First hands

 Emily's hands. I recorded Emily's hands trying to get her to make shapes with her fingers, so i can then go into after effects to add illustration and animations to them, using the pen and brush tool, and by making shapes, quite similar to how i would in photoshop.
This was quite a challenge. First of all, i have forgotten a lot of after effects.
I also want the shapes to be consistent with a figure in the video, like Emily's ring or fingertips. This is hard. However, i was working in the av room with Matt and he told me a about a plug in on after effects called 'trapcode'. I'm not quite sure how it works at the moment, but i am about to research more. It does seem like my best option to get what i want with this animation.


However, before going to research into trapcode, i took on after effects. I just wanted to make lines on my video. It is a look i definitely wanted and it is something that i am aiming for.
I did this by drawing a path with the pen tool and creating a mask (these possibly may be all the wrong technical names)
It was a little difficult trying to get the finger and the line being drawn to match up in the same place and only realised once drawing a line how wonky my finger flows. I also decided after filming Emily's hands, to just film my own whilst watching them on a screen next to the camera, as i knew exactly what i wanted and found it easier to do that, rather than direct somebody else. It also means that i only have myself to blame if it's not what i want.

I tried out two different types of lines. One being the bezier path, which is the top yellow line, which smooths and follows my finger a lot nicer. The second lines are a lot more rigid, which i do actually like but doesn't look as good. I also find this video is similar to sesame street type videos, so having a smoother line is a lot more appropriate. I like how this has linked incidentally with me wanting to make an animation for children. I do like it, but will now look further into trapcode effect as i believe this can make more of an accurate path that follows my finger.