One of the most recent assignments I was given during my study at SintLucas was to follow three separate learning courses: Creating a vector character within Adobe Illustrator, modeling and animating a 3D scene within Blender, and learning how to animate in Adobe After Effects. Our teachers would give us instructions on how to accomplish this during every MOD lesson, which took place each Monday and Thursday.
At the end of term 7, we would have to combine all of our newly acquired knowledge into one final product and present it to our teachers. This final product would need to be an animation in Adobe After Effects that showcases a two-dimensional character implemented into a 3D animated environment.

This Behance project aims to cover my work process and show you every step I took in accomplishing this goal.

The first assignment we were tasked with was to create a vector character of ourselves within Adobe Illustrator. To do this, we first needed to do some practicing in Adobe Illustrator, since many of us had never used the program before. I chose to create some custom emojis, since that would be a simple enough challenge while also teaching me how to properly create vector shapes.

After that, we had to create a sketch of the proportions of a human body within Photoshop. We had to make sure that the sketch was anatomically accurate, meaning that it would need to have the same proportions as a real human body and follow the same set of rules so that it would look correct.

Once the sketch was complete, we needed to gather images from the internet that were in a specific kind of visual style that we liked. After analyzing the images, I noticed that most of them have very round shapes and simple flat colors with little to no texture, so I ended up choosing for a simple style with cartoonish shapes and flat colors to keep everything simple and not make things too hard for myself.

After that, we had to make individual layers for every limb. One for the torso, one for the head, one for the feet, etc. Every layer had to be named correctly and had to be put in the right order so that the shapes wouldn't be obstructing each other.

Now that everything was in order, I had to draw the limbs using the tools that Illustrator provided, such as the shape tool, the pen tool, and the object merge tool, and give them the right colors, making sure that the joints would be able to rotate correctly by rounding them off into perfect spheres.

The second assignment was to model a 3D environment within Blender and animate it. We needed to create a stylized environment with several moving objects to improve our scene building and animating skills.

The first step we needed to take to achieve this was to look for reference images online and create a simple sketch of what we would want the environment to look like within Photoshop, after which we would have to ask our teachers and classmates for feedback.
After analyzing the reference images, I concluded that my scene should include various pieces of scrap and have an unkept and messy feel to it in order for it to truly feel old and abandoned. This could be done by scattering random every day objects around the scene, covering the floor in small sheets of paper and plastic, and having the lights illuminate the scene with a dim glow where most of the lighting comes from the sun instead of the indoor lighting.

The first set of feedback that I received for the sketch was that the right wall was a bit empty, and that it would need to be populated a bit more with decorations and props.
The second set of feedback mentioned that I should add more small details to the overall scene to make it more clear what some of the smaller parts were meant to represent.
After adding all the feedback into my work, I eventually ended up with something that both I, my teachers, and my classmates were satisfied with.

Once the sketch was finished, I moved on to modeling the environment in Blender. I first started with a simplified scene consisting out of simple shapes so that I could focus on the position of the objects and the camera, after which I refined the 3D models, added textures, lights, and added a grease pencil outline to the entire scene in order to give it a bit of a stylized/2D/hand-drawn look.

The third part of this assignment was to learn how to animate within Adobe After Effects. We had never really done something like this before, so it was quite the challenge for us, but with the help and guidance of our teacher we managed to create some pretty cool things.

For this part, we would have to import various Photoshop files into After Effects, learn how to change their position, rotation, and scale, turn them into digital puppets, and make them 2.5D to create the illusion of depth. All of this would be done during practice sessions at the beginning of every Thursday by following the tutorials that were provided to us by our teacher, and thus didn't really require any research or analyzation.

I did conclude, however, that I wanted to try to make my work stand out a bit more and take an original approach. To accomplish this, I decided to add extra details and effects to my animations, such as rainbow colors, bloom, 3D lighting, paper backgrounds, and my own sense of humor.

My teacher also gave me some feedback on my work. At first, I couldn't get the motion tracking to work in the final animation, but my teacher recommended to me that I place the trackers in high contrast areas, which helped out a lot. My teacher also told me to remove the rain so that it wouldn't occasionally obstruct the high contrast areas, which further increased the quality of the motion tracking and made it a lot smoother.

Now it was time to combine all of my new skills together into one final product. As mentioned earlier, this final product would have to be an animation within After Effects that makes use of a 3D animated background with a 2.5D animated vector character from Illustrator.

To accomplish this, I first looked up several tutorials on YouTube so that I would know what kind of techniques and methods I could use to reach my goal and form a solid plan.
The tutorials that I ended up using can be accessed via these links:

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idHSHCx_234
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFUXYeINxJs

After I finished watching the tutorials, I concluded that I would need to create a folder with a set of PNGs in a specific order where their file names would contain a set of numbers that counted up by one digit for every new frame, and create a custom rig for my vector character so that it could be animated more easily.

I then re-watched the tutorials and carefully followed along so that I could replicate the same effects and get the same end results, during which I created a new After Effects project and imported both the PNG sequence from Blender as footage with an alpha channel, and the Illustrator vector character as a composition with individually pose-able limbs. I then rigged the character so that its limbs would stay attached to each other and be easier to animate.

After that, I animated the vector character, positioned him in the doorway, added a mask over his left arm so it would look like he was pushing the door open, and finally painted a sunset background using Nvidia Canvas to expand the scene beyond the inside of the building.

All in all, I'm very happy with how everything worked out. I'm very satisfied with the end result, and I believe that I've learned a lot of new useful skills that will almost certainly help me out in the future.

There were some things that I could have done better, however. There were a couple of mistakes that I made which I would like to have fixed, such as the vector character's silhouette having a rectangular black outline in the final video, but sadly I was unable to do so due to strict time limitations, other important assignments and exams occupying my time, and allergies hindering my workflow and efficiency. I think that next time, I would definitely try to plan things out more ahead of time so that I can have more room to experience setbacks and obstacles like these without them causing any major problems.

I've had a lot of fun working on this assignment, but it has also taken up a lot of my time, probably more than I'd like. I think that another thing that I could potentially improve upon in the future is to try to spend less time on my projects by leaving out small unimportant details and focusing more on what's really important. That way, I can save a bunch of time while the quality of my work doesn't drastically decrease.

Even though I encountered some problems, I still think that everything went pretty well. I handed the assignment in before the deadline arrived (if the servers don't go down again, that is), and I'm very pleased with how everything ended up in the end.