JGH

I took my wife and kids to check out this mosaic park full of amazing colorful art. One of the pieces stood out to me for it’s simplicity, and I found myself just staring at the tiles. My wife asked me if I was in deep thought or meditating.

What a great question.

Inspired by the art piece, I began illustrating the tiles in after effects. I chose to do the entire work in AE because it allowed me the most control. In drawing the shapes, I purposely made each tile uneven to honor the artist and their handmade work that was on display.

After the tiles were in place, I moved into animation. This is where I got to add an element to the piece that was my own, because the original was only a floor structure. In brainstorming ideas, I thought of Michael Jackson’s Billie Jean and how the floor tiles would light up with every step he took. So, I decided to move with that approach and went for a randomized color sequence, by where a tile was highlighted at random with a gold color.

Once the animation was set, it was time for the finishing touches. This involved adding a grunge background. For this, I added a fractal noise effect to a solid and adjusted the settings to come up with something I was satisfied with. Next, I added some color correction to the overall sequence to bring out some of that vibrancy of the colors. That’s it!

Of course, for this particular motion graphic, I couldn’t just stop there. I decided to take the animation I created and produce a 4 min video sequence with ambient music in the background. For the music track, I chose “A Journeys Epilogue” by Yehezkel Raz. I also changed the animation slightly from the GIF.

The result? Watch the video below in fullscreen to see. That is, if you don’t fall asleep first :)

GIF designed using: Adobe After Effects | Video created using: Adobe Premiere Pro