iBook AE

Overview

You will be applying what you learned in After Effects to create an animation like the example.

Setup

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

Create a new composition that is the following dimensions: Width 2110 px, Height 1860 px

Check the partner spreadsheet to see how many seconds to make your AE project file. If you made a the city vertical scene you will animate that one and the other will do the horizontal street scene.

Use the defaults for the other settings.

For each scene you only need a minimum of two object in the background (should be on separate AI layers) to be animated and it can be simple (e.g. sun setting, rain, cars moving). You may get additional points for going above and beyond.

Tip

When you edit a keyframe for animation, you can simple copy the keyframe and paste it if you want the repeated animation. For example you can animate one car passing and copy the keyframe and move it to a later time so that cars continue to drive past.

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 check mark the box "Illustrator/PDF/EPS Sequence" as shown below when you import AI files into AE

Instead, use the following

Animation

Follow the video tutorial above to complete your animation for your first background. Make sure when you are finished you at least have the vertical pan and two objects moving.

Rendering

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.

Posting

When it is finished exporting, upload the file to your YT and post the link to the spreadsheet and also email the link to your Wordpress.

In the next checkpoint, 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 and moving main characters in your story does not count as one of your background movements.

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.

Old Korean iBook dimensions 1024x768 pixel

Open a new AI file with the same 1024x768 pixel dimensions and copy the background that you want to use in that file and place the moving parts of the background are in different layers.

Follow the video tutorial to create a vertical or horizontal pan to your extra long or high scene.

Make sure that your animation has the following:

1. 3D vertical or horizontal pan at the beginning
   1. Make sure to use the 3D zoom with an object in the foreground and a couple objects in the background moving like the tutorial.
   2. Have one or two objects in the foreground (e.g. like the bus and car)
2. Change the camera angle

Render as H.264 and upload to YT and the link to the spreadsheet.