After Effects: Loop Experiment

After Effect Lesson 2

Loop experiment inspired by music video.

Come into my world by Kylie Minogue

This is music video shown to us as an example of the type of loop we was going to create this session. Kylie Minogue has been looped through the video more 4 times. The video is relevant to the type of video we will be producing in todays session. What we needed is a small footage that could loop, one of the good examples is someone standing still and jumping up once. The footage is advised to be one second long as it will be more effective. 

loop_Experiment from Yanda De Vasco on Vimeo.

 

For this session we will be generating one clip running 10 seconds long at 12 to 25fps.  I had previously prepared making my clip that I could use within the loop clip, I used my mobile phone to take 1 to 2 second long video. I had made certain that nothing would conceal the subject I was trying to catch as i will be needing to use the pen in After Effect to crop out. The subject I had on video was of another student walking to the right and jumping once. I chose the jump because it would be effectively easier to crop out. Initially I searched a short video clip such as a gif to use but only came across cartoon style short gifs that and it was preferred for us to videos we had recorded ourselves. I continued to work with the clip I recorded of my colleague and I had cropped out the body jumping, then searched for a copy free right background of a city, ensuring it was HD quality.  

I began by creating the composition, setting it to high HD quality, square pixels and frame rate at 25fps and then started to import the video file as a footage. The frames were doubled with the option stretch selected on the columns option, then stretched to 200% and holding the layer in point. I did this because I wanted to speed up the animating process,  as it could take longer then a day to animate effectively.  

This was all new to me,  as you can guess from viewing my video I found this session very difficult. I wish that I followed what the other students has done which was take video clip from internet because it extremely hard to crop out the subject and keep in check where I was to crop next. I am disappointed in the quality my rotoscope is in, I hope I get more sessions, so I can learn more about this method.