'VIRUS' 2D Animated Short
In the near future of 2021, a virus sweeps through the city of New Shanghai in the People's Republic of United States. Who's to blame? Will anyone survive? In a world engulfed by climate change, global debt, war, misinformation, race riots and massive inequality, does it even matter?
'Virus' is my first endeavor into 2D Animation/Motion Graphics. At the beginning of Lockdown (March 2020) I set myself the goal of learning Adobe After Effects and Premiere Pro in order to upskill and expand on my current Graphic Design skillset of Illustrator, Photoshop and InDesign.
The Process
After I had written the initial storyline, designed the characters and finished the story-boarding. All assets for each scene/shot, such as the characters, props, background environments, etc. were designed and drawn in Illustrator, with some additional texturing, editing, etc. applied in Photoshop. No pre-made stock vectors or illustrations were purchased or used. Each scene/shot was then composited and animated in After Effects. After rendering in Adobe Media Encoder, additional post-production effects such as film grain, vignettes and masks were applied in Premiere Pro before again rendering.
All film footage and sound design elements such as sound effects, folly, ambiance, character voices and original music were sourced through the 'Creative Commons' open licenses or other online sound libraries. With some additional elements of the sound design being recorded in Logic Pro X with a Rode NT2-A Microphone and Behringer UMC404HD Audio Interface. Additional editing of the film reel and Vietnam war footage was done in Premiere Pro. While much of the sound design elements were edited and manipulated in Logic Pro X.
Techniques and features of After Effects learned while making this animation
Preparing and importing Illustrator and Photoshop files, the Timeline and Keyframes, Shape Layers, Blend Modes, Masks, Track Mattes, Compositions, Nesting and Precomposing, Character Rigging, Parenting Character Parts and Layer Hierarchies, the Puppet Pin Tool, Anchor Points, Null Object Parenting, Expressions, Effects, the Graph Editor, Looping, Motion Paths, Working with Audio Tracks, Time Remapping/Switching Art for Lip Sync/Eye Movement, Cameras, Using 3D Layers for Multiplane Parallax, Rendering and Exporting, File Organization, Animating Typography, Colour Palettes, Applying textures, Bounce and Overshoot, Easy Ease.
