jo603kinetictype

[jo603kinetictype]

Final Render!

What I'd do differently when planning an animation is do a few thumbnails in illustrator in full colour. This could have really directed a more meaningful colour palette for my animation - I had chosen a palette that matched with the emoji illustrations I had. Doing this would also help me fully visualise the font I'm using and would hopefully prevent me from having to change font after a first draft! And if I had more time I'd do entirely my own illustrations instead of working off the free emoji font in adobe.

And in future, I'd like to start off by planning the margins/boarder of my frames and keep the text's paragraph alignment consistent. In my first draft of the animation my text was all over the place and would sometimes be centred and sometimes left aligned - it took a lot of work and adjustments to fix this and I wouldn't have had to had I just realised it earlier!

I'd also like to better understand how to import clean vectors from illustrator to after effects. I spent a long time trying my best to figure it out but it was really hard so I did the best with what I managed to do.

What a great tip from George after seeing my first draft: If a person is speaking 12 words per second, you should add more words to a scene instead of only 2 or 3 words so that the scenes don't flash by too quickly in that one second. Such an obvious thing but something I hadn't thought of. It definitely helped my animation flow much better on screen.

Lesley was amazing when she taught us and I'm not sure my understanding would be as good if it weren't for her. She was slow and clear when she taught. :D

I learnt SO MUCH doing this animation. What a great skill to now have up my sleeve! I'm so happy that I pushed myself to do the amount of work that I did and I can't wait to see whats possible in the future.

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old layout (left) vs new layout (right)

Looks much better now and very consistent. I kept it all left aligned. Will be more thoughtful of these basic design rules when I start an animation in the future.

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Changed font and layouts:

I ended up going with a whole different font than I said I would. I found it while doing different design work in my personal time and I thought it'd work great for this animation. 

It was hard work to change the font - I had to go into each source text key frame and change it there... I tried to google if there was a way to mass select a font that you've used and change it in one go but I didn't manage to figure it out... It was fine though because I had to adjust every scene's size, layout and paragraph orientation anyways! 

Then, disaster:

I had worked on my animation for a couple hours straight and did heaps of changes after my feedback. But then this pop up turned up and I was forced to quit AfterEffects... turned out I hadn't saved my progress. Lesson learnt. 

Good news is I was able to make up the work I did in only 30minutes the next time! Very interesting how much time experimenting takes up!

[jo603kinetictype]

visually understanding the feedback I received:

Here I can see that my text is sometimes starting from the very top right and sometimes left aligned and sometimes centre... a lot to fix here

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Interview origin: Kiri Te Kanawa - HARDtalk Interview 2010 Interview 3:54-4:29 Dame Kiri Te Kanawa talks to Stephen Sackur about her career and her Foundation.

She talks about her 4 decades of hard work where she built up her career and reminisces on how lucky she was to have found a passion and to be able to continue to do it through her life. She looks back at her "golden years" and appreciates them.

The interviewer mentions that she was adopted into an odd family situation and she answers this awkward question gracefully. She talks about being blessed with her family and being thankful for growing up in New Zealand and never wanting to disappoint.

She started sining after her car trip story, eventually singing for her mother's friends and then singing on the radio and her path continued on from there.

She also mentions that she had a whole ladder of people through her life help her with her singing from the very beginning. She had many teachers and mentors who were strong and strict as they thought her but she says that she's thankful for it.

She talks about how yes its a world for men but she managed to find her own space in the music world.

She still feels part of New Zealand and visits often and stays connected to her origins. She was hoping to settle back in NZ one day.

What she's up to in NZ 2022:

At home with Dame Kiri Te Kanawa: Why she always knew she would come back to Aotearoa 2022 Article

"Dame Kiri has owned the property in the Bay of Islands for 38 years, but until now has not lived here permanently.

When Dame Kiri last talked to the Weekly, she had recently made the decision to move home from the UK to spend more time with her gorgeous 3-and-a-half-year-old grandson Luther.

She was seeing him once a week and she said, "I'm 77 now and I don't know how many summers I have left. I want those summers to be with Luther."

Dame Kiri remains grateful to be living in New Zealand while her friends back in the UK struggle with the Omicron variant. 

Being stuck in the north has not prevented her from continuing work with the Kiri Te Kanawa Foundation, which she began in 2004 to help young New Zealand opera singers when they start out on their careers.

Dame Kiri mentors the young singers and the foundation works to support them and  for a year, the 18 singers she looked after were supported with £800 (NZ$1600) a month."

What shes up to now May 2023

Lunch with ... Dame Kiri Te Kanawa - opera great opens up on her return to New Zealand, family life and her career (id read it but its behind a paywall but I guess it shows that she's still in NZ now!)

Dame Kiri on why she's taking a back seat and loving it March 2023

"When she announced her decision to retire, a Daily Mail headline trumpeted that the then-77-year-old had quit Britain to spend “her last summers” with her grandson in NZ after being kept apart by Covid.

There are no more performances in her; no plans to come out of retirement, not even for an informal get-together in her hometown of Kerikeri, she insists. She likens it to the agelessness of Marilyn Munro after her early death. “She’s never going to change is she? And that’s what I want people to remember - there’s my voice, it’s never going to change.”

If she does feel moved to sing? “I’ll do it in the car so no-one can hear me.” 

“I’m done, I've moved on and you're never going to hear another sound out of me, because that's what I want everyone to remember.” 

“I'm enjoying what I'm hearing and just…[doing] things that I can help with and just be with them and they love me being there. That's the pleasure I'm getting at the moment.”

This is why Dame Kiri set up the Kiri Te Kanawa Foundation some 20 years ago. To nurture and promote young performers coming through from New Zealand - the next generation of Dame Kiris, and, now, the next generation of Phillip Rhodes."

[jo603kinetictype]

In class presets activity! Very cool to find out there are easy effects like this for future projects. And I like George's warning "use it sparingly or it will look like a bad powerpoint presentation"

[jo603kinetictype]

Tuesday Feedback/Notes

:D

Research- speaker, motivation, what made this speech happen?

Have MORE progress and experimentation screenshots

Have consistent margins and guides!! Same as you would for a poster or publication - why didn't I realise this earlier!

Centre type in the middle of the screen, realistically, peoples eyes don't want to bounce to the top of their screen to start reading.

Tone down the playfulness of the whole thing. Reduce the emojis and don't be so literal. Yes it can still portray a childhood memory but this is being made for adults to view, not children.

Add more words to the frame. If she talks mega fast, then don't have only 2 or 3 words in a frame that lasts .04 seconds, instead have 6 or 8 words in a .5 second frame. That way it will be easier to digest and view.

[jo603kinetictype]

Here are the new fonts I found (left) compared to the old ones (right)

The font I like the most and would look best on a busy kinetic video was a simple yet playful font.

Grenadine is still rounded and playful but still very clean. It's very legible in all weights and hopefully very legible as it moves quickly across the screen.

Roc Grotesk is a fun and founded font but I feel like it isn't very easily legible. Especially its heaviest weight.

Stinger is very artsy and fun and playful but its more of a display font rather than a font that should be all throughout this very quick animation.

Oddval is the trial version of the font. When I saw it displayed on their bechance page I thought it had much more artsy cool bits in the font but after using it in my animation it just ends up looking messy. It's a display font and shouldn't be used all through the animation in this way. It also has missing parts of the font that makes it unusable.

Artusi is another trial font I got off bechance. Its beautiful but plain and I could've gotten the same effect from an existing classic font.

I was in denial at the start when I saw that Oddball and Artusi had missing bits that were essential to my animation and worked with them anyways. I always realise though these uni projects that what seems like a simple shortcut never really ends up in our favour in the end.

Grenadine is my new chosen font :D

[jo603kinetictype]

I actually will change the sans serif font I've chosen, it doesn't have characters outside of the alphabet and I think I will be graded down for having to use another font with it to replace things like commas and exclamation points.

here's some fonts I found that is still playful and sans serif but with everything I need:

[jo603kinetictype]

Third Render

Plenty of things adjusted and added such as emojis to add some interest with some of the descriptive and action words.

Gonna leave it for now until feedback on Tuesday

[jo603kinetictype]

Second Render - not many changes

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First export. Full animation. Worked on the actual animation/after effects part for 3 straight days. After seeing this I already made some changes.

Also I don't love the sans serif font I'd chosen but not sure if I'm keen to go and change it now...

*SHOW THE COMPOSITIONS I USED*

[jo603kinetictype]

I picked some emojis from the emoji font in illustrator, then outlined them. Then made adjustments and added grouped layers for me to move around in the animation.

Then I figured out an appropriate colour pallets that matched the tone of my animation and also these fun emojis.

I adjusted the rest of the emojis minimally - mainly colour changes and have them ready to put into AfterEffects

used this to be able to transfer these edited emojis to After Effects: "Composition - Retain Layer Sizes" "Convert to Layered Comp"

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Squash and Stretch Activity

Very useful to learn how to replace sources and keep the work you've put into it!

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The Truth is Subjective Class Activity

Very cool to be able to use compositions! eliminates there being a bajillion layers in one file

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Detailed Full Storyboarding

I thought I'd just "quickly" do it but then I actually spent heaps of time on it and it was good for processing some ideas haha

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Fonts I really like!

Went looking for playful, expressive fonts. I want something that I'll have fun using. The audio involves a woman reminiscing and remembering a memory from when she was 3 years old, so it allows me to create with something fun and playful.

Oddval:

Artusi - The secret ingredient to design dishes:

Free Font Komique Sans:

also coolvetica

I haven't checked yet if these are free/have free trials or not, hopefully I don't fall in love with one that costs too much lol.