Illustrator Layout File Adjustments - Better Workflow with After Effects

When I began creating the assets for the two main layouts in my film, DinerEast and DinerWest, I originally created a large Illustrator file to accompany all the assets. The art board size was set to 6000 pt width by 1000 pt height. The idea was to layout all the assets in layers and set up the composition before taking the file into After Effects and setting the layouts up in 3D space.

After starting to set up the two panoramic layouts in After Effects, I noticed two major problems:

1) During the set up in Illustrator, I scaled each asset to work with each other. The problem came when I started to push back and bring forward certain asset in the scene e.g. the chair and table that Betty sits at before she jumps up and dashes for the door and the back wall with the large menu and the neon guitar sign.

2) There were two many assets on separate layers. These all had to be carefully positioned in 3D space and took along time to get them right and inline with each other. This isn't a very clever way of doing things as it is time consuming and although the other layouts are much smaller and have less assets in them, it still isn't a very clever way of setting up layouts in After Effects.

To fix these problems at the same time, I decided to change the art board size to that of the composition sizes I am doing in After Effects - 1280p width by 720p height and go through all the assets and rescale them with each other whilst imagining I'm creating a 2D layout. I also consolidated groups of assets that can be together e.g. the large menu on the back wall and the guitar neon sign can all go on the same layer along with the actual wall asset itself. Another example is the front serving bar next to the kitchen door - the straw holders, plates, cups, coffee machine etc. can all go in one layer along with the serving bar itself.