After Effects: Old Work (And New May Be Coming)

I'm getting a separate machine for video pretty soon. I'm very excited about it. It's last year's top-of-the-line iMac, and it'll come with all kinds of video editing software, including Adobe After Effects.

I spent a lot of time in After Effects five or six years ago. It seems kinda cheesy to me now, but at the time, I was very proud of this piece:



I also like this one:



To make this, I drew 34 pictures of my hand in pencil, and then traced over 17 of them in Flash. I had wanted to use all 34, but couldn't for some reason. I attempted to use Flash tweening, but it couldn't handle the job. Instead, I just hand-morphed each line somehow. I don't recall all of the details, but I remember it was a lot of work.



Actually, it's funny. I had the same experience with this hand animation that I had with Archaeopteryx and Towelie. I had a specific end in mind, and I had to try several different approaches before I found the one that worked.