This video tutorial was requested by a member of the YouTube channel, who asked me how I made the initials with After Effects. Instead of doing the classic video tutorial that shows every detail from point A to point B, I wanted to focus on a very important aspect that starts well before opening After Effects: pre-production.
There are several questions that each of us should ask when we want to create video content in an animation made with software like After Effects.
For an example of the animated service logo: how should the logo appear? What elements should accompany it? Are there any inspirations from another animated logo that can help me visualize what I would like to create?
These and other questions are the backbones of every project we start. Sometimes we are given a brief by the client or the communication agency, other times if they are personal projects instead it is a question of starting from 0, from an immaculate sheet of paper. Let’s point the pencil and let’s get started!
The 3 Creative Processes: Listening, Ideation, and Execution
To achieve an acceptable result that can be used professionally (or at least we are committed to achieving such an objective) we must go through 3 important, essential and fundamental phases. They are listening, conception and execution.
Listen
It involves opening the mind and all the receptive organs at our disposal to understand what needs to be done. Whether it’s an Animated Logo or a short film or an explainer video, the concept is the same: you have to enter the project to be carried out with extreme care and attention. Knowing how to listen is part of a way of thinking that leaves room for the idea of entering inside you and focusing on the project.
Also Read: 6 Experts Tips To Improve Your Graphic Design Skills
Ideation
In this phase it is necessary that you take mental notes and begin to dialogue with the information collected in the listening phase. You could use Google to get what you want: visual references, inspiration to bring something new to life. There are many sites that allow you to get visual information, here are a few:
- Pinterest;
- The black Workshop;
- Otakugangsta;
- Art Station;
- Anomalien;
- Deviant Art.
Obviously Google images is fine too, the important thing is to take these references so as not to copy them back to back but to combine what is found in a different way to create something that is good for what you perceived from the Listening phase.
Execution
In this phase you start from the storyboard, or where the video tutorial you find below begins. This phase therefore involves the use of After Effects and other software (depending on what you need to do) and when you are doing it, you may find that the idea that you have come up with is not right or that it needs further integration.
As you could see, the fact of visually explaining the contents in a tool like Storyboarded helped me a lot to define in advance what I should have entered. Clearly that storyboard I created is not the first idea that came to me, before I tried other paths but I didn’t like them. On a mental level maybe I liked them, but then seeing them I turned around.
Also Read: How To Make A Good PowerPoint Presentation
Also what I want to focus on is the final addition of the hand, after the storyboard. This is to make you understand that the two phases of conception and execution continue also subsequently returning to the ideation and again to the execution.
I hope this information will help you to be able to create animations, shorts and who knows what else so you can let your imagination run wild!