Free time hobby

Yesterday I delivered a project which had similar illustration style to this one I have shared, however it was made for kids so it didn't have many motion elements to it as it is advised not include to many motions in videos made for kids of age between 2 to 5.

So I made this one as a hobby to see what happens if I add motions and noise to it and the result was what I expecting, phenomenal!

Tools

I am not a talented designer myself so when it comes to animating in my free time I pick my materials instead of designing them, although I design most of my works but this particular one has been picked from Freepik, make there are tons of such designs.

You can download the illustration on Freepik

I have used several plugins here and I strongly recommend them to any motion designer, unfortunately I can not mention them here so if you like them to know send me a message here.

Background

In vintage and somewhat modern illustrations such as this you always see repeated lines, shapes of any kind and of course dots for background. This simple yet beautiful technique is what draws me to such works. In my opinion beauty is in simplicity and this art is a good example of it.

Design elements

Arc

Just search vintage vaporwave on google and every time you see an arc shape design element in these works, however not all of them are what they should be, this one I used in the animation is simple but a good fit in the whole work.

Leaf

I used a simple method to animate leaf in here, just use a rotation keyframe and make it move like it is dropping, add a cc bend it effect to it and simply bend it in the rotation direction, keep in mind sometimes you need toComp(value) code for starting and ending points of cc bend it effect, I am not gonna tell when but you'll notice if you get to work.

Pillar

This specific element unlike its looks has the most keyframes, this might look easy to achieve but trust me bouncing animation can be tricky every time to do it. That is why sometimes I use motion tools and use the bouncing expression code it provides but still it has its own issues.

I suggest you checking out many tutorials on YouTube for that and then get back here and do it without plugins. Still you can use plugins here but I don't advise it.

Also take a close look to the ball here, you'll see a bulge effect look to it when it is in air, this is one of the most used principles in animation, you can make it look more stretched in your animation if you like but it makes it look cartoonish and may not be a good choice for this artwork.

Disk

This disk here is why I use overlord and suggest it to almost everyone.

One of the issues with aftereffect when you transfer an eps or ai artwork to it is lack of gradient support in exporting.

There is no clear reason of why it is like that while aftereffect it self has a much more advanced gradient effects compared to illustrator.

With overlord we can over come the issue but it is not only that, overlord also provides a neat way of exporting grouped and clipped layers in aftereffect which you simply can not do that if you export ai or eps files manually into aftereffect, simply put it's the aeux of UI designers with a more sophisticated team behind it.

Micro animations

Simple and yet most important part of a good motion design.

As you can see there are lots of more detail in these animations compared to last design elements, this is what that distinguish a good and a bad designer.

Take a note from someone who made this mistake before, do not neglect tiny elements and animate them regardless of what they are and how small they can be.

I am not saying we have to add keyframes to each of these separately and make it harder for us to finish a project but we can use expression codes for most of these elements.

take floors or the window design element here as a good example of expression codes, these two are entirely animated with codes and except for path animations everything is just codes.

Posterize Time effect

Make a good use of this effect, in large works it can be a game changer and make your project look more professional but keep in mind not to over use this.

Get in touch

I always like to hear from you and teach new designers if I can

You can send me a message here but keep in mind I might be slow to answer since I use here just for showcasing my work and nothing more.

You can send an email instead which I answer much faster.

Grab the link on my profile.

Thanks and have a great time, Let me hear you feedback.

Hosein