Digital Photography & Imaging - Week 14

22.12.2025 - 2.1.2026 (Holiday + Week 14)

Cheyenne Liew Khye Yean / 0378330

Digital Photography & Imaging / Bachelor of Design (Hons) Creative Media
Project 4

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PRACTICAL

Figure 1.1 Final Poster, Week 14 (23/12/2025)

I showed Mr. Fitri my final poster and he said it was good to proceed with. So I started merging all the layers together to make the animation process easier.

Figure 1.2 Video Process #1, Week 14 (23/12/2025)

I then imported the .psd file into After Effects to start with the animating.

Figure 1.3 Video Process #2, Week 14 (23/12/2025)

I started by animating the eyes, I wanted them to come in from the sides, so I used the position keyframe to animate them each individually.

Figure 1.4 Video Process #3, Week 14 (23/12/2025)

Then, I changed the positioning of the origin using the pan behind tool for the top of the head to the edge and made it open up. I added an extra layer of the full head right before it opens so the white edges aren't visible.

Figure 1.5 Video Process #4, Week 14 (23/12/2025)

After that, I wanted the strings to appear like they're falling so I searched up a tutorial and found this video. I followed it step by step by first using the pen tool to draw lines as masks on the strings and added a stroke thick enough to cover them, then animated the end. Some steps in the video didn't seem to work on my image, so I had to make some minor adjustments before I achieved the desired effect.

Figure 1.6 Video Process #5, Week 14 (23/12/2025)

Once the strings were animated, I animated the hand to appear from the top whilst the strings appear simultaneously.

Figure 1.7 Video Process #6, Week 14 (23/12/2025)

I then animated the eyes to move side to side to give some movement, but along the way, I noticed that the 2 layers of the eye cutouts (the cutout itself and the rough edges) were moving at different speeds. I didn't merge them before because the merging causes the black background of the white edges to appear, but I didn't anticipate this to happen. I ended up having to Google a solution, most of them didn't work until I found one that mentioned to pre-compose them and animate using a parented null layer.

Figure 1.8 Video Process #7, Week 14 (23/12/2025)

This is one of the pre-compositions, where I could remove the black background using the tool on the top left window. All the previous animations besides the intro were removed before pre-composing, so I ended up having to redo the moving parts.

Figure 1.9 Video Process #8, Week 14 (23/12/2025)

I added a null layer above all the pre-compositions and parented them. I also changed the origins of the null layer since it was in the center by default, and proceeded to animate the left and right movements of each eye.

Figure 1.10 Video Process #9, Week 14 (23/12/2025)

After that, I added puppet pins to the hands and animated them so it doesn't stay static throughout the whole video.

Figure 1.11 Video Process #10, Week 14 (23/12/2025)

I also ended up deciding to give the hand and brain more movement by animating it up and down as if the hand was slowly trying to pull the brain out. I did this by adding a merged layer with both the hand and the brain which starts right after they connect in the beginning.

Figure 1.12 Background Music (Source: YouTube), Week 14 (23/12/2025)

Figure 1.13 Sound Effects (Source: Sound 1, Sound 2), Week 14 (23/12/2025)

I chose to use a lofi version of a song I like as the background music, also because the title has a reference to eyes in it so I thought it would match the theme of my poster. Besides that, I found some sound effects on Pixabay to use when my head opens and when the hand and brain connect.

Figure 1.14 Video Process #11, Week 14 (23/12/2025)

I added all the audio in where necessary and lowered the volume. I also slowed down the audio for the background music.

Figure 1.15 Video Process #12, Week 14 (23/12/2025)

Lastly, I saved the video and brought it into a separate file, where I masked out specific parts of the video and added an invert filter to it to look like glitches.

Video Link: https://youtube.com/shorts/hy8wztAoouc?feature=share

Figure 1.16 Final Video, Week 14 (23/12/2025)

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REFLECTION

This week, I moved on to animating the poster in After Effects and faced a few challenges, such as when the 2 layers of the eyes moved at different speeds, but this led me to discover new techniques like pre-compositions and null layers, which helped me better control the animation and solve the issues I faced. Overall, I am happy with how my final video turned out.