WAVES ALL DAY

After Effects Animation by Cullen Westbury

Growing up on the east coast, I always loved the way the water blends with the sky on a beautiful summer day out on the water. My family often spent days cruising the rivers of eastern Virginia. This After Effects project is meant to reflect all of those priceless, peaceful days on the water.

The breakdown goes as follows:

As mentioned before, the first frame takes place at the part of the day when the light reflects the water and results in nearly perfectly smooth as glass water. I used a 3d layer to create the water texture, bent it in 3d space, and increase the rate at which the fragments moved to create the awesome ripples within the water. I used a layer for the water that was only slightly darker than the sky, and turned the opacity to 10%. I also had a 20 mm camera zooming out from the man on the jetski.

I made sure to get as much movement as I could to emphasize the ripples in the water. It took a lot of effort to animate each individual cloud, as well as both rotate and move the sun, but it was well worth the time. I duplicated, and reflected each layer and moved them under the 3d layer that I created to make the reflections.

In this scene, the camera continues to move backwards. I also had several different layers for the sky and simply animated the opacity of both the sky and water so that it would seamlessly fade into the next scene,

At this point the sky is faded to the crisp, cooler sunset colors. This is one point in the project that I really would have spent more time if I had it. It does no justice at all to the beautiful sunsets on the water.

I wanted to fade away from the man on the jetski, so I continued to animate the camera movement back in 3d space, so that I could better prepare for the grand finale ending.

Here I animated the opacity of the moon as well as the stars so that they would slowly move into place. I create one star as an asset and then simply duplicated and animated each star so that it would blink at different times. I again set the opacity of the sky so that it would slowly fade to black.

One of my favorite parts of this project is the transitions. Here the moon is slowly being animated downward, to create the final scene. Here I had the camera in a stationary spot and Made sure to duplicate and reflect anything in the sky so that it would be visible in the water. Anything under my 3d adjustment layer took the ripple effect which made for an awesome show.

One of my best decisions was making sure not to make the moon white. Here the moon is in place, the stars are glowing, and in the video you can see the shooting star fly acroos the sky. The water layer from earlier was faded into a dark blue and the dark water and dark sky contrast the brighter moon. The gray moon and star give the needed touch to recreate the feeling of a night on the water.

THE PROCESS

Sketch Storyboard

Create Animatic

Create Assets

Rough Animation

Polish Animation

Add music

the original storyboard was really rough, but making an animatic helped me to understand where I wanted to go from the start. I actually ended up changing the road and the traveler to water and a jetski. How cool is that!?

Here we can the see the different assets that I created. As you can see, it doesn't take a ton of different layers to make a scene. I put each asset on it's own layer so that I would be able to animate it. I spent a lot of time designing the sun and it is made up of about 15 different elements. As you can see, I also only made one single star and simply resized and duplicated it within After Effects

I had a grand total of 30 different layers that I was working with on this project. Many of them were simply duplicates that I created individual key frames for. In order to easily manage the entire project, I spent a lot of time using the shyguy to help me organize and hide the layers that I was not using.

This project took a lot of work and time. I gained a whole new appreciation for anyone who is able to animate effectively. I find it amazing how the smallest details often make the biggest impact. After getting the animation down, I used a copyright song by Ross Bugden to add the icing on the cake.

This project is unique and hits close to home for me. I did my best to recreate the feelings of awe that I get when being out on the water. I made sure to follow the general rules of composition to insure that my project made sense and stayed interesting. The entire process was full of learning, and I am super grateful for the chance that I had to make one of my ideas come to reality. This animation project focused on contrast, from the clear calm sky to the reflecting water, to the bright sun and ending with the moon, to even the moon shining in the dark night.

I had a great time animating and I am so excited to make another project with After Effects in the near future!

-Cullen Westbury