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V&M Graphics Assignment 1: Creating The Station Ident, Part 2
Continuation…
After adjusting the tint on the warp-in layer of my MLG logo, I then had to create the actual effect of the warping in. In order to this, I could either create a particle system, but after simply browsing around in After Effects looking at the tools available, I found under the simulation tab a pixel polly effect that once I saw I knew I could use for the effect I desired. In order to achieve the effect I wanted, I duplicated the MLG warp-in logo once again, and used the Pixel Polly tool to give the square warp-in effect.
In order to achieve the pulsing effect, I could have probably used an expression, but instead, since it was just over such a short period of time, I just used a few keyframes placed in alter the force through positive and minus values. However, this was not the only keyframes I used to achieve the effect, I also animated a mask in order to reveal the particles from the top down giving the illusion that the particles are slowly working their way down the MLG logo.
In order to get the desired effect, I had to play around with quite a few of the mask settings, and animating them in different ways. After finalising all of the parameters of my mask and pixel polly, I duplicated the layer and then changed the colours of the second one to give a little more variety and depth. To create a little more variety I also changed the force values of the pixel polly on the new layer. The final way I wanted to edit the layers was to change the opacity of the layers just to blend a little better. The final timeline and effect is shown below.
Although this was starting to look like the final effect I wanted, there was still quite a bit of work to do. The next step, was to get the warp-in design how I actually wanted it. To do this, I produced a solid black masking layer above the pixel effect layers to tone down the whole pixel effect and make it so they smoothly faded away instead of stopping at a harsh border. Not only did I have to create just an overall masking layer for the lower pixel effect layers, I also had to create a mask for the MLG logo warp-in, as well as slowly raising the opacity to create the fading in effect coupled with the mask slowly expanding downwards to reveal the logo from the top down.
After creating the final warp-in effect I wanted to achieve, it was then a case of simply fading the pixel effect, as well as the warp-in MLG logo to the coloured version simply by using opacity keyframes.
The only other part to do, minus the touch ups at the end, was the final reveal of the text accompanying the logo, in this case was the name “Major League Gaming” along with the event name, which in this case is “Providence”. Before any judgement is passed on the font used for the major league gaming name, it’s the official MLG font so that’s the reason for choosing it.
After the correct text was added to the scene and faded out at appropriate times, the only thing left was to add some finishing, small touches on. In this case, one of the the small things I added were small glow effects on the text layers. As shown below by the major league gaming text example.
The other slight alteration I made was a sweeping light effect across the MLG logo using the in-built CC light sweep function in After Effects by applying the effect, and then editing some areas in the parameter section to get the effect I wanted such as just changing the width of the light shaft, the intensity from its central point and the angle it was slanting at, and then simply animating it across.
After doing a quick RAM preview, I still felt something was missing from the ident. After thinking about it further, I decided I wanted to do something extra for the tournament name, since having it simply fade in along with the major league gaming text made it seem less impactful. An extremely popular style used for video game trailers and title reveals, is the use of an extended set of light shafts from the letters moving across, so I thought I would use this effect in the reveal of my providence title, the effect was succesful and the final still shot of it in motion is shown below.
Conclusion
Although from this stage I am currently considering this part of my ident complete, I still may revisit it at a further date and add some more little tweaks the finalize the look of my project.
However, as of this point, I will now move on to producing my show bumper, since I already have my idea finalised as mentioned in a previous ideas post.
V&M Graphics Assignment 1: Creating The Station Ident, Part 1
The idea is to produce a short piece of footage using After Effects, to create a generic station ident using a unique, or themed design showing off their logo. In my case, I was producing a set of TV idents for the Starcraft 2 tournament “Providence” of the MLG Pro Circuit set of tournaments.
Producing the Ident
The first thing to do was import the footage I recorded from Starcraft 2, into After Effects. From there I could reposition it and rescale it to my heart’s content, making it the main focus of my canvas and positioning it in the right place.
As shown below, the original footage had the outline of the building I warped in within the actual game.
Since in my actual ident, I wouldn’t be warping in a building from the game, considering my idea was to warp in the MLG logo, I had to make sure this part of the footage was not shown in the final product. In order to achieve this, I drew out a rough mask. Just as a note, ignore the time line in this screenshot as it will be explained later on.
However, the mask wasn’t precise enough, and the probe ended up disappearing behind the mask when it arrived at the warp-in point. In order to correct this, I had to alter the mask shape to be more precise, shown below.
There was however, another problem I didn’t anticipate, and this was the fact that the building in the footage, had a pulsing blue aura, which at times extended beyond the reach of my current mask. In order to do this, I easily extended the mask outwards. However, when the probe got closer, I had to then retract the mask as the probe came inwards, this meant, using keyframes, I had to just adjust the mask shape to hug the probe as it came forward. This can be seen on the timeline in the original screenshot.
The next step for me after finally fixing the original footage, was to take the MLG logo and duplicate it, making one look like it’s half way through warping in to use as my logo throughout the warp in. Although I’m pretty sure I could do this on simply one layer, the method I’m used to and planned in my head utilised two, so I want to stick with what I thought up. In order to do this, I first had to find a suitable version of the MLG logo, and one that I would want to use. Luckily I found a really good one in the fan art section posted below.
After finding the version of the logo I wanted to use, I then proceeded to cut out the selection of the image I wanted, in this case, the logo itself, using Photoshop. After cutting it out, I then proceeded to export it as a .png file so it would save the transparency and imported it into After Effects.
After importing the file into After Effects, and then added it into the composition timeline. As I previously mentioned, I wanted to do this over two layers instead of one, so I duplicated the MLG logo layer, and applied a tint filter to the one I was using for the warp-in logo. Within this tint filter, I adjusted the colours to the same colours used in the warp-in footage by using the eyedrop tool, the result can be seen below.
As you can see, the result is a much more believable warp-in look with regards to the colour. Before I move on, one thing to mention is that there are 2 versions of the clip shown in the screenshot. The reason for this, is due to time constraints on the video duration itself, I decided to speed up the footage taken from the game, however, I still wanted the probe to move at a decent speed, and not look too sped up, so I duplicated the footage, and made it so the probe footage stayed reasonably slow, and when it went off-screen, the clip sped up.
The rest of the production of this specific ident will be covered in a second blog entry.
V&M Graphics Assignment 1: TV Idents
Task
The first video and motion graphics assignment is to produce 3 different pieces of work in After Effects that relate to TV idents. The three pieces of work to be produced are listed below.
- A generic station ident – Between 5 and 15 seconds
- A show bumper – Between 2 and 5 seconds
- A show lineup – Between 5 and 20 seconds
TV idents are used all of the time, in advert breaks, before a program, as the program goes to break etc… some of the more well-known ones are for the main terrestrial channels, such as, BBC1, BBC2, ITV and Channel 4. The brief summary of each of these items to be produced are that the ident itself, is generally a design that shows off the company’s logo, the bumper is generally what is thrown in before a show and an ad break, and finally, the show lineup is, quite literally, what is coming up over the next few hours.
Initial Ideas
For my project, I wanted to ensure I produced the idents based on something I enjoy watching, instead of simply making up my own company or channel to base these idents off. As per usual, I actually had an idea of the subject I wanted to produce my TV idents on as soon as I read the brief.
Ideally, I would produce a set of TV idents for something to do with video gaming. To do this, I would have to consider what professional electric sports, or eSports, am I interested in, and what ones are large enough to attract a large viewing. This was actually no trouble for me at all, since I knew exactly what game I was going to produce the ident for anyway, and that was professional Starcraft 2 tournaments.
However, there are quite a few large Starcraft 2 tournaments and events, so I thought about which one I would rather cover. The big Starcraft 2 tournaments off the top of my head, that I would consider covering, are:
- The Global Starcraft II League – GSL
- Major League Gaming – MLG
- North American Star League – NASL
- IGN Pro League – IPL
- Dreamhack
Choice
To make my choice, I actually decided to look over the currently existing logos for each event, and see if anything came instantly to mind when looking at the logos.
After looking through them, the one that caught my eye immediately was the MLG logo, since I immediately had an idea of what to do for either the station ident, or the show bumper, this logo is shown below.
My idea would be to take the controller from the MLG logo, and draw out, in a similar style, a large variety of different gaming controllers and have it cycle through them at a quick pace giving a kind of slot machine kind of effect, and then have it finally rest of the controller of the MLG logo. After this comes to a halt, I will then have the MLG logo appear to be followed by the controller settling itself into the logo. That seems to be a bad way to explain it but I will try to upload visual aides to this blog as I produce it to help show the effect I’m looking to achieve.
Further Ideas
With regards to the other idents, I have given it a little thought but not too much. For the show ident, I actually wanted to produce something reasonably similar to the example video Pete sent us through to do with the anime channel, found here, the part I am referring to begins at 0:23 in the video.
With regards to the style, I wanted to do mine reasonably similar in that I will have an active clip that only takes up a portion of the screen at the time, although my background styling will be different. The main thing I was referring to in this video is the panning style between each movie clip, the kind of whipping action to a different area. This is the kind of effect I want to achieve for my show lineup.
Unfortunately, I haven’t really given the generic station ident a proper thought, and the only thing I could say at this early stage of development in this specific area. As previously mentioned, I considered my initial idea to be used as either the show bumper or the station ident, but after further consideration, I think it would work better as a show bumper over the maximum alloted time of 5 seconds.
Daniel Collins 