WIP and thoughts of Steph Jones
Bike cycle… Bicycle… Cycle of bikes… Get it? I hope so!
As I near the end of my animated alphabet series I’ve decided to start to branch out more and try some different and slightly longer animations. I hope you like it!
Let me know what you think by commenting here or tweeting me, I’d also love any tips you can give as I’m still very much learning! Thanks for reading.
Steph.
Not that tight..! Letter 20(!) T for Taut.
Quite a simple one for this letter, but I really wanted to make the shaking aspect of this animation feel natural. It’s quite cartoony rather than life like, but that’s consistent with all the animations within this series. Looking at it now within this blog post I’m thinking whether I should have made the ‘snap back’ a lot quicker for a greater impact. Overall it didn’t take too long and I like the final simple result of this one. It also features another rather quirky repeating background!
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
Slippy, sludgy, sloppy, it’s letter 19 of my animated alphabet, S for Slimy!
This uses six different shape layers for the main S, combined with two effect layers over the top of it all, Fast Blur and Simple Choker. It’s a relatively simple set up with shapes running over the below S. They change in scale and position to get a nice effect as they start to form. I really like the background on this one, it’s simple but pretty, just two Pentagons repeated with flipped transparency fades from left to right.
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
Radical man! Check out this repeating, rotating, radical R!
I love animations that seamlessly repeat,though at times it’s been something I’ve struggled with on a couple of animations within this series! But this one however, I’m really happy with the outcome, even if it is a bit dizzy making… It could do with being slightly slower/longer, but all my animations are 3 seconds long for this alphabet and I didn’t plan on changing that for this one letter!
There’s a slight drop shadow on the R’s to give it a bit of depth, and it took a bit of fiddling to get the speeds correct on the scale and rotate in order for you to still see it is actually a letter R. Though overall it was actually one of my quickest animations to complete!
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
No one likes to be ordinary… Quickly like my Q for Quirky!
Whilst this looks like a relatively simple animation, it actually had so many fiddly bits! The entire background is made up of just two repeated white triangles at different opacity, and there’s three different key frames for the masks controlling the bar coming in…
I’m really pleased with the outcome -it’s like a fun 80’s logo! It didn’t take too long, only about an hour and a half to fiddle with the background and masks. I’m pretty sure there would be a simpler way of doing second line that crosses the Q, but if there is, I couldn’t work it out!
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
Would you please just sit still!? My 16th animated letter, it’s P for Position.
I could not for the life of me think of something for the letter P. This is mostly something I wanted to experiment with, merged with the letter P. But as it turns out, it’s now one of my favourite animations I’ve done so far for this project.
It uses Trimed Paths for the ‘speed lines’ and a Repeater, so I only had to make edits to one line. The P layer itself has keyframes on it’s Scale, Position and the effect ‘Skew’ so it has a bit of drag as it jumps to the next point. The layer also has ‘Motion Blur’ enabled, which adds to the smoothess of the overall movement.
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
Quite an outlandish one for this post! It’s O for Opposite.
I wanted to get my bouncing ‘realism’ cracked for this one, and I really think I have. I created just one ‘O’ bouncing and rolling away, then duplicated that over and over. Once I was happy with the colour changing platform and the ‘O’s, I duplicated it, flipped it, and added a colour invert effect to the right hand side.
I’m very happy with this one, as I feel it’s completely different from any of my other animations so far. I’m hoping I can continue to reach beyond my comfort zone and in the long term, grow it!
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
The sun is setting and it’s nighttime for my 14th letter! It’s N for Night.
It’s a relatively simple one, but there were a few new techniques I picked up to crack this one. For the extended shadow I used a repeater on a duplicated N shape. It was about 120 repeats at 1px down from the one above, increasing to around 150 towards the end so the shadow continues to ‘grow’. I’m definitely going to use this again on future animations; it’s a lovely simple technique to just bring some excitement to a design. Both the shadow and the N have masks following the shape of the ‘mountain’, along with the tree shadows too, but this isn’t really too noticeable.
Something I did have trouble with was the quality. GIF’s only support up to 256 colours, and this animation uses a lot more than that! So when I came to export it, the whole thing looked pretty awful. I had to go back to my original After Effects file and cut down on the gradients I was originally using. But I’m a sucker for flat design, so it’s all cool!
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
Lots of M’s in this one! And it marks half way through my animated alphabet project. Here’s M for Magnetize!
With an M Magnate, M background and little metal M’s, this animation is quite M heavy! I wanted a go at some different illustrator, so had a go at 3d flat design (if that’s a thing, I definitely might have just made that up). I think it looks good though, and works quite well with gravity, shadows and all that fun stuff.
I think I need to step it up a gear and get a bit more advanced in my animations, flee my comfort zone! So I’m off to do more research and learn some new tricks of the trade. Fingers crossed, I might even learn some new illustration skills whilst I’m there.
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
Today I’m lit up for the letter L, my 12th letter of my animated alphabet – nearly halfway!
I think this is just adorable! For this animation I wanted to focus on the idea of the ‘L bulb’ really lighting up the space around itself. I wanted to show the filaments glowing as it lights up, and the reveal of the ‘wallpaper’ behind the light bulb.
Something else I’m pleased with the illustration style. I’m trying my best to step out of my comfort zone and practise with some different drawing techniques. This whole animation only took me around 2 hours to complete in one evening. It’s relatively simple though, just a lot of Glow Effects and masking to get the reveal just right.
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
Jonesing for an Idea 