The idea behind my animated logo was already planned. It seemed petty obvious to me that I had to animate the ladybug flying into frame and landing and morphing into the final logo.

First, I had to make some adjustments to the actual logo to get separate parts that could be animated. I adjusted the clipping masks and moved each part onto its own layer.

Then, I had to figure out a way to incorporate the middle stylus part into the animation, so it felt like it had a purpose and wasn’t just there. My idea originally was that the stylus also resembled bug antennas, but I had to figure out how to animate those where they would end as one piece. I decided that my best option was to triple that element, animate two of them as antenna, and animate the other one as the middle of the stylus. In-class, we learned how to animated elements to seemed drawn on and that was the perfect way for me to animate the middle part rather than just having the opacity rise from zero in its place.

I found the ability to animate a composition within a composition very useful. First, I animated the logo’s parts in its own composition; this consists of the antennas wiggling and the wings rapidly flapping. Then, I animated the logo’s position, scale, and rotation in the larger composition to make it fly around the composition.

I scrolled through music and sound effects for awhile to find the ones I liked. I wanted the music to be whimsically but not sound like a fairytale, so that left limited options. It only seemed right that the sound effect would be a flying bug, to make the ladybug seem more realistic.

I really enjoyed this project and had fun learning more about using After Effects. This semester was my first time using After Effects, and this was only more second exposure to it ever. I never though I would get into animation, but know I have so many ideas how I can incorporate animation into my advertising composition and portfolio work. I believe this will elevate make my work stand out and i am excited to build even more skills within this application.