Animation Entry #2: After Effects & Storyboards

Learning to animate in After Effects has been a bit of a challenge in terms of getting familiar with the software. Thankfully Adobe products have similar iconography so that helped me out.

The storyboard idea I had this week was animating a vinyl on a turntable. I looked through different images and videos on google and YouTube to learn the movement of the different parts. My idea is to have a hand pull out a vinyl from its sleeve and throw it onto a turntable like its a frisbee. The plan is to use slow-ins, arcs and exaggerations in the animation.

I gathered my assets from the web and had some friends send over some vectors they had. I'm still trying to figure out the nitty gritty of how I want the animation to play out but I made a rough storyboard with the main beats I want to hit. I used Storyboarder's worksheets and drew out the storyboard on paper because I prefer to draw on paper than digitally.

So in the storyboard we have a hand remove the vinyl from it's sleeve, throw it like a frisbee and it lands on the turntable and it starts to play. I'll be adding slow-ins in the first frames and then use arcs for the throwing motion. Maybe add secondary motion with the hand in some parts as well. To finish it off the turntable may start to move around the canvas almost like a bicycle. The tone arm of the turntable on top of the vinyl reminds me of a bicycle gear, so I may animate it as such to play with the viewers expectations.