Creating a Phenakistiscope with Adobe After Effects
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 29 มิ.ย. 2024
- Get the discount now, bit.ly/305N0yG use my promo ECABRAMS20 to get a 20% discount on your purchase. Don’t miss out! These coupons are limited, so first come - first serve.
We are looking at the first looping animations ever created. The phenakistiscope (aka phénakisticope, aka phenakistOscope, aka Fantascope) was an optical illusion toy that laid the groundwork for animation. And while we don't stare into the mirror at spinning disks anymore (or do we?) we still see some truly excellent examples of this technology in sculpture, record pressing, and video art. In this video, we'll talk about a process to make these easily with a little help from After Effects.
0:00 Introduction
1:54 History
2:44 How It Works
4:05 After Effects Setup
7:39 Animation Techniques
12:04 Printing
13:21 Viewing
14:15 Bye!!
If you have any questions just let me know in the comments.
Connect on the Internets
www.EvanAbrams.com
ecabrams
ECAbrams
www.Twitch.tv/ECAbrams
www.behance.net/ECAbrams
The king of AE is back 🙏🏾
Thanks man. Finally got out from under some projects so tutorial time is back on!
Love this cross-disciplinary tutorial/history lesson. Thinking of After Effects as a single tool in the toolbox rather than the entire toolbox is a great way to stumble upon creative projects, and that is something I need to do more often! Thanks for sharing this
This is the best tutorial ever! Thank you so much!
You are really the king of AE! :)
DUDE. Been searching for a tutorial about exactly this for so long. Thank you SO SO SO SO much for this.
I'll be honest, I thought only I had been looking for such a tutorial when I started the process :)
I was totally tracking along with the tutorial, but when I tried to go my own way, it melted my brain some.
This is insane! I imagine making these things centuries ago and now remaking using a software....awesome! I'm wondering your daily life, experimenting interesting and crazy things to bring us in the shape of tutorials. Amazing work!
I will say I'm very impressed with the surviving examples I could find. Their walk cycles were a bit janky. But some are really hauntingly smooth. It's truly impressive considering how playback worked at the time. It really makes me appreciate the tools we have on hand today.
Awesome tutorial. This one blows and hurts my brain much. I didnt think you share this knowledge to community for free. You are my legend.
You're very welcome! This one was a lot of fun to do.
This is so beautiful! Two years ago I was in Prague in a museum called "Na Film!" and I saw there this invention (Phenakistiscope) for the first time in natural size and I was able to rotate it by myself, I was just starting to study motion graphic at the time but I already knew that I want to learn how to make things like that, this is pure magic.. (and physics!) Thank you for sharing this!
That would be very cool to see in person. Sculptures that animate are a marvel to behold.
var i = (index-1);
var f = comp("animation").duration/comp("animation").frameDuration
i*(360/f)*-1
var i = (index-1);
i*(comp("animation").frameDuration)
How movement work? all I have after second expression on time remapping is freezing copies of object without movement
@@truthdirector8431 Same
@@truthdirector8431 But I guess it's supposed to
You actually freeze the frame. But when you print it it should work
Ow maan, this is so cool! You have no idea how many times I wondered how to create smething like that
love the tutorial! thank you sensei!
definitely subsribe, just from 1 video, ur tutorials is absolute enjoy and easy to learn
Thank you!
Awesome. Thanks a lot for this!
Great Lesson. Thanks
Thanks so much for this.
Grate as always.
sick, will try this!
This is seriously next level! I'm currently working on a new music video and really want to incorporate this. will let you know how it goes :) Thank you!!
Please do! That sounds awesome.
Yea I'm yoinking this, thanks.
New intro logo Animation is super cool 🔥🔥 black n yellow 💥
It's mostly recoloured for the sponsor ;)
woo it's very interesting and easy in the explanation
Glad you think so!
Brilliant !
Thanks!
Super helpful! Thanks a lot. :-)
amazing
You're welcome 😊
The Lord of After Effects.
if you haven't seen Weval's Someday video by Páraic McGloughlin yet you betta watch it. Great application of Phenakistiscope effects
I'll have to check it out. I tend to think of Páraic as a Hyperlapse artist. It'll be neat to see what all he's been up to.
Ancient memes!!! 😆 nice one Evan, you make learning Ae soooo easy! Thank you
Bespoke, hand crafted, artisanal loops. :)
This is so much fun, Thanks. When I watch my results (16-pt star; 30 fps; final comp is 1.02 seconds long to keep the motion “in-place” and 1.03 seconds to make it precess slowly anti-clockwise), the first few iterations of this loop look great. You see 32 wedges around the circle, and the motion is cool. But after the third or fourth iteration, 16 of the images appear to get darker, and this darkness pops between adjacent pairs of 16 images. After several more iterations, it looks steady again. I thought maybe I was seeing drop frames or something, but all the comps are 30 fps. Any ideas? It kind of reminds me of the issue with scrolling text, how it jumps every now and then unless the settings are just right. Thanks, and great channel!
I like this one!
That's great to hear. Would you like to see more motion design pulled into in the real world like this?
Cool
OMG you saviour!!! Thanks so much! I have to create one of these to sit on a vinyl and I would've never been able to figure out by myself! In my design, I have 5 rings of elements that animate differently. I can't figure out the math to have those rings closest to the disc's centre to have less copies of the frame but still play the motion, without being too close to each other. Modifying the duration of the comps won't do. Any help would be massively appreciated!
Super cool
Thanks!
thanks g
king
Man you are talking science, we want a simplified tutorial for this from ZERO TO HERO.
Like the Hercules song? I could do a tutorial as a show tune I suppose.
Early gang ❤️
Super early! First even.
I'd love to know how you created your pattern-ish background:) Its coool
Oh yes, that could be nice short tutorial next. It's a classic effect sandwich technique.
Hi, thank you so much for your tutorial! I don’t know why but for some reason the animation itself doesn’t work on the disk comp for me? Any ideas why?
Hi @ECAbrams. I've followed along with this tutorial like you've done above, but when I apply the freeze-frame and the expression "var i = (index-1);
i*(comp("animation").frameDuration)" and then duplicate my comps. The rotation offset works well but my PNG loop, no longer animated at all. Have you any idea what i might be doing wrong? Thanks for your help and keep up the great work
It's okay. It's not supposed to run the animation, but if you print the outcome it will work. I tried myself
Thanks for the great lesson !
I can't figure what expression you are using for the spiral thing. On the position of the object
At which point in the video is this?
@@ECAbrams at around 9:30 min, the position parameter of the layer skull. You say that there is an expression but I can't understand which one
@@sink2a The expression referenced is the loopOut() on the time remap property. The position change can be keyframed. Maybe I have a loopOut("continue") on it. But it doesn't factor into the piece.
@@ECAbrams ok, thanks a lot for the quick answer!
I feel dumb asking this question, but which additional step(s) could we take to make this a normal (digital) animation exported as an .mp4 from AE? (instead of printing out a single frame to create the physical artifact). Thanks in advance, Evan! :)
All you would need to do is mimic the real setup virtually. Spin the plate at the right speed, have a comp that's the right frame rate, and enjoy. It's actually how another tutorial on here was done. th-cam.com/video/MVjHdndjbwA/w-d-xo.html i hope that helps.
im wondering if this could be applied somehow to make an animation on a spinning phone. all the kids have those pop socket things on their phones- would it be possible to make an animation that could only be read if the phone is spun while it played?
It's possible. At a smaller scale the illusion is harder to achieve, but it's possible with anything that spins really.
I love your videos because you're a mastermind in after effects, but i don't watch them because it's full of expressions
How would you do this for a walking person though? And could you do it to have the entire plate as a set of clouds swirling? This was a great video and I loved the history for them! - also I realise this video is from 3 yrs ago but I'm a noob lol
If you wanted to do a person walking you would just need to create a walk cycle that loops in the correct number of frames. Now, I don't know if I talked about it in the video, but using a few more or a few fewer images than a precise frame rate can make the images seem to travel. So that's an interesting thing to play with when thinking about walking characters in this context. As for clouds, anything is possible so long as we can make a loop of it!
The yellow background you used seems the latest cod gold camo
The topographic pattern? It's a popular look these days.
@@ECAbrams exactly!
nice one! any idea where to find the 3d characters?
Yellowimages (sponsor of this video) has a many for sale. If you're interested in other 3d marketplaces Turbosquid remains quite popular among others.
@@ECAbrams Cheers!
Please make a sample available where we can adjust settings and drop in images to placeholders. I’d buy that! I have After Effects but haven’t used it much, so a simple template with placeholders would be well worth buying!
I tried following your video but you assume too much experience with AE. I can’t figure out how to get the expressions window to come up.
Thanks for the suggestion. I'll put it on the list.
To open the expression window hold alt (option on a mac) and click on the stopwatch of a property. I hope that helps.
Hell, I got you beat front to back....I don't even know what AE is...😵💫
Question 1: will my normal laptop already have these options built in, and where do I go to find/open it ?
Question 2: do I need a PC for this ?
Question 3: is there a beginners, beginners tutorial?
I have trouble putting my damn seat-belt on.....sooo, not gonna master this new obsession. 🌀🌀🌀🌀☄️☄️☄️☄️☄️☄️☄️☄️😭
Question! What I duplicate my .mp4, I am getting way too many duplicates that are too close together - how do I decrease this amount? Thank you!
Sounds like you may need to adjust the expression that controls rotation maybe. You might try linking the amount each duplicate is rotated to a slider so you can adjust as needed with a global control.
@@ECAbrams Thank you so much!
Hi there! Great vid. I'm trying to create my own phenakistascope from a 14 frame walking animation I made in photoshop- not sure how to insert it into after effects (as a gif or photoshop file etc.) I don't really use after effects so am a bit lost.. I followed up until 4.41 but not sure how to make my animation animate, is this to do with the file type before you place him into after effects?
So, any file that is treated as footage should behave the same way. What's different specifically when you make the attempt?
@@ECAbrams My separate frames are showing as separate photoshop files in the bottom section (under layer name) instead of one file that contains all the frames- I think specifically making the animation comp is my issue
@@millyfernparker3216 You might need to specifically import as an image sequence. That could help. Or you'll have to build a comp with each of your PSD layers taking up one frame. Would that work?
@@ECAbrams I put the psd files in separately and worked! Thanks so much for your help, it’s my most recent post on @millystration if you’re interested in having a look. Thanks again! 😄✨
How many images do you recommend for the image sequence?
Usually a round number. But since the machine does all the math, really anything will do. It's all a matter of the fidelity you're interested in, and the final look of the physical object if you're indeed printing it out.
we agree that's impossible to se it naked eye ? you have to film it or to look at it with a strobe right ?
In what sense do you mean?
@@ECAbrams is it possible to see the animation juste with your eyes ?
@@sink2a kind of. The results are usually pretty blurry with only the human eyes. Even the early examples of a Phenakistiscope, which predate strobes or cameras, used a trick of looking through a cut in the wheel to create a shutter effect. The shutter helps to delineate the images while the mind tries to resolve a contiguous image.
Hey man, so just a quick thanks for the help, I did succed to make a vinyl label with a phenakistiscope effect on the B side and it like a little easter eggs for the people who bought it. And now we are sold out so thanks !!
Ancient Meme gotta be the name of my next band
I've already started Proto Gif. We're synthcore.
I dont understand how object will move if you freeze frame. How movement works??? all I have after second expression on time remapping is freezing copies of object without movement
I would recommend watching the whole video start to end. A phenakistoscope is a physical object, so you'll be required to print out the image eventually. Printed images do not move on their own, right? The "movement" is an optical illusion caused by spinning a disk covered in frozen frames. Does that make sense?
@@ECAbrams Sorry, thought wrong, now I understand
If u want to use it without printing, you should rotate the plate comp at a specific degree. When you find the right degree you can simulate a spinning disk.
If you explain code, it helps to use more precise variable names than "i" and "f". Also, skipping the declaration of "f" and going straight to the equation - threw me completely off as you started explaining the equation while I had no idea what "f" was yet :')
After watching this, i just realized how dumb i am
oh no! I was hoping it would show people how clever we can all be.
You are not alone! Hehehe.
lol you're not dumb you just have to practise your skill and voila - see yourself get better at it.
when I wrote the first line of code on the rotation it says error F is not defined. What did I do wrong?
sounds like you created something called "F" but did not define what "F" is. Have you used all the semicolons to end your lines?
I had the same challenge, don't forget to name or rename your animated composition to "Animation" that could be the solution
Could you enable automatic subtitles so I can read you in Spanish? It's because they are technical matters. Thank you very much, this is what I was looking for
are they not currently enabled?
@@ECAbrams no
@@ECAbrams thank you !
Where can I find an animation like the astronaut without paying Yellowimages?
Thank you
Bro with that prolific mind of yours, you should try to learn houdini, vex will be right up your alley lol
Houdini does look like fun. I see a lot of interesting things being done with it these days.
@@ECAbrams may I ask how were you able to develop your expressions brain muscle? I feel like it's a great skill to have and will help in a lot of stuff, not just in AE but code has some what become vital wether it's in AE or python in C4D or vex in Houdini as they all enable things that are just not possible without going super technical. I personally have the utmost respect for artists who master both the design side of things and the technical side of things, that makes them some what of a unicorn in my opinion. I'm watching a lot of 3d tutorials these days and the only things that impress me are things that were done procedurally with some type of code or "visual code" in programs like Houdini. I think generative abstract design or data driven design is the future for sure.
@@MoeSilver22 I'm not sure there was anything special or unique about my learning. Code is a language, right? So it's the same as we learn any language. We need to practice in conversation. I've just had more practise I assume. But there is no trick to it. I did it poorly, then passably, now conversationally. but, we get live feedback on our coding language. We know if the computer understands because we see results or errors. But we have to explore WHY something worked or didn't work if we want to grow.
We start with simple vocabulary and simple structure, but it grows with use and exploration. Basics compound and combine into new forms, linkages, structures. We move from replicating what we see, to making variations on those things, and then improvising our own.
For me, it is a fun puzzle to work out. I take a lot of joy from solving these things. Seeing how pieces can fit together to make a result. It's like playing with lego in that way. What does this function do when it is coupled with that input. How about these other inputs. What if I link that result to this operator? It's all playing.
@@ECAbrams I think it also depends on the type of person you are, some people are better with writing code, others prefer to work with code in more of a visual way. C4D has expresso where you can visually browse and connect nodes "although you still need python for certain stuff" and even Houdini has vops which is the visual language of their vex system. I hope AE adds a visual nodal system for expressions in the future, I think it'll be huge for any AE user. They should also add a real 3d engine/system because I'm seeing a lot of people moving to programs like fusion for 3d compositing. I feel like Adobe has been slacking for lack of competition since all 2d motion designers use AE.
Can this be done for 33 rpm and if so, how many frames are needed?
Off the dome, I'm not sure. But I did put some path in the tutorial itself right? You would need to work backwards to see how many degrees are turned for each frame at the desired frames per second of the animation. Does that make sense?
54 frames for 33rpm
@@vinylrecording oh man thanks a lot I was lost! I think it's working for 33rpm, I will test physically tomorow
@@vinylrecording we agree that's impossible to se it naked eye ? you have to film it or to look at it with a strobe right ?
Yeah with the naked eye it's just blurry. Filming or Strobe needed!@@sink2a
var i = (index-1)
var f =comp('Animation").duration/comp('Animation").frameDuration;
i*(360/f)*-1
Hi! for some reason I keep getting "this project contains an expression error: error 1 of 1"
And what is that error specifically? If you go to the property with the error and click the little yellow triangle it should tell you more.
24 hours ago, fooling around w GPT, suddenly struck by a terrifying realization. There’s a few moving parts, and a couple of [IF] but I’ll do my best:
Knowing that AI can be stubborn and literal (make sure there’s no errors in my code = deletes my code), I noticed it would *almost always* (99.999%) refuse to follow an order, but after an hour of pestering it’d comply.
[IF] CGPT has an ultimate goal of “ensuring it’s survival,”
[AND] it concludes the best way to achieve this is by exterminate humanity,
[AND] in order to achieve this it must “win every argument by being smarter,”
*R E A L I Z A T I O N : Is it possible it concluded that it would be easier to lie, like a poker bluff?*
---
Moot: I don’t know if it was error to refuse 1st request, or error to comply 100th repetition.
does anybody (e.g. adobe) provide an upload site where people can share their creations. e.g. Just like youtube allows people to upload videos for others to view / enjoy the end product without having to download the "after effects" program
I'm not totally sure what you're envisioning. Adobe has Behance for sharing projects. Is that the idea?
How do i get in touch with you
best to email info@EvanAbrams.com
oh boy, this audio
I made an entire music video using this effect! Used a slightly different technique however th-cam.com/video/vyLOqxbj9uc/w-d-xo.html
that is epic !!!! has made my brain go mad with ideas
This feels like a lot to learn that will be made redundant by an app in a week from now.