During the progress of my creative project I have learned a new animation technique using Adobe After Effects. This was how to create a 'sparkle' sort of effect.
I searched up a couple of YouTube tutorials to gain a basic understanding of how to go about creating a sparkle effect before I had a go for myself. Most of this was just experimenting but in the end it worked out well.
I first created a new small white solid and added a particle system effect. I experimented with various colours, types of particles and transfer modes to achieve the sort of effects I wanted.
Once I had my effect, I needed to create a path for it to follow. I selected my white solid, and then the pen tool, and drew a path for the 'sparkle' effect to follow. I wanted this effect to move across the text I had already created, so I adjusted it's position and opacities accordingly.
This is the effect that I ended up with, and I am glad I was able to learn something new in this.
From starting my animation, I have now completed the first part/introduction of my animated info graphic.
I now have about 40 seconds of footage.
I have kept the same style and fonts throughout my animation, however I have now introduced a few new colours and transitions to make my animation a little more varied and interesting.
I now aim to move on to the next part of my animation where I will include quotes from responses from my online survey, and also some statistics around the new topic of the tampon tax.
Something that I thought would be very useful to learn how to use in my animation was how to create and use text paths. I looked at a couple of tutorials on YouTube and decided to have a go for myself. I created a new composition in Adobe After Effects and created a plain black solid shape and some text on top of this.
With the text shape selected, I selected the pen tool at the top of the screen and drew a rough path for my text to follow.
This path then appeared as a mask for my text layer, and so I selected this mask, and then added an animation preset for my text.
This is how my first experiment using text paths in Adobe After Effects ended up:
Although this was only a rough experiment, I have learned a useful skill and I now feel more confident in how I will progress in my animation.
To start my project I created a new composition in Adobe After Effects and added the music track to my composition. I had decided to start with a red and white colour scheme to emphasise importance, as this recent news topic of the tampon tax has sparked up a lot of interest and opinions. Choosing what font to use took me a while, as I wanted something fairly bold yet not too formal. I eventually decided on the font 'Avenir' with the black setting applied. I started off by creating my title and animating it onto the project.
I animated the position of the words 'Tampon' and 'Tax' one after the other in time with the music. As it was the title, I left these on the screen for a couple of seconds before animating the rotation and scale of these words, so that the 'T' in 'Tampon' was on its side at the bottom of the screen.
I then animated in my first bit of text with a typewriter style effect at the top of the screen.
Next, I quickly opened Adobe Illustrator and created a simple silhouette of a cartoonish style person, in the same red colour I had just used for my title text in my animation.
By creating this 'character' in Adobe Illustrator, I was able to import it into After Effects as a new composition, with the layers still seperate.
I then rigged up this 'character' by changing the anchor points of each layer and making sure that they were parented to the 'body' layer. This enabled me to start animating 2 versions of this 'character.
I went back into Adobe Illustrator to draw out two quick phrases: 'Keep the tax!' and 'Lose the tax!' and imported them into After Effects again.
I changed the scale and opacity of these to try to animate them to look like they were appearing from the two 'characters' heads.
However, I am unsure if I like how this looks, and so would like to learn how to animate text over a path, to save time and achieve a more professional look.
I decided that for my animation I would like to have some music to accompany my images and text. This would also aid the transitions in my animation, and make it overall more entertaining. I decided to look for some music with creative commons licensing, as I knew that there would (hopefully) be no copyright issues with using music with creative common licensing. I found a website called bensound.com (http://www.bensound.com) which allowed users to download and use music as long as the website was credited. I have decided to use a track from bensound.com called 'Energy', as I feel this is overall quite suitable for my project, and it is also just under 3 minutes long, an ideal length for my animation.
British MPs voted this week against a move to
force the government to cut the so-called "Tampon Tax" down from its
current 5%. Politicians rejected the Finance Bill amendment on 26 October,
which would have stopped sanitary products from being classified as
"non-essential luxury items" by 305 to 287 votes. – ibtimes
Periods have been taxed since 1973. It was then that we
began paying 17.5 per cent tax on sanitary products such as tampons and pads
because the Government deemed them “non-essential” items. After a lot of
campaigning, that same ‘period tax’ was dropped to five per cent in 2001. –
telegraph
Labour reduced VAT on sanitary products from 17.5% to 5%
in 2000 but could not go any further under EU rules. – guardian
Ministers have promised to lobby Brussels over the
so-called tampon tax in order to avoid a rebellion in the House of Commons. –
theweek
So, in order for an item to be exempt from tax, all 28 EU
member states would have to agree to change its status. "Sadly it seems
unlikely that the UK would be able to secure unanimous agreement," said
Labour MP Kerry McCarthy. - theweek
The majority of the female population were outraged last
week after MPs - men and women - voted against a Finance Bill amendment, which
would have forced a negotiation with the EU for a reduction in the current five
percent rate. - hemeltoday
“As a member of the EU, the UK cannot unilaterally
zero-rate any item from VAT without each of the 28 other country members of the
EU, and the European Commission, giving its approval.
“The lowest the VAT rate can be set without this approval
is five per cent.
“This is the current VAT rate for sanitary products. -
hastingsobserver
I have also found some interesting articles providing facts and statistics on how much women will spend on periods in their lifetime:
So far I have had over 60 responses to my questionnaire on the recent news topic of the tampon tax. I have received many interesting and opinionated responses which I can use within my creative project animation. Now I need to think about what steps I need to now take to progress with my project:
Storyboard/narrative - I need to decide at least a rough order of when I will include what in my animation, and how much of the animation it will take up
Facts and statistics - I need to research some definite facts and statistics to add some background information on the topic of the tampon tax to my project, so there is clear reasoning for some of the responses I will use
Colour and font schemes - I need to decide on what main colours and fonts, and possible themes, I will want to use in my animation, and whether these should be different for male and female responses
Graphics - I need to start making some simple but interesting graphics and images to illustrate some of the statistics and opinions which I will use in my project, and think about how I may choose to animate these
To aid the content of my creative project animation, I have decided to make a survey to collect responses, opinions and anecdotes from various people on the subject of the recent vote against the cut on the 5%VAT tax that is currently on sanitary products such as tampons. I created my questionnaire using the website SurveyMonkey, and it can be found here: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/V2J5NRM Here are the questions that I have included in this survey:
What is your gender?
How do you feel about
British MPs voting against a government move to cut the 5% VAT tax on sanitary
products such as tampons?
77% of the members of the
House of Lords are male. How do you think this factor may have affected the
vote?
Do you think that tampons should
be classed as a luxury item? Why/why not?
Is tax on tampons discriminatory
or fair?
Why do you think that this
5% VAT tax on tampons is coming to our attention now?
A recent study has revealed
that the average woman will spend over £18,000 on having periods in their
lifetime. What is your opinion on this?
Condoms, dental dams and
the pill are all (quite rightly) available free of charge from the NHS. Do you
think that these should be paid for too, or should tampons also be free? Or
should things stay the way they are?
On a recent episode of
Russell Howard’s Good News, Russell said: ‘Well here is a list of some of the
things that the taxman thinks is essential more than tampons: helicopters;
bingo; Twiglets; adult nappies; flapjacks; toffee apples; edible cake
decorations; a ticket to the zoo and crocodile meat.’
What are your opinions on this?
Do you think that the
subject of tampons and periods should be kept as a private matter, or should it
be acceptable to talk about in everyday situations, or somewhere in between?
I have decided to change my idea for my creative project.
Over the last few weeks of this module, I have come to realize that I was not enjoying the process of constructing and creating my previous idea, and that it was not about a topic that particularly interested or inspired me.
After speaking to my tutor, it became apparent that, with the amount of time left, this would be the last possible time to change my idea and start a new project.
I have chosen to stick with animation as the medium of my creative project, but have come up with a new idea, and a question to base my project around.
The question to base my creative project around would be: 'How does the recent news topic of tampons being classed as a 'luxury item' and therefore subject to EU tax reflect how gender roles and the female body are represented within a patriarchal society?'
I plan on creating an online questionnaire and gathering people's opinions on this subject. I would like the responses to be fairly informal, and the questionnaire would be completely anonymous except for the person's gender.
I plan on using statistics, quotes from news articles, and responses from my questionnaire, and animating these in a sort of up-beat modern stylistic way, also using simple animated images and graphs/charts to illustrate them.
I would like to use interesting and entertaining animated transition techniques to aid the progression (or narrative?) of my animation. I also would like to use music and sound effects along with this.
With this new idea I feel a lot more inspired to work on my creative project. Being able to have a clear question to work on makes progressing in project a lot easier and less daunting. Now that I am working with a topic that I am interested in I will hopefully enjoy this module a lot more.
I was encouraged to think about using sound within my animation. An idea that may work well with my animation was to use sound clips, from speeches or movies, that related to my theme of capitalism. These sound clips would be used when the hand appears. However, over the weeks I have still been finding it difficult to find relevant sound and video clips for this. I have found a possible couple of clips from videos of Margaret Thatcher making speeches or talks, however I still do not feel that this is enough or that the clips I have found are powerful or relevant enough for my project.
I did an experiment in Adobe After Effects combining video and a simple animated 2D vector based character. My aim was to give the illusion of these two elements interacting. I shot a simple short video of my own hand on my phone. When I come to take footage for my actual project I will use a DCLR camera with a plain white background. I imported this video into After Effects and imported my charter that I created in Adobe Illustrator into the same After Effects file but as a separate composition, so that each layer of the character would be separate in order for me to animate.
I used keyframes to animate each part of my character and also it's overall position so that it looked like it was being flicked over by my hand.
Although this was only a very short animation, I now know that it is possible for me to animate a 2D vector based character interacting with video footage in this way.
Aside from The Hand, all of the characters that I plan to us in my animation will be very simple 2D vector characters. This is so that they can be developed and given more detail by The Hand.
Using Adobe Illustrator I created a basic line drawing of the sort of character I would like to use, with each part of it on separate layers. I then imported this into Adobe After Effects to animate.
I also plan to use a white background in my animation so that it can also be developed and given more detail by the things that The Hand introduces.
Because each part of my character was drawn onto its own layers in Adobe Illustrator, I was able to move the anchor points of each and use character rigging.
I was able to use key points to animate my character, and enable multiple actions to take place at once.
This was the end result of my basic character animation process:
