Animation Setup

Follow the video tutorial above to complete your animation for your first background.

Directions for setting up your scenes and animations for After Effects:

Create a new composition according to the screenshot except make the duration 20sec instead of 30. Name it bg1 for background 1. Use the defaults for the other settings. In the last box, duration, set the estimated time about how long the narration for that scene will be. You can always change it later before exporting out by pressing cmd+k.

In AE, go to File > Import. After you select the Illustrator file choose composition (not footage) and click import. If you import the file and layers and it does not appear correct, try to resave the AI file and reimport.

DO NOT use the setting below & checkmark the box "Illustrator/PDF/EPS Sequence"

Instead, use the following

Animations

For each scene you only need a minimum of one object in the background to be animated and it can be simple (e.g. sun setting, rain, ants crawling). You may get additional points for going above and beyond but not recommended due to the limited time you have to complete it. Make sure you animate the characters in terms of their position movement on the screen to illustrate the story. You do not need to make their mouth and legs move which can be difficult.

When you edit a keyframe for animation, you can simple copy the keyframe and paste it if you want the repeated animation.

Exporting

When you are ready to export to video, go to Composition > Add to Render Queue

If you forgot, you may want to go back and rewatch the video on rendering.

In the render queue, click on the Render and Output settings

For the render settings, choose Best, Full, and the same dimensions. Click on custom on the middle right side of the box and choose how long the video clip will be in length.

In the output settings, choose Quicktime (.mov) and best quality.

The file should be under 5mb and not that big. If it is too big it will not upload to the web quickly and you should let me know and try to render again at a lower size.

Then click on the Output To: setting and choose where the file will be saved. Save it to your computer first and then move it to your USB if needed (faster).

Posting

When it is finished exporting, email the video file to Posterous and email it your partner as well. Post the link to the spreadsheet.

For the caption and comment section, write classID bg1 (background number). Copy the link to the video and paste it to the spreadsheet and not to posterous.

upload the video to your Picasa album in an album called Animated Backgrounds.