CPS - Week 9 - Forces

By Rachael Thompson

CPS Week 9 - Forces

Context:

Forces shape the way we design, create and make. For example the sound and music of video games in the 90s were limited by the size and capabilities of the sound chips in the consoles.

LINK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=11&v=jvIzIAgRWV0

Method:

We all wrote down three 'rules'/'limitations' and put them in a hat.

We then chose three rules out of the hat. I got:

1. Circles are squares

2. Use only greyscale

3. Jump to walk

I chose a car hopping in the snow because I'd just seen an email in my inbox about being careful driving in winter because of weather and ice etc. I thought it would be fun to have a car with square wheels and it would also give it a reason to hop. I added snow partly so I could have little squares falling, but also because I thought something in the atmosphere would be cool and it would give the car another reason (beside square wheels) to jump through the lanscape. It was great to practice using multiple animated layers in AE and also good to practice a jumping movement.

I started animating first in TV Paint but ended up switching to After Effects but with the assets created in TV paint because it After Effects seemed more familiar (and classmate Ben also gave me a couple of tips). It was a great opprtunity to get more familiar with After Effects!

The original placeholder image of the car was a rectangle on wheels, which I replaced with a nice Citron I found on google royalty-free image serach - mostly because I can't draw and I thought it would look cool.

On the first export the composition came out with a black background because I'd forgotten that the backgrounds were transparent. Then I added in a whitebackground and re-exported it - however I'm still not sure which one I like more, the black or white, so I posted both.

Response

I never would have come up with a work like this without being set these limitations by my classmates.

Snow looks cool as squares! Hopping cars are something a bit different. Plus, it was a fun way to learn AE.

Experimenting with different backgound colours can change mood as it turns out - as well as the whole aesthetic.

Overall, there's lots to be gained by limitations and there was an abvious stylistic influence on my work.

Using tweens between keyframes also influenced the way my char character moves in the scene. If I had only been able to use individual key frames I probably would have got a more organic, rough movement.