Blog Feed – AAA – All About Animation

Review on TEAMS & WordPress.com using through IT Prefessional Skills module

TEAMS by Microsoft

I used TEAMS for a group project in which we have to research about Tesla Haptic Suit. If you have never heard of it, TEAMS is an online collaboration platform that is said to be especially useful for group/teamwork. TEAMS has its own built-in workplace, open-conversations, private chat, assignments, calendar and a lot more!

With its own sophisticated yet professional look, TEAMS offers users a great users’ experience. Every group has their own default “General” channel where all members can post in, below the group’s name is a couple of files and a plus, the files appear is those current files the group owns, and if anyone wants to add in any additional files, click on the plus.

After clicking on the plus, a tab will be opened with a variety of file-options. Those options shown above are all Microsoft’s built-in apps which are all useful for teamwork; e.g. MindMeister is used for online mind mapping, OneNote, PowerPoint are all familiar apps – but in the TEAMS platform, these are used collaboratively.

TEAMS also supports online meetings, which I found pretty convenient for a team – especially those involving technical-purpose projects. With this functionality, a member will set up an E-meeting date and time, while everyone can comment below whether they agree or not. At the time of the meeting, a notification will be automatically sent to your Microsoft’s inbox (Outlook), and if you log in TEAMS, a reminder would appear. Subsequently, one member will start the online meeting – which works basically like a video call – and members can join. There is also a chat box in the online meeting and “record meeting” button if any members wish to.

There are TEAMS available on different devices like phone, windows app or browser across many OS like Windows, Linux, IOS and Android.

The advantages of TEAMS are:

Helps groups collaborate more effectively, as there is a lot of work can be done online.
A good amount of useful built-in apps.
Business look-alike, this will encourage people to behave more professional.
Easy to use and work with.

Those disadvantages are:

The notification system does not work properly, users rarely get notify when someone post on general channels, but get s separated notify email whenever someone say something in the private chat, so if someone puts 6 lines in one separate chat, you will get 6 emails!
Still have many bugs, not fully facilitate users.
Many apps are hard to use, and most of them are Microsoft’s products – so you may know, some of them are just… crabs.

In conclusion, I would say I’m glad to used TEAMS at least once to know what is out there, but to consider to use TEAMS as one of my online collaborative spaces, I will be hesitating!

2. WordPress

As part of this module, I chose WordPress as the platform for my technical blogs. Before WordPress, I used to try using Weebly – as known as an online modern blogging page works based on drag & drop. WordPress has put a huge effort into designing the UI & UX, giving users a clear and elegant interface.

WordPress is long known for the user-friendly blogging site, with its free plan is already enough for its customers to have an impressive page.

The pros of WordPress are:

Easy to get to know, user-friendly.
Offers different plans – from free to big enterprises.
Effective, modern and facilitated, a lot of options can be adjusted without knowing a single implementing language.
Statistics site which helps to track site traffic.
Notify you whenever people like your posts.

Those cons are:

Does not support additional options for programmers – in Weebly, users can change the code of page.
A bit difficult and time-consuming if users want to create a modern look webpage using WordPress.
Many functions are useless.

Personal E-Portfolio Wireframe

Below is the wireframe for a personal E-portfolio for my clients.

Customer’s profile:

Female
In her 70s
Has a historical, ancient vibe in her work projects
Her targeted audience will be her friends and those who are interested in historical projects e.g. audience from her website Historical Ballinrobe (http://www.historicalballinrobe.com/)
The look of the website must be clean, neat, clear and easy to follow, gentle to the eyes
Simple but elegant look
Responsive design

1. Home Page – Where personal information, notifications will be placed
2. Book – A page to showcase all her published books with theirs descriptions
3. Projects – All projects will be put on this page with a short description and an external link in each box to link to a page with more specific details about that project.
4. Specific details page
5. Contact Page – With email, phone number and form.

Useful resources & links for Adobe After Effect and personal tips

In the post this time, I will recommend for you some of the useful online resources and links which will help you on your way of developing the skills. As me myself is a self-taught “animator”, I have to visit a wide range of YouTube Channels and websites to find myself suitable tutorials.

When talking about self-learner, most of us will think about going on YouTube, as there are a lots of amazing quality videos out there, free of charge and easy to follow up ( as usually you can follow all steps on videos and have the instructors’ voices ).

So down here is my top YouTube Channels for learning animating using After Effect:

School of Motion – This Channel is superb as it has the 30 days of After Effect playlists where you can find lots of using tutorials, the instruction is clear enough to follow, and you will never get bored animating!
Leo Dinh – This young ambitious guy’s channel is the first place I went to when I started animating. He has interactive, interesting tutorials with examples, practices that you can follow up – because “practice make perfect”.
Digital Art Creation – This has a good number of AE tutorials, on the other hand, it does offer a huge amount of tutorials on Adobe Illustrator. As you may already known, Illustrator has a fundamental link with After Effect as you go deeper into the field.
Cinecom.net – This channel is opened by a Polish guy – growing small on his own, he now has a studio and his own website (cinecom.net) where he sells online courses relating to Adobe’s products. This has a lot of useful and common tutorials for all levels, which an energetic way of teaching.

Sometimes, you may find following the tutorials is just so boring, what I do to improve my skills and find it’s interesting is to have my own project. My project is making music lyrics video in the animation style – and with all words appearas the same time it is sung. To make it more appealing to myself, the audio is also authentic ( yes, I sing and play the guitar as well! ) so everything will be my own work.

Down here is my first work on the song – Butterfly Fly Away:

Please tell me what you think about it!

Easy After Effect tutorial for beginners – How to animate the rising sun?

In the post this time, I will show you how to animate the rising sun using After Effect in Motion Graphic style.

Below is the video on how to do it so you can open up your After Effect and we can do it together – or I also have the written texts below so you can also follow my instructions.

First of all, create a new project by going to Files => New Project…
After the project is created, we will need to create a compotition (if we don’t have any external files to import in), go to Composition => New Composition, a small window will be shown to you asking the nameand the dimension of the composition, in this tutorial, I will go with HDTV 24 (1920×1080)
In the Sequence’s Files Area, right click => new => shape layer… ( this can also be done by going to Layer => New => Shape Layer… ).
On the tool bar, click on the rectangle, then Alt + right click a few time to find circle, then draw it on the composition. Now by default we will have the circle filled with color and no stroke, change to no fill and increase the stroke width.
In the Sequence’s Files Area, in this shape layer, click on the little arrow to show all the option, click on the Add => Trim Paths, move the timeline further a bit, subsequently, put a clock on both Start & End, then move the timeline to the the start point (0:00), adjust the value of End to 0%.
Next is the sun beams, create another shape layer, this time, use the Pen Tool to draw the single line, now, we will also trim paths for it. Add => Trim Paths. Move the timeline a bit further, then put a clock on both Start & End, then move back the timeline, adjust the end back to 0%.
Now, apparently we need more than just one sun beams, animating each will be a non-effective and time-consuming work, click on Add => Repeater, change the number of repeater (optional, I will change from 3 to 5 in this tutorial), change the rotation value, then the x and y of position, play around with it to see what best for you.
And off you go!

That’s it! You have completed your first animation, I hope to see you again in my next post – so stay tune!

Please tell me below what do you think about this tutorial.

Adobe After Effect’s interface, basic tools & useful shortcuts

As mentioned in the first post, in this second post, I will shows you some of the most used and efficient shortcuts in After Effect which will boost your workflow.
First of all, open your After Effect, if you have not yet get used to the interface, this is a quick run out of the software’s interface and basic tools which you only need to mind for now.

This area (Bin/Project’s files) is where you will see all the files of you’re your current project, including the ones you create in After Effect or the ones you import in. The best practice is to have different bins/folders for all the files, as you get more familiar with AE and if you may have to do big projects in the future, you will have tons of files – so putting them neatly and logically in folders will improve your workflow. Note that files in folders don’t appear on your video/work yet if you have not yet out it in a composition.
Composition’s files: This is the place where you will see all the files you have in the composition you’re working on. You will be working on this area a lot while animating as a huge common effects can be easily made here, goes from simply adjusting the size, the transparency to tracking path.
This is the timeline space; this place allows users to decide in which order will they put all the compositions/objects so that these will appear in aiming sequence.
Work space is the area where you should see what’s going on in your final work – your video. You can set up the dimension of your final video when you first create the project – this can also be changed if you so wish. After setting the dimention, you will have a frame indicates the size of your video everything inside the frame will be shown as the output, and on the contrary – everything outside it will not appear.
Palette is where you can find all the effects, and supporting information which help you to creating your masterpices.
This is the Standard default After Effect layout, the software allows users to change the place of all the tools and spaces as well as adjusting their sizes – this serves users with different preferable set up.

There are some shortcuts of tools you need to remember to work much more efficiently with this software. They are:

Position (shortcut is P): with Position, users can adjust the object’s position in workplace (or screen), by simply changing the value on the X (vertically) or Y (horizontally).
Rotation (shortcut is R): with this feature, you can easily rotate the object around its Anchor Point, this can both be done by either hover around your object on working screen till you see the double pointed arrow or changing the value in the layer section.
Anchor Point (shortcut is Y): this is one of the most major factors of all objects, because by simply changing the anchor point’s position, the effect can turn out completely different.
Scale (shortcut is S): Scale helps user to change the size of the objects.
Opacity (short is T): this helps adjust the transparency of objects.
Redo (Ctrl + Z): Go to the previous stage.

Now, you should know a litle bit more about After Effect – hopefully! In the next post, I will have a tutorial on how to animate the rising sun in MoGraph style – which should be interesting.

Thank you – and see you soon!

Adobe After Effect & Adobe Premiere – which one is for you?

“Should I use After Effect or Premiere if I want to edit video?”- This is one of the most frequently asked questions by my friends especially when they don’t know much about Adobe’s softwares. Both After Effect and Premiere are known as creating videos softwares, but the difference is one to use for creating animations, and the other is for editing recorded videos.

So, if you want to create an animated video with all the shapes and other graphic elements, After Effect is the best choice here, as the software offers animators a clear interface with all the efficient tools needed for your own purposes. The shape layer is the most fundamental factor of AE as shapes are all animations are about. An animated video which is purely from shape layers and other illusion objects is known as Motion Graphic ( or MoGraph in short).

But if you want to edit some footages you have recorded by any media, After Effect is not going to be your solution. As it was not built for that purpose, putting any footages in AE will only slow down the software and you cannot do anything to it. In this case, Premiere is your hero. With Premiere, editing videos is so much easier. The users can cut any parts of a video, putting in as many effects as they want ( but of course you shouldn’t overuse it! ), and having videos stacked on each other if you so wish. And you never get a delay in Premiere no matter how heavy your files are – but of course, it also depends on your CPU’s RAM. But you won’t be able to create sophisticated animation in Premiere ( although you can do easy animation movements, it will not be as easy as doing it in After Effect ).

Both of these softwares have live-update, which means that whenever you update anything to objects ( like changing the scale ) or moving the timeline, you will be able to see it in the sequence screen.

To me, both of these softwares are brilliant in doing their jobs, in the next post, I’ll show you how some basics tools and shortcuts in After Effect.