How to create motion comics

Unfortunately, when completing this induction, my computer would not let me save anything, this may have been a problem with my account or the computer, all I could identify was that emptying the recycle bin and deleting cache files didn't work (which had been my usual way of getting around this problem), so although I was able to take notes I could note produce the final piece.

 How to create motion comics

Open after effects go to the drop down menu from ‘After Effects’>preferences>Media & Disk Cache’ change the ‘Maximum Disk Cache Size to 50 and set destination to new folder in scratch disk.

Click the space (3^rd square on the layer with the cube exactly above, in the space above the layers), and after effects gives the layer a new axis, X,Y, and now Z.

You can click in the window and choose different two views, or four views, etc. This allows you to space out each layer like planes, or a puppet theatre. By placing these at certain distances away from each other can enlarge and shrink the images to give perspective even in flat orthographic image, but once a camera is placed, the perspective becomes clearer especially when panning or moving the camera.

To get this, go the Layer drop down menu: Layer>new>Camera.

Playing with the camera pan can then give you a good idea of how far the distances of layers should be should you whish to edit them.

Ensure the furthest back layers are actually far larger then the frame size itself, so when moving the camera you are less likely to see the image edges of the furthest layers. It would be advisable for his to be 3 to 4 times wider that the actual frame size.

Key framing the camera.

The Position of the camera will allow the camera to move so keying this from A to B could allow the camera to move through a valley.

The Point of Interest is where to camera is looking. So this means that while the camera is moving through a valley, it could do so while focusing on a particular mountain, look at it, pass it and finally look back at it.

You can then use the same technique of key framing to make the scene feel more alive., such as making the clouds slowly move through the sky or let smoke rise.

Altering the Focal Distance and the Aperture can allow the scene to look more 3D as well, as you can decide to, for example, blur the background but not foreground and simply allow depth of field on the camera., but adding this to the camera will increase render time.

Adding Motion Blur (the first square on each layer with the four circles exactly above, in the space above the layers) to each layer can again add a realistic effect to the scene, making the flow of the camera seem more believably existing in a living world.

Lastly ensure the composition settings are at HD size.

The Puppet Tool

There is a little pin button at the top menu bar below the main tabs at the top of the After Effects screen. Click this Pin button and it will make a triangular mesh around the layer you are selected on.

Using these pins allows the positions not to change; where as unpinned the layers position values will changes as normal. These pins added in numbers can bend the layer via the mesh and you can key frame them to make them look more alive. Unfortunately, to add any kind of bones or rig costs approximately £50 as an After Effects Add-On.

An alternate to this, s called starching. By clicking the starch tool with the pins selected you can add starching points near or on the pins to control the level of bending and overall control the pins have over the mesh.

The Amount and Extent qualities can be altered to define this.

By pressing the reset button (under the layer, effect, and next to ‘puppet’) you can reset all these factors to their original value.

A third element of the puppet tool us by clicking the Mesh, and adding pins and keyframes to this using the ‘overlap’ option of the pin tool, you can make parts of the Mesh go behind or in front of other parts. You can do this by clicking on an overlap point (for example, on a characters hand) and changing the value of the ‘In Front’ to be higher than another overlap points value (for example, on the characters body), so you can move a characters hand to be in front of his body.