Learning new things : Motion design in After Effects & advice on how to start

This winter I decided to take on something new by learning After Effects to dive more into Motion Design.

Those who have followed me for a while will know that I’ve done little animations before using Procreate to give some fun to what are otherwise static art pieces. (See my Magical Sunriver Map and Sassy cat examples.)

But After effects is a leap away from frame by frame animation which is very very very time consuming, and allows you to do certain things easier like camera panning. For example, when trying to show you different aspects of my magical map I needed to film my iPad and move it manually to different parts of my illustration. It was clumsy and I didn’t feel it was executed as well as it could be. So in after effects, you can achieve camera movements much more precisely. You can also capture different styles like flat vector animations easily and longer animations.

Inspiration + How am I learning?

To start I dove into Skillshare and Youtube (not sponsored, but you can see my playlist of interesting AE videos on my YT channel). One artist I was lead to which I absolutely love is SlimJim. Seeing his work inspires me to want to do some of my own, especially as some meshes with themes I like, such as travel, but putting my own interests of nature and biodiversity themes in there too. See my fave work from him below:

Is After Effects easy? No. Is it intuitive? Hell no. But not much worse than Illustrator. Once you grasp the concept of a simplified illustrator times the variable of time, it all starts to make sense.

I think this type of learning will especially appeal to feel like they are both right brain and left brain people. They love art but also like math and/or coding. Because there’s optional math and coding aspects to AE that will help you achieve the artistic vision you’re going after. (More on that another time.)

A simpler motion design - my first plant

Here is a little plant I made as a way of breaking down a much larger project into very small bite sized pieces. To do it I made the plant itself in Illustrator, made sure break each part that would move into different layers (each leaf w/ stem on a different layer) (ALWAYS NAMING MY LAYERS) and then importing it with layers intact into After Effects.

Then in After Effects I assigned a “Bend” effect to each leaf layer over time, telling each leaf which direction to bend in and for how long. For this animation I wanted each leaf to be a little unique from each other so they don’t all bend perfectly the same, making it a little more interesting.

I know, it’s spectacular. But I wanted to share with you my learning process so that it might inspire you to learn to. Artists don’t need to stick to one medium.

If you want to start in AE and already have a good base in Illustrator, I recommend a day or more of basic course exercises (my first was on skillshare) and then you can add random videos to support your learning.

For the above bend video, I used this class on YT:

Happy new year! May you have a very creative 2021.

Cheers,

Jess

Downloadable Weekly Planner

I’ll admit a guilty pleasure - I love planners. I love visualizing and making plans for the future. I think like a lot of people this year has put all far into the future plans to a standstill. But what we can do is still look to the near future, and make small steps towards our goals.

I watched a recent video by Furry Little Peach where she talked about her approach to planning her week and I really liked it. I wasn’t convinced it would work enough for me to invest in an expensive planner, but I wanted to give it a try. So I made my own style of planner sheet to try out — complete with room for doodling.

When I think about my week as an illustrator/freelancer my day actually starts on Friday so I made a version for myself as well starting then and with equal space for weekend days. I also added a section for wellness and creativity to remind myself to care for my body + mind and to allow myself to play with art just for myself.

Download these: Plain for doodles + Coffee Illustration Sheet HERE.

Whale party!

This was such a fun piece to make. The idea for this piece has been been on my idea wall for weeks and I was glad to finally achieve it. Humpback whales are magical, and I love the pure joy they express when you watch them dive and breach.

Look closely for the following Easter eggs:

• a sunfish

• a starfish

• an orca

• a self portrait (a crab!)

• a girl swimming

• bull kelp

• fucus

Process

It all started out as an experiment on various kinds of watercolor paper:

After painting, I scanned each whale and then drew the blossoming portions by hand on an iPad. I then transferred it over to my laptop to add the gradient layer.

Through trial and error I learned that the Illustrator Live trace tool does not do well with sketchy style tools, it did not like my pencil or my shale tool! When I traces it it lost a lot of detail and created thick lines. (To see the difference, look closely at the whale on the right. The lines are thicker.) It was unfortunate because it’s of great benefit to be able to have my floral layer as a vector, in terms of easily adding gradient and in terms of having a design become scaleable.

In the end I redrew the floral whale, this time by using the eraser shale tool and erasing the design on a white layer. Then I imported into Photoshop and applied a gradient underneath. Downside: not scaleable. Upside: got to keep all my file details and texture.

Here’s some individual shots:

View fullsize

Some combined florals for fun:

Later, Edit: I realized a little later that creating a white layer and erasing into the layer was just a sillier way of drawing on a clear layer and applying a layer mask in photoshop, something I’ve done a million times before but it didn’t occur to me for some reason. The one upside to the erase-into-white technique is that you can place a spray tool style gradient behind it to watch the colour as you draw. However, now Procreate has the function of allowing a layer masks too, so you could equally do it that way.

Beginner Portraits - Rainbow skin for fun, moody portraits

If you're at all like me, you might find portrait painting a little intimidating. 

This rainbow skin tutorial feels more accessible to the beginner portrait artist because the goal isn't really accurate colors and values. The effect is a little wistful, ethereal and sometimes somber. 

A fun pairing with these colorful portraits are Prismacolor Color-ase pencils. I like red, vermillion, purple or lavender. 

Red

Yellow (or Peach) 

Blue/Purple

Green

You can find a good speed paint of rainbow skin at the following: Rainbow Skin Class!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8NSeJnajs8

You can find a full, short tutorial on Skillshare: Rainbow Skin - How to Create Colorful, Confident Skin Tones in Watercolor 

(Note, this is not a sponsored post. I am receiving nothing from Skillshare!)