Our brief was given at the start of the session; take a square and a circle. Make one morph into the other, and back again. We were advised to consider both the 12 Animation Principles & where they can be applied, and to come up with unique ideas for each transformation.
I came up with my two ideas; I had the square squash in it's sides to their extremes, making the shape more resemble an "X". Once it reached a breaking point, it would snap into four individual spiked components. They'd then reform into the circle. Once the circle was reformed, I'd have a simple squash down and reemerge as the square again.
I managed to get the square to morph into the X shape easily enough; just change some attributes using bezier handles. But it was splitting the shape up that was the problem. I thought that you could just select the bit you wanted to separate, press a hotkey and then it's done. But unfortunately, that wouldn't work. There was a workaround however; separate layers.
I created the four fragments on separate layers, and made an appropriate switch out when needed. Once the X seemed like it had reached breaking point, I brought the fragments in from offscreen and animated them as they needed to move. I used the same swapping technique when bringing in the circle; once it was onscreen, the fragments shrank into the circle, blending in with the colours, and then moving offscreen.
(The animation's first pass after finishing the session. I went back later to finish it.)
Moving back into the square was somewhat trickier. The technique I had used in the last session to turn on shape into another wasn't working; this was pretty frustrating, considering that action was the base for everything else I was going to apply to the squash and stretch back up. But I realised I could just use the same thing I did for the segments yet again. I learned later on that the elements of the animation didn't actually have to morph, but look like they did.
I eventually finished, with this as the final pass;
(The final pass of the animation.)
Overall, this session was a lot like the last After Effects one; I didn't really enjoy it too much, nothing really appealed to me personally. After Effects still doesn't feel like "my thing", especially after giving it a fair go both at uni and when finishing work at home. While the animation came out alright, it just about meets my own personal standard. The thing I feel holding me back from making it better is just my incompatibility with After Effects. I should try and find ways to make things easier to work with next week.
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