When beginning this project, I found John Whitney’s motions graphics that have triangles layered over top of one another. I love simple geometrical patterns. I then created a mood board. It included a lot of geometric triangular and square patterns as well as black and white patterns. When I looked over my mood board, it didn’t feel ‘space-like’. I went back to try and search for more space-oriented images. I was drawn to the magentas, purples, and blues of nebulas, but was worried about trying to re-create these images on After Effects. The combination of a lack of software experience and a prompt made me nervous, but the next day, I was staring at my phone case which has a sun on it. I immediately decided I would start with creating a sun. I wasn’t in love with this idea because I thought it seemed too obviously aligned with the theme of the prompt. However, I saw it as a starting place.
My process revolved around sketching images that pulled from concepts in images online and then thinking about what tools in After Effects I could use to make my ideas come to life. I found an image online that had vertical black and white striped lines, so I sketched an image of a sun with vertical stripes on top of it. I figured I could use a repeater to do this. This idea later morphed into the kaleidoscope effect with the white strips on top. During the beginning of my process, I focused on using the tools that were required for my prompt such as a repeater, trim paths, a kaleidoscope, and a fractal. I used these as a base that I later built off of. For example, originally, the sun wasn’t textured, but just solid color. I thought it looked too simplistic, so I added the Scatterize effect. Later on, I found the Starburst effect which was a pivotal moment for me. It looked just like the speckles of a galaxy. I figured this effect could be re-occurring and a sort of back up plan for if I couldn’t figure out to create a space-like feel in other parts of my motion graphic. However, it became something that wasn’t a back-up plan anymore, but something really intentional, and one of my favorite parts of the piece.
There are a couple parts of my motion graphic when motion completely stops. I’ve realized this doesn’t work. It seems un-intentional and glitch like rather than purposeful. The parts that work best are when I have a combination of different kinds of motion. There’s a moment when I have the Starburst effects in the background with the Kaleidoscope effect on top. They both move at the same time in different directions, making the images more dynamic.
Art can be intimidating, especially a 3-6minute assignment after struggling through just 20 seconds, so I found it really helpful to give myself time limits. When my timer went off, I moved on to the next part of my video. I continued in this way until I had 3:00 minutes. I spend a solid few days on the first 30 seconds of the video because I wanted it to be perfect before I moved on. However, I found that it was more productive for me to create a rough draft of sorts the way I do when writing papers and then to go back and focus on specific parts of the video, perfecting that portion. After creating the base and making specific sections as perfect as I could with the time that I had, I worked on the transitions. I had really harsh transitions that I wanted to smooth out. I played around with opacity and scale to do this. I’m still not completely happy with my transitions, but I plan to continue working on them. While making this graphic, I realized that 1) transitions add time and 2) I don’t need a new idea for every second of the video. A good chunk of the video was a merely the kaleidoscope effect, I just altered the size, scale, opacity, and color. I learned that I could use the same shapes and effects repeatedly if I just altered one aspect of it. Like most things, starting to make a piece of art is the hardest part, but I continuously learn that I have to just see what happens, explore the software and click undo if I don’t like how it comes out. I’ve also realized spending less time imagining images in my head and more time actually in the software seems to be more effective. 
