So here is the next design problem I am attempting to solve - easily moving from an animated timeline to a series of clips without having to reinvent the keyframe wheel each time. The main principle here is that the clips need to feel LINKED to the timeline. In previous examples (here and here) I was basically living by my wits making it up as I went along... This time I need a more sustainable process for those upcoming bigger projects in my day-job.
Rough sketch of animation states - drawn while eating porridge in my kitchen.
Mocked up states in Affinity Designer. I took proportionate screen grabs from the West Worthing video.
It was very frustrating trying to get this to work. Too many moving parts! The problem is that once you start animating a dialogue box (and drop-zone) you have to be ready to apply it to a wide range of possibilities. This is something I don’t currently have time for so I trimmed it all back to something more simple and workable.
Here is the sample piece I arrived at:
And my process:
1: Trim whatever content I have in shot using FCP into a single timeline. Make sure that there are a three or more seconds built in at the start of each usable sequence for the transition between Motion-designed material and the video clips.
2: In Affinity Designer - segment the vector timeline into pre-decided sections (based on content in step 1).
3: Import into Motion (via Pixelmator) and animate with FCP-friendly pauses using the ‘write-on’ behaviour.
4: Decide camera compositions bearing in mind where each video insert is going to pop up. Sometimes it might be good to use a whole screen (some video deserves it) and occasionally as a smaller inserted clip.
5: Use the AddMotion A-B setting (see image below for what I did). Notice that whatever A-B settings you end up using - copy that adjustment layer, swapping it out for the B-A reverse. Change the transition to 2 seconds. It works well I think.
The AddMotion plug-in.com/info/osmaddmotion/ does a lot of very useful heavy lifting in FCP.
6: Notice that I am using an adjustment layer to apply AddMotion clips to the timeline. This becomes a little tricky when you have multiple clips stacked on top of each other… solve this by using the ‘behind’ blend mode (see below). It’s a great fix.
This is the first time I have used this blend mode - I picked it up from the Ripple guys on YT.
So the built-in limitation with this solution here is that it can be perhaps a little… ploddy?
This is the design I was pressing for - something formula-driven that can be relatively easily-repeated without me crying at night. For those more funky everything-is-moving designs I will likely build it all in Motion.
I hope that this will be a format that can be applied to a number of stories.