This is my plan and template for my idea of an animation that creates typography through lightsabers. These lightsabers were created in Illustrator and the hilt and blades are in separate layers so they will be separate objects in After Effects.
My final animation included the blade of a lightsaber shooting out of its hilt and they were positioned to form 3 letters "A", "E" and "T". The lightsaber hilts were just simple grey rectangles but the blades were created in Illustrator using rounded rectangles that were given a colour. In After Effects I applied the glow effect to every blade which gave them the glowing outline to give the objects life. I positioned the hilts so when the blades extend out they would form a letter and then making the blades extend out included the transitioning opacity tool and the positioning tool. On the timeline at the first point I made the blade invisible and positioned it in line with the hilt and then a couple of frames later I made the blade completely visible and moved its positioning further out of the hilt, this created the illusion that the lightsaber was turning on by extending very quickly.
The animation and task overall was a success and I was very happy with its outcome. I didn't run into any problems when planning and making this animation and it ran smoothly. The task has definitely improved my way of thinking and planning when ideas need to be created. In the future coming up with an idea will be easier for me and much faster because I have learnt to throw out all and any ideas I can think of and then review each one to decide which will be the best.
