Stings for the DPI Showreel

Before starting work on the showreel, I set about making some short stings both for me to use and to turn into lower thirds graphics for Rob who would be compiling the full length showreel containing everyones full pieces of work. I used After Effects and a logo file that Jess created in Illustrator. This is the logo that I had to work with:

She gave me both a PNG file and the original Illustrator file. I thought that I could add interest and animation to each of the squares and so opted to import the Illustrator file into After Effects as a composition. This means that each of the layers will be separated out into layers within After Effects and can be animated and manipulated independently. So I first opened the Illustrator file and made sure that each bow was on it's own separate layer to begin with. Which they weren't... thanks Jess. So, once I had made them all on separate layers I was good to go.

I imported them in and set about creating three different animations. Each one would be 5 seconds long and for the most part employ a different idea or gimmick. I decided to do one simple pop in animation where each square pops in one after the other. One where one cube flies over and produces the others. And one where the title cube flaps out and flops down the the other cubes fan out from behind.

I got to a point where the animations were complete but they were really lacking sound. So I broke out my Zoom H6 and got to recording some sound assets. I really enjoy this process as it allows me to add a whole other layer to my work and allows me to really play with the viewers attention and feelings. I can accentuate certain parts and smooth over others. Sound is really important with motion graphics too as it adds so much grounding and plausibility to the motion. It really is essential. Anyway, after a bit of toying around with the sounds and some finessing; this is what I produced:

As you can see the sound really helps to add personality and depth to each animation. It goes a long way to completing the effect and adds a lot of the charm. My favourite of the three is definitely the first one. "Grow and Shuffle" I called it. It has the most intrigue I think. It came together really nicely and the sound effects work really well and cohesively.

And now that I had a few options for stings, I could move onto the showreel.