Commercial Project - Logo Animation 1: Entry 1

For the commercial project I was tasked with creating an animated logo for my University. Fortunately we were given the necessary resources in order to complete the project this being the logo as well as the font (roboto-slab) used for the company title.

I came up with an idea of using motion graphics within After Effects, my rational behind why I decided upon After Effect is that from the online logo animations they were all to a suitable professional standard. The movement of the logos were slick and had the visual appeal of imprinting a strong first impression onto the viewer. A notable example would be Kevin Yang’s “Visual Designer” logo animation, with the logo inside a square formation and the text appear to the right of his logo was something I wanted to create.

I created a brief story board of an idea as a plan for me to see if the concept and action of motion will work rather than jumping straight into development. It was very tempting since I could independently visualise how the University logo will form. The logo will be created with an opening of blue x lines with 2 squares appearing from the centre (One square will have a stroke while the other square will have a fill and be slightly smaller. Both of which will be from the centre point), both shapes would then rotate in 360 degrees. Shortly after this the inner square will enlarge to meet with the outline of the square with a stroke and the logo will then appear inside the square as well as the University name appearing beside the logo. Admittedly the storyboard I’ve cobbled together would be somewhat confusing to decipher but what was most important was that I understood what it meant to me or else this would have been a fruitless endeavour and a waste of time if I didn’t understand my own storyboard.

Within After Effects in a new composition titled “Main_Comp” I made preparations on animating the x lines, this was done by using the pen tool to create a white line from the centre of my composition. I then applied a trim path onto the line. Once I had added key frames across the timeline from the end and start options I was able to have the line move across the screen and have it disappear behind it. But the movement was stiff and the key frames require easy ease to smoothen the animation, this method is done by highlighting the desired key frames and hitting F9 on the keyboard. Once you’ve change the key frames to an easy ease format I then edited the speed between the key frames in the graph editor. Sometimes you’ll have to change the graph, the solution to this is done by right clicking on the graph editor and select the “Edit Speed Graph” option. This allows me to change the ease and speed of the animation making it slick and smooth, once I was satisfied with the animation of the line, I then added a repeater onto the animation this’ll duplicate the line animation and I rearranged the duplicated lines into a X formation.