The first of what will no doubt be dozens hundreds gazillions of experiments I’ll share with you here at Charfish. This one is “Hitchcock Meets Charfish” and is a mere glimpse into the incredible things After Effects and a few minutes of time can produce.

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Been playing around in After Effects a bit recently, and it is the bee’s knees I tell you. Brilliant program with which you can make pretty much anything look entirely bitchin. You put in some lousy pictures, add your dumb ideas and push the “Make Something Awesome” button and stuff like this is what comes out. Just click the image above to watch the animation. It’s about 3MB and may take a sec to load.

Have a look-see and let me know what you think. Oh, and as a warning there is sound in this file, so if you’re at work or next to a sleeping baby, take note.

Technical stuff for those who I know will be curious:

• All animations were done in After Effects.
• The flock of birds is actually just one static bird designed in Illustrator. Brought into After Effects, that single bird acts as a particle which is continuously emitted using Trapcode Particular. And then some mathematical trig-like expressions control the randomity of the flapping and the flock as a whole, so they don’t all fly as one and look too contrived.
• “Music” or sound effects or whatever that is was composed in Reason and keyed in After Effects.

Hope you like. Much more of this stuff to come.