Starting Logo and Using Particles

This week we started to develop the logo in after effects, and had a try of using a few particle effects.

Firstly, we started to create the assets that we need in all of the different logo designs. I sketched out my idea for the logo first on my drawing pad before creating the assets in illustrator then importing them to after effects. What I want to create is a small plant on a hill that becomes engulfed with bright light as the night sky draws in. Then the bright light clears to show the moon in the sky behind the plant with trickling light from the sky. Then the logo name appears.

The first step (aside from having the idea), is to complete the assets that you want in the VFX sequence. This is the first version of the created assets that I want in the sequence (considering I need more practice at drawing programs I don't know how well I can improve them), the moon and the plant. The best thing I can say about these assets is that they have gradient colour coding.

The other part of the session was learning about the particle effects in after effects.The way that these usually work is from a null object in the scene, but these were created by adding a solid object layer and adding a layer style to it making the center of the scene a different colour than the rest of it.



With this we were able to test out, a few of the particle effects such as CC bubbles and shatter. We had a fiddle with the ones that we could use in the settings to see what we could create. These could prove to be useful and fun to use, but the problem is that only half of the particle effects we could use, the rest would not correspond with the solid layer.

So we are making progress and making new skills in this task, but I feel that given how little people in our group have used this program and the freedom of this small project it can cause you to feel lost in this program with no real guidance.