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After Effects with Sara (Workshop 4) - Kinetic Type


In my 4th workshop with Sara, our focus was Kinetic Type. In my recent lecture this is something we started looking at and I really enjoyed watching the way this was done and how It can look TV standard through effects and movement.
Our brief was to bring several images based on a font of our choice to the workshop.

I found this quite a challenge as I didn't know what to put on my story boards at first. However I started with some research into other Kinetic Type videos.
Kinetic Typography - Paul Renner's Futura from Eric Chin on Vimeo.

Above shows another persons assignment to Kinetic Type. I really liked the way this used transitions and also used text that would appear like a type writer. I love how it flows together and moves really smooth together. My aim was to work with the animation presets and continue working with the position and scale tools on After Effects.

In my kinetic type workshop with Sara, I choose to do something quite simple to focus on making the type move and allow myself to understand how everything fits together.
The text I choose to work with was Futura. I use this very frequently and love how the style is so fluent that it fits with advertising and other commercial use. When I started initially looking into Futura I found it quite interesting how this was a German font along with Helvetica,  Din and other successful fonts.

CONTEXT
I decided to start researching into these style German fonts and what they may have in common.

DIN 1451 - sans-serif, used on road signing in Germany, also used on car driving plates, way finding, traffic signs, created with compass and rulers to enable quick and easy reproduction.


Helvetica - sans-serif, road signs, signage, UK government publication and logo. Use of curves, oblique style and narrow apertures.

Futura - sans-serif, advertisements, logo, transport, IKEA, Volkswagen and sports. Geometrical, near-perfect circles, triangles and squares.

These three well known fonts all follow the same style of usage: advertisement and signage. I can also see they all follow the idea of working with geometrics and near-perfect shapes.

In my workshop I then started working with creating my assets in After Effects rather than placing them from Photoshop. This would then give me more control over my project. I continued by working with my normal settings for the composition. I was working with the type face Futura. I wanted to work with the colour scheme: black, red and yellow which follows in the German flag to represent in a subtle way that this was a German font. I also originally was going to show other designers who had worked on this font along side Paul Renner however I decided against this as I felt Paul Renner had more influence on this type than anyone and was more well known to have designed it.
Below shows my finished After Effects project for Futura - Kinetic Type:
Futura Font - Kinetic Type from Amy Winson on Vimeo.

I worked with a yellow transition drops, subtle animation presets that have my text fading in and a range of wipes and dissolves to create a sense of movement.

Conclusion
When I first started working with my assets I felt my design was too simple. However after working with my animation presets and a few wipes with the use of solid colours, I feel like this piece fits together and moves really fluently. The animation is straight to the point, clear and tells the viewer straight away what Futura is. I have enjoyed this workshop and it has give me a sense of movement within text and the speed it should work at. For this piece I worked with a range of fast and slow movements within the text.

After the Workshop
After the workshop, I decided to pick another two fonts completely different to Futura and work on more animation and the way the different fonts will have different styles and movements. I thought of the fonts as people and how they are their own characters.
The first font I choose to work with was Chalkduster. This is a calligraphy style font that reminded me of when a teacher would write on a blackboard in school.
Brief for Chalkduster
My brief for my animation was to somehow have the narrative to follow a school style of theme. I wanted to have wipes that would look similar to paint strokes or brush strokes for my transitions and also wanted to have music in the background that could represent typing or writing. Below shows my final animation for Chalkduster.
Chalkduster Type from Amy Winson on Vimeo.

Conclusion
 I do like how different this style is from my Futura animation. I choose to focus on black & white colour scheme as I felt this showed the traditional blackboard style and also creates a sense of mystery along side the typewriting intriguing music. I really like how when the alphabet and numbers are written. how certain letters are pulled out spelling "chalk". I think this would make a viewer pause  to read what the letters say. One thing I am not completely sure on is the dissolve straight away at the start of the animation, I think I will spend some time in the future working on intros and endings of my projects to see the animation presets I can work with.

Brief for Simpsons Font
After doing two completely different fonts, I decided to work with something slightly more well known and commercial. I choose to work on the Simpsons Font. This is quite fun and playful and I wanted to work with creating an idea for a potential intro for Channel 4 for the Simpsons. My aim was to have one character: I choose Lisa Simpson, but I choose to have her in the corner. I then decided to work with musical instruments and a remixed version of the Simpsons to create a sense of modernism. Also after my last project working with Chalkduster, I decided I needed to work with my intro and ending. For this I decided to have something quite colourful and fun at the start and at the end I wanted a sudden ending so everything was straight to the point. In this animation, instead of just focusing on the type moving, I choose to consider everything I have learnt so far and how I could utilise the skills I have recently learnt and work with them where necessary. Below shows my animation for the Simpsons Font:
SIMPSONS CHANNEL 4 INTRO from Amy Winson on Vimeo.

Conclusion
I really like the way I have modernised some elements for this Simpsons style intro, for example: At the start of the Simpsons the clouds are always the first thing the viewer sees and then they change other elements in the animation: what Bart writes on the chalkboard, the way the Simpsons sit and more. I decided since this is something they never changed that I would change it to try and visualise and bring that sense of modernism to the table. I also worked with a few sudden flashes to introduce the animation. I found this works really well. I am really happy with the outcome and how I have managed to improve the intro for this. My next aim for future projects is to continue spending more time with working with the intro and ending and to also work with smoother transitions.



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