One of the very first projects I worked on was set up by the Business and Innovation team for DPS students across different courses. We were commissioned by the company CAF rail, a Spanish company that manufactures railway vehicles, to create a production for them to use to aid training. They were working on a new train and wanted a more up-to-date training method. The project was split into different components, some dealing with live action while some (including myself) would be creating animations which explain different components
Before we started doing any work on the animations, we got to visit their depot! This was mostly for the film and photography students to plan a schedule for their filming but the animators also tagged along. It was intruiging to see how everything worked and getting a better understanding of what we were actually animating.
Shortly after this, we had a meeting with some staff to discuss what exactly they wanted for us to animate, since we had no knowledge of the mechanics.
Notes I made during the meeting
Initially, there were quite a few things we were animating and illustrating written down on an excel sheet. However, after this meeting we deleted almost half of this list!
Prior to starting animation, we were also given some After Effects tutorials to follow. This was the first time using After Effects for most of us, so we really needed these basic tutorials before we got started.
I heavily relied on this pop-up animation tutorial as I would be using it so many times in my animation.
This is a very initial sketch of my interpretation of what they wanted animated
I was sent this powerpoint as a guide to where each image should point on the train carriages.
I cleaned up the carriage images and lined them up to get an image of the full train.
Finished animations:
Honestly, the pop up animations were very tedious and repetetive to make but, I got the hang of it eventually and now I’m a pop up animation pro! Considering this was my first time using After Effects and I was learning it while working on this, I’m also pleased that I did output a full animation, delivered it on time and had no notes for changes – the client loved them!