Time Re Mapping

You can expand, compress, play backward, or freeze a portion of the duration of a layer using a process known as time-remapping.


Graph editor will show your changes. 
Steep line= fast motion
Straight line = freeze frame
Downwards = backwards


http://help.adobe.com/en_US/AfterEffects/9.0/WS3878526689cb91655866c1103906c6dea-7d4da.html

Tips for After EFX

• Hit F9 on a key frame which turns it into a bezier keyframe. This eases it in and makes it smoother
• Turn on motion blue (three circles symbol)
• Adjustment layers effect everything beneath it

ANGIE TAYLOR DESIGN ESSENTIALS CHAPTER 6

COLOUR CHAPTER 6

• Look around for colour combinations every day in both nature and man made designs
• Light is the source of all colour
• Long wave lengths make us see red, whereas shorter ones produce violet results
• Response to colour is highly personal; we all have different associations with it
• We absorb these meanings subconsciously
• Be aware of what different colours mean internationally and how they change over time e.g green used to represent money yet now it is for the environment
• RED: stimulating, used with caution, attracts attention easily, can represent heat, power love, anger etc, use to highlight important elements
• YELLOW: highly visible and bright, bold when against a black background, used for nature, represent sunshine, happiness, brightness, illness, betrayal
• ORANGE: warmth, fire, energetic, cheerful, brash, healthy
• BLUE: cold, winter clarity, liquid, ice, detachment, calming, peaceful, metaphor for sadness, fairly conventional and accepted, 'safe' colour
• GREEN: nature, growth, renewal, nausea, envy, evil, safety
• PURPLE: regal colour, luxury, bravery, wealth, conceit, worn by larger than life characters,  use when you want your designs to be daring and exciting
• PINK: girls, toys, dolls, make up, feminine, used by the gay community, good when combined with blues and greys  
• BLACK: formal, powerful, mysterious, sophisticated, used as a background in design
• WHITE: purity, innocence, truth, cowardice, peace, as a background it creates open space simplicity
• Take into account gender when choosing colours: soft colours for women and strong bright colours for men
• PRIMARY COLOURS are red, yellow and blue
• SECONDARY COLOURS: orange, green and violet
• TERTIARY: created by mixing a primary and secondary colour in equal measures
• Black, greys and white are neutrals
• Monochromatic is made up of different variations of one colour
• Analogous: 3 colours adjacent to each other on the colour wheel, work best when one colour is a primary one
• Complementary: colours opposite each other
• Triadic: combines three colours that are equally spaced around the colour wheel
• Clashing colours: not advisable in design

DIGITAL COLOUR MODELS

• CYMK subtractive colour model = used to explain colours reproduced with ink and paint
• RGB additive colour model = colours viewed on screen, 3 colour channels
• Hue saturation and brightness 
• Aim to create rhythm in your designs
• Calibrate your monitor!!!

Lighting

I experimented with basic lighting, adjusting the X and Y positions and also what type of light it is for example spot, ambient parallel etc.

Kinetic/Motion Typography

Motion typography refers to the art and technique of animating text. It is meant to create or evoke a particular idea or emotion. The typefaces used is an extremely important choice to make when working with motion typography as this will determine what effect it will have an the audience. The timing and pace of the composition is also highly important.


http://www.marcofolio.net/video/15_stunning_motion_typography_videos.html
http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2009/07/18-creative-examples-of-typography-in-motion/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCvn-nX5vKE&feature=player_embedded#!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZe5V3-9l3I

After Effects

I have very basic knowledge of After Effects and so in the past few weeks I have been learning the interface and basic tools to use to animate shapes and text. Below are two videos I created experimenting with lines and space. I have stuck strictly to my company's colour scheme and fonts to achieve consistency.

ANGIE TAYLOR DESIGN ESSENTIALS CHAPTER 9

TECHNICAL

• VIDEO FORMATS = PAL: europe, stands for phase alternating line, NTSC: united states, canada, japan, SECAM: used in france but generally being phased outing favour of PAL
• FRAME RATE: number of frames transmitted per second, higher frame rate means smoother play back, PAL is 25 fps, NTSC is 29.97, frame rate of film is 24fps. 
• Try to change to multiples of frame rates for easy conversion e.g. 30 to 15frames)
• TIMECODE: a method for measuring time, animation is measured in frames, to work out the length of a project you must divide the number of frames by the working frame rate, SMPTE TIME CODE is divided into hours, minutes, seconds and frames
• FIELDS AND INTERLACING: interlaced and progressive scanning
• PAL 25fps, fields are captured at double the frame rate (50 fields per second), when footage is captured in a computer, the two fields will be mixed together to make up each frame shown on the screen, this results in feathering 
• Adobe After Effects can deinterlace/separate the fields to reduce this 
• Make sure horizontal lines are not too thin as this may cause a flickering effect
• PIXEL ASPECT RATIOS: computers display images using square pixels, pixels used to make an image on a video monitor/TV and rectangular. The shape of the rectangle differs whether it is PAL, NTSC etc
• 788 square pixels: 4:3 PAL (width)
• 576 is the height
• FRAME ASPECT RATIOS: 1. Standard definition TV=4:3 or widescreen 16:9, 2. High definitely TV= square pixels, 16:9 or 1920X1080, 3. Computer Displays = 4:3 but more commonly 5:4
• WIDESCREEN: 16:9, has the same frame rate as 4:3
• Converting can include letter boxing, simulcasting (offering viewers an option), centre cutout, scan and pan
• CODEC: compressor/decompressor
• Spatial and Temporal compression
• CODECS BY MEDIUM: videotape: DV PAL or DV NTSC codecs, these should be used when working with generic DV footage and the footage is going back to tape
• Photoshop and After Effects allows you to change individual colour channels
• TRANSPARENCY: Mattes= an image of movie that tells the compositing software which areas should be transparent and what should be opaque
• ALPHA CHANNELS: black and white, straight (transparency information is only in the alpha channel of the image) and premultiplied (one or all of the RGB channels will have used the alpha information to change the appearance of the image)
• MASKS: user defined shapes that select areas of your image for transparency and opacity, masks can be drawn in After Effects using Bezier drawing tools, can be used to isolate part of your layer