Design for Screen: Animation

In order to incorporate animation within the site to create a interesting and engaging aspect I've experimented with producing an animation featuring a simple illustration with an exploding head of confetti to show that we as students are ready to blow your mind. This required isolating the individual section that will be animated within the illustration so they could be edited in After Effects separately (see figures 1-3). This allowed the head to be animated so that it would pop open allowing for the confetti to pop out. In relation to creating the confetti, squares are drawn and then edited using pixel polly which creates an exploding effect, however the initial animation needs editing further to create more of an explosion (see figure 4). Whilst creating this animation its been particularly difficult to maximise the amount of explosion by editing the force, randomness and grid spacing (see figure 5).Whilst experimenting with different sections of the pixel polly effect I discovered lowering the grid spacing created slight smaller confetti which when used in conjunction with larger versions it creates the impression of more confetti allowing for a bigger explosion to be created (see figure 6).  Furthermore on receiving feedback from peers the movement of the hat has been edited by adding more points of movement (see figure 7) to create a smother transition and avoid the hat overlapping parts of the head such as the ear which occurred in earlier experiments (see figure 4).  

Figure 1

Figure 2

Figure 3

Figure 4

Figure 5

Figure 5

Figure 6

In order to further refine this animation for use within the website the confetti pieces have been made smaller to greater a larger explosion by reducing the grid spacing further to 2. By changing the shape to textured square different shades of confetti are created creating a more realistic explosion which is aided by increasing the speed randomness to 100% which is shown more effectively when used with a smaller grid spacing (see figure 7). Furthermore upon refining the animation I discovered the ability to change the anchor point of specific layer which allowed for the movement of the hat to me much smoother by moving the anchor point to match the point where the hat pivots from (see figure 8). 

Figure 7

Figure 8