the cabinet of mysteries

1.) Readability is text being clearly arranged for the eye. Legibility is text being clearly written and understandable.

2.) You can communicate emotion via typography by having: -frantic motion indicate anxiety -smooth, Easy In/Out motion indicate coolness -text being splintered or broken apart indicating bodily harm

3.) Storyboarding an animation allows you to create a roadmap for all of your ideas on a project.

For this exercise, I chose to animate a picture of myself in a 1970's style. I wanted the background colors to evoke the look of retro carpets and wallpapers, and the typeface would reference posters and advertisements. An especially important detail would be recreating the look of 1970s film stock, with heightened contrast and saturation plus film projection jitter.

For my subject, I used a picture of myself at a softball game in Miami earlier this summer, and my first objective was to separate my body from the background.

To accomplish this, I imported my picture into Photoshop and used the Object Selection tool in Photoshop to select my body and duplicate it. Next, I used the Content Aware Fill feature to fill in the gap left behind.

Once I had my body and my background as two separate images, I got to work separating my arms from my body. This was a difficult process. I again used the Object Selection Tool to select and duplicate each of my arms as new layers. I then used the Content Aware Fill and Eraser tools to remove my arms from the full image of my body. Now I had a clean plate to animate on top of.

After I imported all my assets into After Effects, I used the Position and Scale tools to animate myself moving into frame along with the background. I also used the Opacity tool to have the picture's original background transition into a 1970's inspired pattern off a public domain site called Freepik.

I then used the Position tool to animate the text entering the frame, with some Motion Blur as an added touch.

For this animation, I had to use the 3D Camera tool in After Effects to reveal the text of a haiku of my choice. I chose a haiku called "You Only Live Twice" by Ian Fleming:

"You only live twice. Once when you are born. And once when you look death in the face."

I used a Dark Grey solid as the base and stacked every following layer on top of it. For the text, I chose the Bold version of the Futura PT font and had the word "Twice" split into two as a reference to the poster for the film "You Only Live Twice." Each piece of text also fades in and out using keyframes in Opacity.

From there, I used shape layers to create a baby for the second stanza and animated it rocking back and forth. For the third stanza, I used shape layers and the Trace tool to create a version of the Grim Reaper inspired by the character of Death from Family Guy.

For this animation, I used an official portrait of Peter Capaldi as the Twelfth Doctor from Doctor Who. I separated the Doctor's right hand from his body using the Magnetic Lasso Tool in Photoshop. From there, I used the Content Aware Fill tool to fill the gap in the Doctor's body.

Next, I exported the Doctor's hand and body as separate PNGs before importing them each into After Effects. I then used the Pen tool to separate the Doctor from his background. Once the Doctor was separate, I used the Generate Fill tool to fill in the background's gap. I then put the Doctor's body and hand into their own pre-comp and put the background elements into their own pre-comp.

Once all these steps were complete, I added text behind the Doctor listing the show's title in nine rows. I then used the Scale & Transform tools to animate the Doctor growing as the text shrinks. As an added touch to separate the Doctor from his background, I added a Drop Shadow to his layer.