After Effects workshop #1

For the previous After Effect workshops, I didn’t attend them as they were all geared towards 2d animation. However, after my 1 to 1 feedback session with my tutor, I decided to attend this one as it was recommended for my project.

In the workshop we experimented with 3d through the use of image planes and camera movements to create a parallax effect. At first, I thought that I would be at a disadvantage for not attending the sessions prior, however the basic functions of After Effects are very easy to understand which meant that I could keep up with the workshop. Throughout the workshop we used image planes and key framing to create a theatre with lighting and parallaxing to give of the illusion of 3d. whilst I learnt a lot about the program and found its 3d functions to be very interesting, I also had mixed feeling on how relevant it was to my project. On the one hand my project will already be rendered out in 3d so there is no real need for a parallax effect. On the other, if I was to composite my scene correctly during the rendering, I could use these functions to layer the 2d renders in a 3d space, allowing me to add effects with depth post production. An example of this would be adding fog to the forest scene without having to actually render out fog. This technique has a lot of potential to save time on production and rendering, however that would only be the case if I don’t end up wasting that time figuring out how to render the elements separately whilst having uniform lighting.

Overall, however I had fun during this workshop and was happy with the result that came out of it.