Ants: Flash to AE
Reworking a Flash cartoon into an After Effects motion graphic project
UPDATE:
Project history:
Ants was a title sequence for a Flash Cartoon I made years ago. It was confined to 12 fps, no textures, and audio streaming, so never satisfied my goals for it. As I develop character rigging and build 3D environments in After Effects for my Trollie project, I wanted elements I could play with. So I pulled the original storyboards and FLAs.
Since it had been a title sequence the framing was built around words, so pulled those which meant composition was off. I export out the main actions scenes as pngs into Photoshop, play with the frame, shift sequence around, and make sure there is a logical flow.
I export a Quicktime movie from Flash CC. In Premiere I combine the stills and movie into a new roughcut.
I redraw the ant in Illustrator, all segments on seperate layers, and tryout several textures. I import these into After Effects, retaining layers, and see what lights and Z space can bring to the character.
Happy with the look, I rig the ant for a walk cycle. There are so many sections to think about, anticipation and follow through: What a front foot step does to the abdomen? Do eyes blink as body lifts into the air? How does one act march with other ants? So I run walk tests:
Walk Cycle 1
This is a uniform step between all ants, which is a metaphor for unity, but visually boring. So with Time-Remapping I stagger the step.
Walk Cycle 2
The stagger gives the impression of action/reaction, where one Ants step pushes anothers step forward.
Unflashing the look or the Forest for the Trees...
Flash has an inherent look and if that's what I wanted, great done, but I want to bring my sketching style and vector style closer together. This is the point of using AE. I've embraced the Blob Brush for Illustration and Icons, so want to see how I can use it for motion.
Next, seperate this AI onto an AE stage to figure out the lights and camera. Wish projects were a job that pays,