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COMM 491 Advanced Digital Video Editing

Dancing Mannequin

Assignment

Use After Effects parent-children relationships to create an animated dancing mannequin.

Procedure

1. Download this folder (right-click on the link and "save link as"). Inside you will find two versions of an Adobe Illustrator file called "mannequin". One is a CS4 versions and requires After Effects CS4 or newer. The other is an Illustrator-10 file and should be compatible with most older versions of AE.
2. Launch After Effects. Go File > Import and select the appropriate file for your version of AE. In the import widow, choose "Import as Composition—Cropped Layers," this will preserve the layers in the Illustrator document, allowing for each to be animated separately.
   
3. Open the composition (double-click on the composition icon in the project window). Notice how each layer appears in the timeline.
4. Go to the Composition Settings. Set the duration for 15 seconds, and the rate to 29.97 frames per second.
5. Assign child-parent relationships under "Parent" in the timeline. Outer extremities should be children of inner body parts; for example, the left foot should be the child of the left shin, which should in turn be the chid of the left thigh, which should be the child of the pelvis, which should be the child of the torso. The torso should be the ultimate ancestor of all body parts.
6. Move the anchor points. Use the Pan Behind tool to drag the anchor (or pivot) points for each body part to its joint. For example, the pivot point of the foot should be the ankle; the pivot point of the shin should be the knee; the pivot point of the thigh should be the hip and the pelvis' pivot point should be at the waist, just below the torso.
7. Import a piece of music, preferably something up tempo.
8. Make your mannequin dance! Use keyframes and the rotate tools to animate your mannequin. Hint: use the waveform display to find "peaks"—beats. If you place your keyframes on the beats it'll look like he's dancing to the music.

Above and beyond

You could add a setting (background), or another dancer (or several), or customize your mannequin in some way.

Output

Once the project is done, the next step is to output it to a format that can be easily viewed.

1. Select the composition tab in the layers/timeline window.
2. Choose Composition > Make Movie
3. In the dialog box that pops open name the file yourName_dancingMannequin. Save it to the Data HD (or your own hard drive).
4. The Render Queue should appear over the top of the timeline. Press the orange link that says Best Settings . This will open a dialog box. Choose the following options:
   • For Quality select Best.
   • For Resolution choose Full.
   • For Time Span (near the bottom) choose Length of Comp.
   • Click OK
5. Now press the orange link that says Lossless. In this dialog box choose the following:
   • For Format choose H.264
   • At the very bottom of the window, make sure Audio Output is checked (otherwise your movie will have no sound).
   • Click OK
6. Back in the Render Queue press the Render button. It will take a few minutes (at least) to render.
7. When AE has finished rendering, locate your file on the Data HD and upload it to the drop box on D2L.

Specifications:

• Preset: custom
• Composition size: use size of imported artwork
• Length: 15 seconds
• Output format: H.264 (in an mpeg-4 wrapper)
• Deliverables: rendered video file, NOT the After Effects project file!
• Due Date: week 7 (Feb 22)

Base Grading Rubric

Categories	A	B	C	D
Dancing	Great dance moves; he's really moving to the beat.	Decent dancer; a bit off-beat.	He's not really moving to the beat well.	Has absolutely no sense of rhythm.
Animation	Animation is smooth, complex, well-paced, and makes good use of multiple parent-children relationships	While generally good, the animation is a little rough in spots. A greater variety of body parts could be animated.	The animation is rough or overly simple. Limited body parts are used.	Very little animation is used, and/or it is of poor quality, demonstrating little skill.
Sound & technical	Good quality sound; not technical issues.	Minor technical glitches like clipping sound or wrong length	Substantial technical glitches.	The piece is a technical nightmare.
Above and beyond	Student went above and beyond and added a background, or another dancer, etc.	Student didn't add anything beyond the basics.	na	na