Moving Cameras in 3D space

InDesign Construction from Emma Nicholson on Vimeo.

For this project I decided to take a different spin on it and potentially break a fourth wall. Here I disassembled a typical InDesign document and created artwork on separate layers ready to import into After Effects.

*Side note: editing what looked like an InDesign document in After Effects, whilst the real InDesign was open in the background was quite disorientating, but pretty funny when someone tried to figure out what was going on on screen when they walked past.

So I imported my Illustrator file into After Effects and set the layers to work in 3D space. I adjusted my workspace to show two viewports, one birds eye view so I could see where my objects where placed in relation to each other, and the other a perspective view so I could see what would be the final output. I then set the objects apart on the new y axis and created a camera layer. The camera layer started around the middle of the y axis, I then moved it all the way back over the course of the animation. This gave the impression that as the camera was zooming out, elements of the InDesign document were moving and being set into place. It took a lot of adjustment to get an intriguing angle and speed of movement, but I learnt that the most effective way was to place all my objects on the final frame and work backwards from there.

From there I was also shown the page turn effect which I used on the page element int he InDesign document, so the 'paper' was being placed int he InDesign document like it would onto a real desk.