After weeks of exposition and introduction to the aftereffetcts software, we were finally tasked to combine all skills in previous projects into one story animation. myself, being an ambitious story teller as well as artist found this demand exhilarating and terrifying. It was stressful yet eye opening, and overall a process.
Story Board Outline
having high hopes for myself from the start, there was no easy way I was going to settle on just any plot. I wanted a strong main character with an obvious motive and problem getting in the way of it.
It needed to be easy to draw, easy to give life and personality. I made a million, unessesary, rising actions, that would cut and downsized later. the writing process was fun, but orignigal ideas were a tad unreasonable for my first story animation. regardless, i stuck with a main charcter and theme i had preped for, and after creating sketches, plot stucture mountain, and story board, i was ready to start animating. "The Paper Cycle" following the life of a notebook piece of paper looking for purpose, but can;t seem to get a break. when all hope is lost, the paper wad is thrown in a recycling bin, and the story optimistically repeats.
Production
Technical wise, the project was intimidating. while creating a substancial amount of layers, before even importing to aftereffects, the story seemed unacheivable. Lots of prioratizing took place while producing. i asked questions like, Will this really help story? or How can i make this character's action simpleler? In photoshop, i created each layer drawn with a pen tool.
in afteraffects , each scene wes placed and perfected in it's own composition. later to be combine all in to one que. I had to include a walk cycle, miltiplane, ball bounce, and basic skillz attained over the course of the class.
having high hopes for myself from the start, there was no easy way I was going to settle on just any plot. I wanted a strong main character with an obvious motive and problem getting in the way of it. 
