Title Sequence

So I've been drawing a few storyboards, and realised I want to create a really good title sequence. I have created using After Effects before however what I created was quite simplistic and wasn't very focused on the title with this piece of work I want to make the title just as good as the rest of the sequence.

I've seen a few different tutorials out there, however they all require optical flares addition to After Effects, which I don't have access too, therefor I am going to attempt to create something without the use of Optical Flares.

Creating my own optical flare is an option however I think I am going to take a different route with the title and create a few working compositions.

Success

After a few hours messing around researching and trying to find decent tutorials I finally found one which allowed me to create a short cube using a pre made script from aescripts.com

Obviously this isn't what I want, but its a start and I can now start thinking about creating a advert for SearchBox!

After Effects Scripts

I've done some research regarding After Effects Scripts, and found out a fair few things which I didn't know before.

After Effects uses a language called ExtendScript, ExtendScript comes from JavaScript and uses all the same principles that JavaScript does.

To allow yourself to script within After Effects you must first find the ExtendScript Toolkit, to get here navigate to File > Script > Script Editor. This will allow you access to the ExtendScript editor, ExtendScript saves as .jsx file, however you are also able to export as binary, which has the .jsxbin extension.

If you haven't used ExtendScript Editor before to access all of the features please choose Edit > Preferences > General(Windows) or After Effects > Preferences > General (Mac OS), you must then select Allow Scripts to write files and access network option. ESTK Also has a JavaScript Debugger included which is very handy to know to get to this you must go to Preferences > General and Select the Debugger.

When you type script you must save it within the After Effects file, this is so that After Effects knows where to find the scripts. If your files aren't within the folder then After Effects will not be able to find it. 

You are also able to execute scripts from the command line and from AppleScript.

ExtendScript has many functions all are similar to JavaScript;

As you can see there are many different operators out there for the Script if you would like to know what each script do 

Click Here

Youtube Videos

This week I've hunted around Youtube for some videos on how I would like my Rubiks cube to potentially look like.

These have customisable templates so I can atleast get a feel for After Effects again before I start designing my own.

This was one of my favourites, I enjoy the way this flows and the music behind it goes very well, however I feel I could work with this, but would need to make it feel more agile and elegant rather than how it feels at the moment which is all sort of aggresive and angry.

This portrays what I want exactly, however this also seems super complicated to do, this template also costs money, which I am contemplating spending, just so I can see how this works.

Rubiks Cube Template, After Effects

For my project I need to research into Rubiks Cube Templates within After Effects, this will allow me to create a advert for my concept.

Unfortunately no one wants to give information away for free, but I have spoken to my lecturer about this and there is a way to do this through the use of scripts.

So you set one block as the parent and this will control your whole cube, you then make all your other cubes children of this one block. You then create a script saying that when the main on is turning to 140 degrees then one of the other will move to 80 etc. Just so that everything moves at the same time.

I plan to take a week to research after effects scripts and play around with them before I start creating a short motion clip on how SearchBox will work.

Visual Concept Image

I've been working on more visual's this afternoon to show what my project will look like.

So we can see from this the user has typed in Social Networking, and has formed a cube of social networks.

The idea is to get users to touch the icons and the websites load up, so if they hit the blogger image they would be forward onto blogger and so on.

Practice Photo's

So i've spent some time creating practice images in photoshop, I've achieved an image which im not happy with however, it is something for now until i figure out how to actually use the 3D tool properly.

But this is my first attempt at a prototype of SearchCube

It doesn't look much but this was my first attempt obviously I am going to keep perservering with this until I feel that it is right. However from this image I can explain my idea better and hopefully give people a better understanding on how I want the final product to look like.


After a discussion with my lecturer I was reminded how to create vpe's and export them either as a vpe file or as a 3ds file, this allows me to play around and create mock images.

The above image allow for a clear sort of visual of the type of idea i have, the results will differ per cube and wont be the same on each cube. The user will then either swipe left or right to view the different results on the sides of the cubes.

The user will be able to select a cube individually, once selected the user will be able to either swipe, up, down, left or right to view the desired website.

I have put together another image which includes the search bar, and different images.

These are my first drafts sort of things, just so i can represent my concept in some sort of visual form, as personally I sometimes struggle explaining my point.