As a task I had to get all of my User Interface elements and animate them on to a moving image. The programme that I used was Adobe After Effects CC 2015 and Adobe Photoshop CC 2015 to arrange all the various layers and create certain features such as the map markers and the different stages of the speedometer. Considering I was knew to using this programme I was limited to the things I could do however this is only a rough idea as to how I want the elements to move. The team I chose to animate was ‘Team Viper’, the green team. Just like my original plans I planned to have all the text the same for my UI elements to show professionalism, I used the font Monaco.
My first step was converting all of my Adobe Illustrator CC into psd. files so I could manipulate each layer as well as the files being easier to use. I then proceeded to add the UI elements that would be inactive thought my clip- my speedometer border and team logo (I added the wrong one at first). When adding my speedometer I altered the brightness but clicking the tab Effect> Hue/ Saturation because I found that the border was too dark for the player to see. The next part was adding the numbers to the speedometer so it seemed that the ‘players’ speed was gradually increasing, I only increased the units by 5 or 10, but if was the real game then the numbers would go up by one.
The next part of my speedometer I had to animate was the gradient speed bar, this was challenging because I didn’t know to animate it the way I wanted but I did find a similar way in which to do it. I got the original bar from my speedometer and erased a large section to make it appear that the speed was low. I saved each speed bar so it could represent a certain speed, I only made 5 bars. To animate the bars, all I did was fade them in and out over the top of one another to appear synchronised with the units on the speedometer.
The next UI element that I worked on was the map which I previously planned to be in the bottom left corner. I designed the map shape and colour in Cinema 4D and converted in to a png. file so I was able to use it on After Effects CC. My idea for the map was that it would rotate on the spot and constantly have the players car maker facing north and staying roughly in the same position, additionally half of the map would be faded out so it doesn’t obstruct the players’ view (I didn’t know how to do that so I just left the entire map for now). The tool used to change the position of the map was Position, I would add a point on the timeline if I wanted to move it a certain way and alter the y and x axis. On the other hand I used the Rotation tool and changed the angle accordingly. As well as map I added the lap times and placement, just like my original plan and made them increase in number over the period of time, just like the speedometer. To show the difference between each teams I added two marker points, one being blue and the other green to show that there was a race happening. Lastly I changed the logo at the top left because I put the wrong logo in at first.
After adding all of my UI’s the final step I had was to add my sound loop, the sound loop I decided on was Sound Loop 3 because it’s the most upbeat out of the three and the transition between each sound is smooth.
KCIMGD- Nichola Humphreys 