Name - Motion Graphics 2 course masking project

Assignment:
Name Game - Using animated masks to animate letters of name becoming a creature then exiting off screen. (One week.)


Intro
Name.
Acting as an introduction, I guess I'll say a little about myself. (For those uninterested, feel free to jump ahead to the tech part.)
My full name is Tao-chia Karen Chin. I go by Karen Chin. Why? Because I was born with a English name.
To be fair, I do have an awesome and utmost unique Chinese name and I'm totally fine if I were to be called by it, only if it were pronounced in Chinese (yes, with accentuation). So if anyone were to ask me how do you pronounce Tao-chia? Tao-chia. It's spelled out in English, not French. Just a useful tip: Chinese names in English are mostly all phonically translated to English, therefore just pronounce the letters the way you would in English, you'd get it right. If not, they're just playing with you, saying it in Chinese. You really think Yao Ming is how his parents call him?
As for how Eastern educational systems teach students to come up with a pleasing English name to sound cool or to match their stereotypical profile... yeah, that's a whole new can of worms.

The "tech part"
1. To come to think of it, I think I have a thing for kitty tigers. No specific reason (no, I'm not a zodiac tiger) they're just cool.
2. I like Mael font. It looks cool but there's never a chance to use it and nobody will read anything in Mael longer than a phrase.
So sad.
3. So I decided to use a cool font to transform into a cool creature and make magic then transform into cool birds.



It was the first week of school still fresh and full of juice. AE fun! :D
The idea and process of execution was pretty simple:
Letters morphing to kitty-tiger with CHIN stripes (haha see what I did there) -> something within the letters -> flying birds
Tweaking points -> track matte -> masking footage

Hmm... that was short.

Revisiting
Sped things up a bit and did a little bit of cleaning...
I shall not shoot myself in the foot by pointing out if you look closely the watermarks and the edges of the flying birds footage were totally obvious.



2012.09.05





Send me back up plz...