Shot 25 Set Up - Hand and Pen Animation

After speaking to Hilary on Thursday about the progress I am making on my film, and showing her the Excel document I made which details all the assets needed for each shot as well as a simple rating for the level of difficulty to complete each shot (easy, medium and hard), I've decided to go back to the most difficult shots and animate them first. 

Shot 25 is one of the most difficult shots to get right. Although only Betty's lower arms, wrists and hands are in frame, I also have William in the background scoffing his food. Because there is quite a lot happening in this shot, I have broken it down to it's core elements - Betty writing the check and William eating food. 

For me to get across the idea Betty is finishing writing William's check, I have to animate this in After Effects as well as William eating in the background. 

Whilst researching After Effects and the motion graphics people in the industry have been able to create earlier in the year, I've rediscovered two tutorials which will be perfect for this shot.

Tutorial 1 is how to animate a text layer as if it is being written with a pen or pencil by hand.

Create an Elegantly Handwritten Text Reveal 

Although this tutorial details the process of creating a text reveal using assets in a particular style of ink and a quill, I have been able to pick out what I need from it and apply it to my own shot.

Tutorial 2 is how to animate an object, in this case text, along a path. Again, I have been able to take from it what I need and have applied it to my own shot.

Tutorial 2 Link 

Storyboard Panel for Shot 25

Breakdown

Betty POV of William sat at his booth with his meal in front of him on the table

Betty brings up her notepad in her left hand and pen in the left

We see motion blurred arms in the background and visual queues indicating William is eating his food extremely fast (i.e. bits of food and drink flying off screen in the background

Betty is filling in the check (writing "10" and "B x")

We see a blob of food hit the front of the notepad where Betty is writing the above line and nudges it off with her hand (she is a bit surprised here so she pauses and then nudges it off the notepad)

Betty finishes writing the above line

Assets

Notepad Asset 

(This isn't in the test project I am working on at the moment, just the assets pictured below)

Notepad Asset Document Set Up

(insert PNG of layer panel in Illustrator)

Hand and Pen Assets

 

James Asset (same document as above on it's own layer)

Hand and Pen Assets Document Set Up

At the moment I have only imported the assets into After Effects and finished setting up the hierarchies as well as creating Null controllers for the hand and pen ready to animate later.

I have also set up the project file following Tutorial 1. I have created three pre-comps entitled 'Text', 'Masks' and 'FinalComp'. This will be for when I test the reveal animation where the text appears to actually be written by the pen. 

Pen Animation Blocking