The CAFNR Edge Opening Process Part 1

A year ago, I was hard at work creating an opening graphic sequence of all the majors in the College of Agriculture, Food, and Natural Resources. I finished the project and blogged about it at the time, but recently began to think that I might want to be able to look back at the process and maybe others would want to understand how I created it. So, in an effort to make the process about as transparent as possible, here's how I did it (including other tutorials that helped me figure out how to do this):

1. It began with an idea. The idea was to quickly showcase each of the CAFNR majors in a way that related them all to each other. I gathered inspiration from a number of places, two of which I blogged about. During the process of creating, the idea had to change based on feedback, but that's ok. Regardless, I began this stage of the process with a sketch:

2. Since I knew I wanted the final image to appear like a little planet at the end of the animation, I wanted to make sure my starting image could warp properly. So, I polarized my sketch in Photoshop so that I could make adjustments and have the image on hand as a reference. (Previously, I learned how to make little planets by polarizing images from this tutorial by Gavtrain.)

Before continuing to create the images for animation, I pulled my sketches into After Effects and made a sort-of animated storyboard. I took the panorama sketch on one layer and animated keyframes, then set those to "rove across time" and added text layers. I parented those text layers to my panorama layer so that they would all move together. Then I added the polarized image to the end, seeing how that might sync up. This allowed me to see where I needed to stretch the image to fit all the text in the allotted time. As it turned out, I needed to stretch the beginning to fit all the Agriculture-related majors. (click on image to view larger)

I also parented each of the text layers to the sketch so that they all move together.

3. In Photoshop, I created a new project with the preset of 1280 x 720, imported my panorama sketch, then increased the scale of the sketch so that I could view the biochem image at full-resolution. Then I selected Image > Canvas Size and increased the scale until I could see my whole sketch. The resulting canvas size was 7129 x 3129 pixels. I decreased the opacity of the sketch so that I could see my new drawing over top. I used the pen tool to re-draw each line that I wanted to appear as if it was drawn with one stroke, as in the book path seen here:

And, creating a new layer, I set my brush so that it had a varied shape that progressed based on "pen pressure" and hit the "stroke" button at the bottom of the "Paths" panel (where you see my cursor in the image below). I learned this technique from the light streaks tutorial, which I posted about early on in my blog. For the most part, each line that appears on the final image is its own layer and has its own saved path.

 Hint: since there are so many layers in the final images, it is helpful to label all layers and paths for ease in making changes which inevitably happen.

4. Because I was thinking about this in a process similar to my experience painting, I decided to give it an overall background "wash" of colors. To make the ground, I made a layer of green and then used the gradient tool, making the bottom darkest and giving the middle a lighter shade of green as seen here:

5. Next, for the sky, I made a new document (which wasn't really necessary, you could just make a new layer), set my foreground and background colors to blue and white, then used the clouds filter to create an overall texture.

The texture was too intense for me, so I increased the scale and might even have added some blur to it to decrease the contrast. Then, I added a haze at the bottom, by creating a light-colored gradient and applied that to the bottom.

I imported the sky image as one layer into my drawing, behind the ground.

6. It looked very flat to me, so to add some overall texture, I used a photograph I had taken of a piece of dyed fabric and desaturated it:

Then I added it as a layer over my whole image, changed the blend to "Overlay". Since it did not cover the whole image, I used the clone stamp tool with a soft edge to paint the same texture over the rest of the image as seen here:

(This texture layer remained on top of all the other layers, with the exception of the biochemistry circle. I wanted the texture to have the same scale when that part was full-screen, so I colored the inside of this circle separately, using radial gradients, and added the fabric texture on top, then collapsed those layers together.)

7. Next, I needed to color the rest of the image. Knowing that I wanted to animate the coloring process gradually, I painted in one color on a new layer, then painted another color on another layer, and so forth, as you can see with the layers I've highlighted in the image below.

I set my brush based on the area I was working with, but for the most part, I used the brush presets tool and set it to "wet" edges, used a sponge brush, and set the flow and opacity below 100%, as you can see in the image here:

Next: How I transformed the final PSD image into a motion graphic in After Effects.

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