I was so moved by yesterday’s masterpiece that I decided to do another one today, the overall goal being to learn After Effects and get better at Illustrator. Today, I took a sketch that was the starting point from a tutorial provided by VectorTuts+ here and drew it in Illustrator (I didn’t follow the tutorial as their goal and mine for the finished product were different). The first part of the video illustrates the layers and items in each layer that created the character, a sad emo boy holding a black heart.

This brings us, again, to After Effects where I used the Puppet Pin Tool to animate the blowing of the hair and the twisting of the torso. It’s very basic but it’s a neat (and easy) way to animate for someone who doesn’t intend to create the next Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

Finally, I brought the exported .mov file into Final Cut Pro and layered it over a video I took of my speedometer while driving home this passed December. The music is “Pogo” by my solo music project Kill The Ghoul from the album “JWG.” I’m pretty sure it’s never been heard outside of my house and the apartment it was written in…

Enjoy today’s haiku:

Now After Effects
and Illustrator are done
HTML5