Animated Graffiti :: 9 in 10
I love living in New York City, and I am constantly walking around exploring new areas that I’ve never seen. In my 10 years here, I am still discovering new areas. One thing I’ve noticed, in almost everywhere I go, is the amazing street art/graffiti that covers the streets. I’m not talking about the traditional spay painted “tagging” graffiti, but these pieces of art work that scatter the scafoldings, walks, traffic posts, etc.
Throughout the summer I had been taking pictures of the really cool pieces that I would come across. I wasn’t sure exactly what I was going to do with them, but I wanted to start keeping a record of what I was seeing.
It finally occurred to me that these pieces would lend themselves so perfectly to animation. I decided to do a test animation so I could develop a process. I chose to animate a flying bird that had a scroll in its feet. My thoughts were that the bird would fly in and then the scroll would unravel.
First I had to bring the photograph into photoshop and remove the bird from the brick wall background. Then I broke the bird apart, separating it into the two wings, an open and closed eye, the two parts of the beak, the body, and the scroll. Once this tedious process was complete, I brought it into After Effects, and just did a simple animation to it. I think that this is a great idea, and some of the images I took would be perfect for this. I am excited to try to do some of the other ones.
