How to Create a Track Matte in After Effects

Sometimes in an animation, it's important to move a shape to do something like turn a head, but if you just move the eyes and mouth, it'll just end up going off the head, like this.
To fix this, you need to use Track Mattes to limit the edges of the face.









Step 1: Click on the "Toggle Switches/Modes" button. This will show the Mode and TrkMat options for all layers you have in your scene. This will be important later as that is how to get the Track Matte set up.





Step 2: Create a new Solid layer under the layer you want to move (the eyes in my animation).







Step 3: Double-Click on the Solid. This will pull up an editor, where you can move around the anchor and transform the layer in other ways. For this, you will need to use the shape tool to make a rectangle on the layer. The size of the rectangle will depend on what it is you want to put a Track Matte on.







Step 4: Close out of the window for editing the layer. After that, in the TrkMat bar you opened earlier, select Alpha on the Solid layer. The layer it says after "Alpha" should be the one you want to mask.




Step 5: From here, use the Transform sliders or just drag the Solid (shown by an empty box) to move the Track Matte box onto the area you want to mask.

If all of this goes right, you should have a working Track Matte, useful for lots of different situations to make a 2 dimentional story look more realistic and give it depth.

Review: "Can a Robot Love?"

YouTube Creators, Corridor Digital, recently made a video called "Can a Robot Love?" using robots and stop-motion to put together a story. The video tells the story of a robot who is unintentionally sent to a junkyard while cleaning. In the junkyard, the robot meets others: some friendly, and some not.

The video was very well made, especially considering the extra steps that had to be included for using robotics. One thing that I felt was especially good was the storytelling. In a story without human characters or dialogue, it's often times hard to portray emotions, but all the robots in the video, even the ones that had no "faces" gave off their own unique feel. A lot of the shots were great, too. The sweeping establishing shots and the close ups of certain actions fit together, adding to the quality. However, as with all videos, there were some small problems. For one, some of the junkyard characters that were stop-motion animated looked a bit clunky at points, breaking the realism. Also, once the action started, it was a bit confusing what was going on. The action scene was really cool after the viewer figures out what's happening, but there isn't enough to introduce it.

There were a lot of things in this video that I would like to use at some point. For one, the use of panning and other movement makes a shot a lot cooler and can establish a location. Also, I think using stop-motion or other forms of animation within a live-action video is an awesome idea, and can make a fantastical situation like the one in the video a lot more realistic.

https://youtu.be/XgsZ6GnFglA

Corridor Digital. “Robots Programmed to Kill!.” Online video clip. YouTube. Youtube, 22 October, 2016. Web. 29 November, 2016.

Tae Kwon Do Feature

After the last feature story I made, I wanted this next one to be better, incorporating all the things that weren't so great last time, and keeping the good things from last time in. First of all, while I originally thought that my idea to do a story on marching band was a good idea (and I still think it could've been), my planning, especially for the B-Roll/nat. sound, was not great, giving me little to work with in the editing. This time, I chose a subject (Tae Kwon Do) that I know a lot about, and I got some much better footage with good sound with it. I was also able to get a variety of shots this time, fitting some more medium and close shots into the video.

I think the interviews were about the same quality as last time. I got the answers that I needed, and the sound was good, but they weren't amazing of anything. I did get some things better, though. For one, last time, the location wasn't very good, being a solid gray wall and a weirdly-lit basement. While I couldn't get a relevant location for Drew's interview, I was able to get Master Stephen's in front of the flags, which ended up being a bit better.

When looking at this video compared to the last one, I'd say that I'm still improving. In the final product, I got much better nat sound than last time, and also just improved a bit on all the other aspects that make a good story. It's not amazing yet, but I'd say that I'm getting closer.

Learning Maya

Earlier last week, I started using Maya for 3-D models, and I'm really liking it so far. Previously, I made a few models in Sketchup, but I feel like Maya will allow me to do much more, especially when we get into the animating characters. My first project was just an intro, testing out all of the polygon tools to make some shapes.

After that, though, I started making a castle. I made the walls and towers with extensive use of the Boolean tools, and also "cut out" a door, but then I added a few things to make the castle look better. First, as the central area was pretty plain, I made a little building in the center, making another door and some windows into it. Then I added some color to the towers. This was hard in some places, as I had already duplicated my towers, meaning I couldn't edit the top individually. However, with a bit more time, I was able to recolor the spires with the Face view. Later on, I learned how to add textures, making the walls look like stone and the flags look like cloth. Although a few things didn't turn out perfectly, this was a good starter for Maya, and I'm looking forward to making better things later.

Marching Band Feature Story

On the News, there are two types of stories: Hard News and Feature stories. Feature stories focus on a specific person, event, or group, and are usually only a couple minutes. For my first feature, I interviewed two Marching Band students about all the commitments that go into marching. I wanted to do Marching Band myself, but my schedule didn't allow it, so I went to see what all they did.

This was my first project where I had to shoot B-Roll, and it went okay... The conditions while I was shooting weren't very good; it had just rained, the band was just practicing marching, not playing, and I had to use my own camera, as the school cameras were all checked out. Even though, I got all the shots I needed, and in a good quality. Looking back, the shot variance wasn't all that good, but I couldn't get too close to the band.



The interviews went well, though; much better than the last project. In my opinion, the questions, audio, and video quality were all improved (which is strange, as I wasn't using a video camera or an external mic). However, the lighting on Miles was not great, and the placement wasn't good, either. The guys I interviewed also gave some great answers, showing the idea I was trying to prove. After I imported the clips into Premiere, I used the skills I had learned on the last interview, plus a few new ones, to make a story I'm pretty proud of. J and L edits were one such skill, which I tried to use as much as I could, but I didn't really have enough footage to do more. Some of the bits, such as the "At Ease" at the end might be a bit cheesy, but I thought it sounded cool. When I put the B-Roll in, I did realize that a few of my shots were shaky or out of focus, but I ended up having enough for the whole video. Overall, though,  this is one of my better projects, and I'm already seeing improvement from earlier in the year.

"The Delivery" Animation

I have 1000 times more respect for every pro animator after this project. 2000 frames and 20 hours of work, and it's only a minute long. But I have learned so much from this, and it's my favorite project I've done in my 1 and a quarter years in e-Comm. This project taught me the process of making a story, from the ever-important storyboard, to the final rendering. In the actual production, I learned so many skills: from styling and the Pen tool in Photoshop, to Track Mattes in After Effects, I've gotten a lot better at both programs.

To make this project, I first had to plan out what I was going to do. I've actually had the initial concept for a while, but making the whole story work and writing a plot took a long time. It was also during the planning phase that I had my first problems, as coming up with all the elements of a story was hard to do for my idea.


 But after that, I got to work, trying as hard as I could to create and animate exactly what was going on in my head and on the storyboard. This
took so long, and I spent all my class time and more just trying to get it done.

What I've gotten done on it so far isn't completely what I really saw in my head, but I'm going to continue working on it, hopefully entering it into e-Magine later this year.

How to make titles in Premiere Pro

When making a video in Premiere Pro, knowing how to make titles can really help in conveying information, especially for news headlines or similar situations. A title, to clarify, is when you have text appear on the screen in some way. It's pretty useful in a lot of situations, like clarifying who someone is in an interview or scrolling text like on a news channel. There are many more situations that would call for titles, so it's an important skill for a video editor to have.

Step 1: Open the title creator with either "Command + t" or by right clicking and choosing "New Item" in the Project tab, where your clips are.

Step 2: In the Title Creator, you can use the tools and the sidebar to make the text look any way you want, but be sure to keep the text within the Title-Safe zone, which is the smaller of the 2 rectangles that will appear in the window.

Step 3: Once you have chosen the style and placement of the text, just exit out of the Title Creator; it will save automatically.

Step 4: Insert the title into your timeline, on the layer above your normal footage. From here, you can add effects and transitions to the title, and change how long it stays on screen.

With titles, you should be able to add a whole new layer (literally and figuratively) to your videos, displaying information in a new way.