirable and talented animators and editors in their own rights. I was always amused by their unique way of storytelling and conveying emotions and wanted to try and use that as a main source of influence for my work while trying to also put my own mix into the take.

Global Context

My global context that will be the main focus of this project is Personal and Cultural Expression. Personal expression will suit my personal project well since my project is an expression of themes and concepts that I will like to explore and that video is the medium I choose to convey those thoughts. The main theme that I want to express is the concept of self-exploration and understanding one and other. This is all in the goals of giving someone that has ever felt different or outcast a sense of understanding and belonging from my animation videos and also giving other people an idea of another person’s thoughts, worldview, and emotions.

Product

After I knew the very basics of the software, I began on creating the practice video that was a short video edit of Mafumafu and Soraru’s cover of “Roki”. The things I practice here is camera work and 3D effects that can be seen in the beginning of the video, some transitions, text animation, animating images, and using their effects. I also created all the assets used in this practice video. The second video is an animation video that I edited in AEs. The song I used was Fading (remake) by Sappheiros on youtube that uploads his music that is free for commercial use. This video includes simple transitions, rotation, fading, pan animation, and layering videos with images. Creating assets from this video was more tedious than before since everything has to be fully rendered with shading, different art-style depending on the scenario and also multiple backgrounds that were all created by hand.

Reflection

This personal project was very eye-opening. I have learned a lot about the software. In terms of editing skills, I think I have gone a long way in terms of my progress in learning the software from not understanding it at all and being somewhat overwhelmed by the amount of commands into being comfortable with it and understanding the mechanics and commands. After creating both the practice video and the animation video, I asked Emilia, the person I interviewed, to give a review on how I did and how she would rate the videos based on my criterias. I have also gained a lot of new respect towards editors after learning how much creativity and time to create even a short video.

I have gained a lot of experience from doing this project as a whole, especially in turning my experience and struggles into words and trying to have a coherent report without having my thoughts just splattered confusingly around the paragraph. For global context, I’ve learned a lot about how I’ve learned to express my personal thoughts and ideas, exploring personal and cultural expression. Combining both creativity with storytelling and also common issues in today’s society. With that being said, I do want to re-edit the ending of the video and extend it since I felt it was way too rushed and I wanted to improve it on my own time.

IB Learner Reflection

During the creation of this project, I have learned a lot as a IB Learner student and I have also learned multiple things that can help me grow as a person and skills that'll be useful in the future. The most dominant one is communicator. I have learned more than I had initially expected about communicating through new media like videos and edits. I have learned how to express not only emotions and thoughts but also experiences that I want to portray and make the audience sympathize with the characters in the video. It has also helped me become more confident in my ideas and thoughts, knowing that I can share them in such a beautiful way. This was also a test for my creativity and how I can expand general ideas into something new.

Another IB Learner profile that was something I lacked was principled. I always preferred to take responsibility for my own actions but that was because I didn’t want to take responsibility for another person’s failure and if I fail only I would get the impact of a bad score. This is a bad mindset and having that makes me slack on my own projects and that I should be more responsible, starting from a project that I can literally choose what to do. After doing this project, I did feel more responsible for my own actions and If I wanted to be responsible to others, I first had to be truly responsible for my own actions and my own projects, only after that can I be more responsible when doing so team projects and not fearing them.