Animated A-Z: Zigzag

And that’s it, my last letter of my animated alphabet, Z for Zigzag!

This may have taken a while, but I got there in the end! I used a few different techniques that I’ve previously practised. The background is made up of two different shapes with three different repeaters. It’s actually one of my favourites I’ve done! For the z it’s three continuous lines with trim paths, with the outer two at 50% opacity. Finally the whole thing has a drop shadow after it was pre-composed so it wouldn’t overlap. The hardest thing was thinking up a word beginning with Z!

As always, thanks for reading! I’m always eager to hear any feedback on my blog, some animating tips or just general chit chat, so Tweet me if you fancy on @stephhh.

Steph

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Animated A-Z: Yank

Off the stage with you – my penultimate letter of my animated alphabet, Y for Yank!

I cannot believe this project is nearing it’s end! This one is something I’ve had in my head for a long time. It has a number of very subtle things that I wanted to try out, like using alpha masks to keep the spotlights all in a line, making the hook go behind on the way in, but ‘around ‘ the Y on the way out, and the slight bend on the Y as it gets pulled off. All simple things that you wouldn’t really notice, but all together they make the difference!

As always, thanks for reading! I’m always eager to hear any feedback on my blog, some animating tips or just general chit chat, so Tweet me if you fancy on @stephhh.

Steph

Animated A-Z: X-Ray

Who knew that’s what it looked like inside? Letter 24, X for X-Ray!

I’ve had this one sussed since last year, so I’m really pleased with it! Quite simple but it does use a separate fixed place mask (alfa mask on the layer above) so that the later can move but the mask stays in the same place, a super handy thing to learn!

All in all it took a couple hours, one of my fastest as I knew exactly what I was going for from the start. Only two more to go!

As always, thanks for reading! I’m always eager to hear any feedback on my blog, some animating tips or just general chit chat, so Tweet me if you fancy on @stephhh.

Steph

48hrs in Copenhagen

In actual fact it was a lot less than 48hrs, but who can say no when your boyfriend offers to fly you out to Copenhagen for the weekend? So off I went, after work on Friday, to meet up with Nic after his work’s summer party in the capitol of Denmark.

We had a whirlwind adventure over the next two days as we tried to visit as much as we could in the glorious Danish sunshine! Copenhagen is a beautiful City, Nic is there a lot for work so he was a great tour guide and it was so lovely to have a little holiday with him.

All these photos were all taken on my new Olympus OM-D Mark 2.

Enjoy!

First morning in Copenhagen!

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Walking along the main strip

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Beautiful graffiti in Freetown Christiania

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Frederik’s Church

Frederik’s Church at sunset

The Little Mermaid and her swan at sunset

30 second fountain exposure

Me and my lovely Nic!

Nic isn’t so great with heights!

View from the Church of Our Saviour (spiral tower!)

Animated A-Z: Windy

We’re so close! Here’s a blustery number, W for Windy!

I love this animation, I think it’s totally adorable, and it’s exactly how I planned out from my first sketches of this letter. There’s over 30 individual leaves which has to be animated but it was definitely worth it in the end.

The whole thing took about 3 hours from start to finish, so not too bad! I started out with a Photoshop drawing that I imported into After Effects to animate the different elements after I changed all their anchor points. It was quite a simple animation, but with a few time consuming fiddly bits!

With 23 down, I only have 3 more letters to go! We’ll get there soon enough!

As always, thanks for reading! I’m always eager to hear any feedback on my blog, some animating tips or just general chit chat, so Tweet me if you fancy on @stephhh.

Steph

Olympus OM-D River Adventure

Nic, and his lovely parents, bought me a beautiful Olympus OM-D Mark 2 for my birthday! I have been in love with it ever since, and it’s hardly left my side.

Last week I had the most incredible day when I was promoted to Senior Digital Designer, and then was lucky enough to go to a meeting which required us to get a private boat over the Thames to get to their offices. After the meeting I got a Thames Clippers boat all the way from North Greenwich to Westminster to make the most of my new beautiful camera and the glorious sunshine! It was honestly just the best day.

Here’s a couple of snaps from my river adventures!

Top of The O2

Me and my colleague on the boat across the river

The sun shining on The O2

The Eremites cable car over the river

Font on of The London Eye

My celebratory pint!

A quarter of The London Eye from the boat

Tip of the shard on a incredibly blue sky

Sideways view of The London Eye

Animated A-Z: Vicious

I had so much fun with my last ‘character animation’ I had to have another go! V for Vicious!

Yes he’s still a bit adorable but there we go, what can you do? V for vicious, and only four more letters to go! I whipped this up sat in a hotel bar with my Mum in London. She’s down for the weekend, and we like to spend it being touristy and staying in fancy hotels. It took two hours from start to finish and that includes time spent sipping on prosecco and eating cheese…

There’s two effects layers used, Roughen Edges on the V and the water in the background, and Cell Pattern for the texture on the V. Then it’s just a few key frames on the rotation of the teeth (all grouped together per side), the position of them, and then of course the path shape of the V. All pretty simple, just a bit fiddly at times!

As always, thanks for reading! I’m always eager to hear any feedback on my blog, some animating tips or just general chit chat, so Tweet me if you fancy on @stephhh.

Steph