Overview

For two weeks, I worked hard on my new project. It was to draw your own character, import it into PhotoShop, clean it up, and then put it into AfterEffects to animate it. This was something new to me - scanning my drawing into a computer file.

PhotoShop

First thing I learned to do was how to scan something using the cool machine in our classroom. After that it was 2 tries of trying to import that fresh PNG file into PhotoShop, which I realized on my second try that the reason it looked so blurry was because I was on a quarter view. Yeah. After that hiccup I was back to stuff I already knew how to do: using the paint bucket, wand tool, brush, etc. from my time in Microsoft Paint.

AfterEffects

After about 4 days of polishing my character, who I based off of Sackboy from LittleBigPlanet, I imported him into AfterEffects. Oh. Ohoho. I spent twenty minutes trying to figure out why he was importing so blurry, until I asked my teacher for help and he pointed out that I was on a quarter view. Again. After THAT hiccup I was again back to what I knew how to do: using rotation, anchor points, and position to make Sackboy walk across my screen. When I first used the null object tool to move him across the screen, I managed to make his footsteps line up perfectly with his walking speed on the first try. He started in the middle of the screen, though, but I was too scared of messing up my accomplishment, so I just made him fall from the sky to let him land in the same place.

That was something I could have definitely done better, along with a background that was actually made by myself. I do think I did well on actually drawing my character, though. We're gonna be starting a new project very soon actually, and I can't wait to see what it is.