After Effects

After Effects particle background 

Step by step process

Using the particle world I was able to make a falling snow flake animation. Here I could use the coordinates so the balls would fall and then use the other coordinate (Y) to turn the circles so it looks like the perspective is going around the snow flakes. 

When turning the particles a 3D cube will appear in the top left of the particles. This shows how much you're turning the animation. By pressing the clock button next to the Y coordinate the animation was able to be recorded.  

I think the particle world feature will be useful for another project, such as if I were to create a space background with stars. I don't think I will be using this as a background though it's not really my style. I really enjoyed making this though the particle world is something I'll definitely use in the future. 

After Effects background

For this moving background I chose a blue background to work. Using a gradient ramp I was able to change this blue background to get a nice shadow, making it darker in some areas. 

I then changed the scale of the background so it would change shape on the time line.

I then shrunk the blue blue background and duplicated it a lot. Scattering each one around the page and rotating them till they finish the whole background. 

 I then changed the softness of all of the solids to give a nice 3D effect on the sides. I also precomposed all of the solids so they become one solid. This makes it easier to change all of them at the same time

After adding this effect I then rotated the shapes using the rotate tool. This made the shapes turn while changing shape to make this cool effect. 

I found this background to be quite creative and I think I'd use this one over the previous background in the future for something. A feature on After Effects that I really liked when making this was the drop shadow effects. It gives a nice 3D effect. 

After Effects challenge

After being give the three different images I arranged the layers in the bottom left of the After Effects software. Layering images is important because it results in what covers what. If I didn't do this the background could have covered the while template so nothing else would've been seen. 

After layering the images I separated the different letters in the image with the text. I did this using the pen tool and duplicating the different images. The pen tool is useful for cutting and separating things in an image. 

After separating the different letters I used the scaling and positioning to change the direction and sizing of each letter. So when pressing play to the video each letter would enlarge and pop up in a line to make "ACDC".

I really enjoyed making this animation especially  since I picked up on how to use the pen tool. This tool allows me to separate small sections of an image. This was how I separated the text from the "ACDC". Without this tool I couldn't have made individual movements for each letter on the image. I'm pretty happy with the final results of this After Effects video.