National Geographic - Production in After Effects

This is my first real attempt at After Effects so I did have to refresh my memory with some Youtube clips about pretty simple things like setting up compositions, importing files as well as fiddling around with and manipulating my Assets.

I imported my assets into AE and followed my paper edit storyboard. Using the slow in and slow out effect really made the biggest difference as the objects looked too mechanical when moving at a consistent pace.

One Issue I had was that my assets would pixelate when they were scaled. I went online to figure out how to prevent this from happening. As long as the little sun symbol is active, the objects will remain rasterised. The website I pulled this from is below:

Here is my first draft:

Something I know I would like to change is the transition between the laptop and the iPad so that it looks like the Laptop is closing and opening into an iPad. it might also be interesting to rotate the object horizontally as it closes.

I also tried using a dark grey background which actually looks really nice. It would also be quite consistent with the website as the website does have a dark background with white type. This means I would have to change the colour of the type for the logo. Mmmh...

I will continue to tweak and refine my project tomorrow. The next step would be to find some video footage of subjects pertaining to the National Geographic Channel and importing them into my project. My plan is to use a clipping mask to contain the footage within the objects I have animated.

I also have yet to find a soundtrack to my Ident! I am imaging something adventurous and rhythmic..