Layer Tennis How It All Went DownIn a Layer Tennis first, we pitted a motion designer against an illustrator, Nick Campbell and Aaron Scamihorn, respectively. Both Tennis veterans, Aaron having worked his way up last season from the Qualifying Matches all the way to the playoffs, and Nick playing in previous matches with the team at Digital Kitchen, we had no idea what to expect but weren't surprised at all when the match became the stuff of lore. After the pixel dust settled, we sat down with Nick to talk about the match.
LYT: With Aaron laying it down from the start with that You vs. Him layout, we should have known going in that things were going to get both bloody and strange. What did you think of the match?
NC: I had a blast. It was so awesome to work with such an awesome illustrator like Aaron. He provided such great illustrations and stuff to animate! Things surely got strange. It may seem cliché to fall into battle or voting themes with Layer Tennis, but how could I resist when I had my face to animate with?
LYT: Speaking of that: starting early, I wanted to concentrate on Layer 2. What made you move it toward that voting angle?
NC: With only 15 minutes in between volley, I just went with the first idea that popped into my head and started animating. Seeing both of our faces on the first volley, my initial reaction was to find a way to make it all about ME! Not sure what that says about my mind-grapes, but that's what happened. I zoomed into my big head and asked for a vote.
LYT: Any other directions you thought about taking it?
NC: Not really. I wish I had more time to think more about where to take each volley, but by the time I animate and render (rendering can take up to 5-10 minutes with some of these animations), it was all I could do to try and tell some sort of story.
LYT: With that limited time to work, I'm guessing you didn't keyframe individual solid masks to reveal those dozens of bars that leap out from behind your head. What did you do to animated it so quickly?
NC: I used a technique in After Effects called Pre-comping. It's kind of like smart layers in Photoshop. I keyframed one set of stripes and pre-comped them into one layer so that I could reuse that animation throughout the scene. I took the pre-comp and rotated copies of it from behind my head. I then offset each of them in the timeline so that they animated at different times. I even used a scaled up copy for the "Vote Gorilla" stripes and the falling beards in layer 6. If you're interested in learning more about pre-comps, I show you how to use the technique in this tutorial from my training site, Greyscale Gorilla.
LYT: The film effects look really stellar, very organic. A plugin? Or some sort of overlay of real, scratched up old film?
NC: It's a plugin called BCC Film Damage. It's not the most realistic film plugin for After Effects, but it renders REALLY fast which was great for the fast turnaround time.
LYT: A follow up to that: why the old film look?
NC: As I started to build the stripe animation, it dawned on me that this was starting to look like a propaganda poster. I added the film look and faded-out color to add to that effect.
LYT: After around the midpoint of the match, things took a turn toward the absurd. Where did that come from?
NC: When it came to Layer 8, it was getting late in the day and I knew I had to turn this next layer around fast. With some of the renders of the previous animations taking too long, I decided to make it simple and sing a song about whatever the previous layer was about. When his Layer 7 had the words "more than just an accessory", I knew I had my lyrics. I sang a quick song, made a joke about "Mr. Beard" and called it a day. I then used Motion Sketch to animate the dancing knife and Mr. Beard very quickly. That was a fun one.
LYT: For an overall view of the match, any thoughts on what it was like to be pitted against a non-motion designer?
NC: I thought it was fun. With two motion people, it's hard to continue a story. I also loved to be able to animate with some of his assets. Some may say that it was unfair, but I thought both sides were represented well and it made for a great argument for the artistic merit of both mediums on Twitter.
LYT: To finish up, in this and your previous Layer Tennis experiences, do you try thinking up a few ideas first and then get to work, or do the time constraints demand that you just go with the first thing that pops into your head?
NC: I gave myself about one minute before I started animating. With the time being only fifteen minutes, you can't make every volley a clever plot twist. One example was volley 6. I just thought if we were shaven clean, then where would our precious beards go? So, I made a scene where all the forgotten shaven beards of the world would fall. Not a great concept, but for fifteen minutes, I was happy with the result.
LYT: Thanks for your time Nick. It was great watching you play.
NC: Thanks again for Friday. I had so much fun.
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The voting is closed and the results are in from Friday. In Match 1 Armin Vit defeated Matt Stevens and in Match 2 Nick Campbell defeated Aaron Scamihorn.
"So, tell me what I need to know" I said.
"It's awful...the most stressful thing ever" was the reply.
"And this is your third time?"
"Yes."
A few post-match thoughts from competitor Matt Stevens.
Reminder. The Season Ticket Holders Mash-up Contest deadline is Wednesday the 25th.
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