This is the first time I started using After Effects. I managed to import all the layers from a Photoshop file with ease. I chose one of the first five shots from the film since I felt the way I had animated the layers by hand seemed a bit forced. I wanted a more natural feel to the movement by animating the camera as opposed to each layer individually.
I used this scene to work through several tutorials I found online. I understand the principle of what needs to be done, but every tool had to be located in the myriad of nested folders and windows. My biggest discovery was that the escape key toggles between this flat composition camera and a 3D camera of the scene. The breath layer imported lower than it should have so I needed to figure out how to move it up. In this image I hadn’t discovered how to do that yet.
I found a complicated tutorial that involved adding a null to the scene and parenting that null to the camera. The Z value was then set to zero and the null would have the same location as the camera. That parent was then turned off and all the other layers including the camera were parented to the null. The Z values of the null could then be used to transform each layer back in space.
That all sound like a foreign language, right? Well to me it is. I struggled with the steps three separate times and each time, the layers ended up moving a clump of layers rather than each individually. I kept problem solving but ultimately this first evening I never got that null to work. I tried just moving the camera using red, green and blue arrows. Green stands for the Y axis, red stands for the X axis and blue stands for the Z Axis. That is probably the most important thing I learned.
My first steps in this new world were not entirely a failure. By messing around I stated to learn how to navigate this 3D space.
