We completed an animation workshop with and artist and professional animator called Liam Nunn. He gave us a crash course on digital animation in Adobe After Affects. He created what he calls a “Rig” of the face and shoulders of a lady that we could easily animate. It allowed us to animate her facial movement, eyes closing and opening, mouth opening and closing, eye and eyebrow positions, nose movement etc.

Above is an example of what we started off with and the dots on the lines beneath the lady show when movement is happening corresponding with the number of seconds above the dots. Also what line the dots are on shows what movement is occurring. Animating the image is quite easy as after making one or two movements that you like, you can copy and paste again and again to repeat the movements.

Above is an example of the different movements possible and how they work. To make something move you press the little diamond button to the left of the image that is highlighted blue where you want it to happen on the timeline. When entering a keyframe you can change how much movement is occurring and when it is occurring.

Above is my final animated video. I have made her move and changed her hair colour, clothes colour and face colour. It lasts for 15 second because I have looped it. I have had to compress it into a slightly lower quality to get it onto the blog.