Description
This is the first step in creating the gradient, by creating a bunch of circles of differing colours and sizes. Afterwards, using an effect called ‘Drop Shadow’, I picked a bright green to use as the colour of the drop shadow and adjusted the angle and distance accordingly. Then I applied the same effect to the rest of the circles I drew.

Timeline and Effect

Description
This is the second step in creating the gradient, using the ‘CC Repetile’ effect to constantly make the composition I created repeat and move in a certain direction.
I adjusted the amount to repeat and expand to the right, up, and down.
Lastly, to make the animation slowly move to the right (my desired direction), I added keyframes for the position of the layer at the beginning and the end of the timeline.

Timeline and Effect

Description
For the final step to creating the gradient, I dragged the animation created in the second step into the new composition. I first applied the ‘Turbulant Displace’ effect, messing up the perfect circles created in the previous steps. I adjusted the strength of the displacement and complexity randomly. Then I applied the ‘Directional Blur’ effect and that was where the gradient effect started to take place. For this effect, I only adjusted the blur strength to 600. Lastly, I applied the ‘Twirl’ effect which made my gradient look much nicer. For this effect, I adjusted the radius and direction of the twirl. When I unpaused my animation, not to toot my own horn but it really seemed like a desktop screen saver. Because my composition background was black, I changed the blending mode of the created swirly gradient to ‘Colour Dodge’ for the colours to pop even more against the dark background.

Timeline and Effect

    Timeline

Reflection
To create this final animation, I had to first change the background to black, to create a nice base for the gradient I created before this. I dragged the final gradient composition into this new composition and added a magnify effect, with a small circle in the center being the magnification lense. I adjusted the intensity of the magnification and size throughout the animation by adding keyframes at different moments. I wanted to create a fade in and out kind of moment, hence the circle becoming big then small. Furthermore, I adjusted the opacity for the entire composition to complement the fading in and out look I was going for. On top of all that, I added a text layer and used a drop shadow effect on it, then similarly to the rest of the animation, made it fade in and out.
Overall, this was fun and I had fun adjusting and playing with the look of my animated gradient and being introduced to different effects available within After Effects (lol).

Process
First, I found an image online with a text gradient that I liked. Then I created a composition within After Effects and tried my best to replicate the gradient there. After creating a rough gradient, I applied an adjustment layer, consisting of the ‘Offset’, and ‘Transform’ effect.  Firstly, using the ‘Offset’ effect, I shifted the center of the composition to the line in the middle of the gradient. Then using the ‘Transform’ effect, I scaled the height and width of the gradient.
Next, I created another composition for my text. To fully encompass the vaporwave-esque gradient, I decided to use ‘SWAG’ as my text. The only things I adjusted in this composition were the anchor point and size of the layer.
Next, I created yet another composition, to place the gradient within my text(?). First, I dragged the text composition in, then my gradient composition under. I changed the track matte for the gradient composition to the text layer, sort of creating a layer mask. Then I applied the ‘CC Blobbylize’ effect and changed the layer I wanted to ‘blob’. After that, I adjusted the softness and cut away of the effect. This effect added a sort of 3D look to my text which made the chrome effect more apparent.
Lastly, I created one last composition and placed my gradient applied ‘SWAG’ composition within the main composition. To make things look even more Y2K-ish, I scoured the internet to find and add a PNG of flames and smoke. To add depth to this, I tried to apply the same Ripple effect I added to the flames in my asteroid animation. However... perhaps because I did not do it properly and made the radius too small or direction too odd.... it turned out just like a water ripple which I guess is what the effect was for anyways. However, once again due to time constraint, I decided to just leave it like that. I also then animated my text to drop down from above and even bounce twice before settling. Thus concludes my swag chrome animation with fake flames and smoke....

Reflection
This activity was also pretty fun, I especially liked the ‘CC Blobbylize’ effect because it made text look really 3D, which I envision to be really useful in the future. Could I have done better and used a better flame graphic or video, or used some shiny sparkles to place further emphasis on the chrome effect, or improved the text animation?

However, at this point I was swamped with work and was honestly, behind my peers. The only thing on my mind was survival and just getting this assignment done to the best of my abilities while struggling to balance my personal life with work.  Even though the text in this animation was based around ‘swag’ and the previous one being ‘hai :3’, my emotions were far from that.  I guess that is also obvious due to the rather strange things I submitted, which were outside of my usual style. I was honestly just trying to make work more fun and new to me and I apologise for creating such low quality work.

Description
Firstly, I placed the original image of the whale into Photoshop, then expanded the background using the ‘Content-Aware Fill’ tool . I also cropped the whale from the original image and filled in the background using the same tool. From the assets given,  there was also a png of a diver which I subsequently placed into the Photoshop file as well. After constructing my composition and separating the assets into their appropriate layers, I saved the file to be used for the animation on After Effects.

Reflection
After separating the layers on Photoshop, I imported the file into After Effects. Using the Photoshop composition as the final and desired end of the animation, I first set the keyframes for each element. I then applied ‘Puppet Warp’ to both the whale and the diver. For the whale, I set multiple pins on the tail, fins, etc. However, I only made it move a little as it looked strange when it moved too much. For the diver, most of the pins were concentrated on the feet and hands, making it seem as though the diver was swimming towards the whale. Looking back, I should have done something with the bubbles as well, as it seems a little strange for that to be static. After I was done with the puppet warp animation, I took the short bubble animation which was provided in the original group of assets, and placed it behind the whale and diver, infront of the water background. I then changed the blending mode to ‘Soft Light’ for it to be more harmonious with the other assets. After all this, I tempered with the camera settings according to the tutorial, separating the different assets into different depths, then making the camera move in for my final animation. The diver is in the front, followed by the whale and the bubbles, then the sea background.

Timeline and Camera

Description
I first created a bunch of random assets on Illustrator then separated them into different layers on Illustrator itself, then I imported the entire file into After Effects. After that, I proceeded to pull the assets into a different composition. Seeing how these graphics are simple flat shapes, I decided to create outlines out of these assets so that the layers are no longer linked to the Illustrator layers.  

Description
The original image is on the right, and by using Photoshop, I separated the layers and expanded the image via ‘Content-Aware Fill’ and other tools. After this was done, I imported the entire file into After Effects to begin animating.

Reflection
After separating the layers on Photoshop, I imported the file into After Effects. Using the Photoshop composition as the final and desired end of the animation, I first set the keyframes for each element. I then applied ‘Puppet Warp’ to both the person and the butterfly. The desired outcome was to make the butterfly’s wings flap and travel towards the person, but this did not turn out as well as I hoped it would. For the person, I just made him kind of bounce up and down as the camera panned out. Similar to the whale activity, I also played with the camera settings and changed the depth of the different layers, as well as camera movement. To add a level of depth, I even added a short video of light rays then changed the blending mode to screen. I don’t know why but I placed this layer behind all my other assets when it should have been on top. My mistake. I also added an audio layer of birds chirping to further add to the vibe. Initially I also wanted to remove the text from the original image then let the text slowly fade in as the animation continued, but I ran out of time to do that. Similar to last lesson, there are multiple things that I could have done better but due to time constraint, I kind of just cut corners here and there. Once again, my bad. Looking at the animation again, the bush also looks super weird, and I think I should have taken a little more time to remove the text and animate it in. Oh well, I think it looks alright and if you view it from afar, it isn’t that bad. This class was fun though. Before this, I have seen multiple edits on social media with this sort of effect, animated flat images, and it was interesting to find out how they achieved this effect, and also to attempt to create my own. If I did this better I would have been happier with the final result, but there is no point regretting anything. I think I am going down the path of just creating troll animations like what I did last week.

Timeline and Camera