Step 1: Planning
First, I sketched out a storyboard of how I wanted the animation to look like and what parts I wanted to animate. I knew that I wanted an image of a mug as I’m a big fan of anything coffee or tea! Personally, I imagined it to have tea inside. I wanted to animate the steam coming off the mug and to bob up and down to create a realistic portrayal of steam from a hot cuppa. I also wanted my brand name ‘Rachel’s Image Design’ to pop up one by one, almost like it was being stamped onto the page. I planned this out step by step in order of what I wanted each animation to appear.
Step 2: Photoshop
I then used Adobe Photoshop to design my logo animation. I created the mug using the elipse tool for the circular shapes, and I used the lasso tool along with the fill tool to create the mug body and the mug handle and filled it in with a light pink colour. Because the steam I wanted was a specific shape and I wanted it to be simple, I drew the steam using the paint tool. The layers in photoshop were very important in order to create the tea inside the mug to make it look like it’s inside the mug and not on top.
I then downloaded a font on dafont in order to create a unique typography for my blog name. I wanted a simple yet fun looking typography which I was able to find. I then used this as my font and coloured it in different colours to make it stand out and look more unique. I also matched it to the spots on the mug to create a particular pastel theme. I feel the pastel colour also makes it quite ‘cosy’ feeling and this is the persona I want to portray within my blog. I also decided to make the lines for the steam thinner as I disliked the thicker lines I drew at first and I think it makes it look more simple and stands out less as I wanted the mug to be the main attraction.
Step 3: Importing onto Premiere Pro
In order to create my animation, I had to save my Photoshop file and import it into Adobe Premiere Pro. I needed each of my Photoshop layers to be imported separately so that I could animate each of the layers. I ordered them onto the timeline so that I could ‘re-build’ the mug and I locked these layers so that no components of the mug moved as I wanted this to stay still. Ordering these layers were important, especially with the ‘tea’ part as this needed to look like it was inside and not on top so the mug body had to be over this. I then queued the steam to bob up and down using the opacity tool to fade it in and out much like the appearance of steam in real life. I then queued in ‘Rachel’s Image Design’ at the end to individually appear much like it was being stamped. I think this was a great way to wrap up my animation.
I then saved my project, exported it as a YouTube 1080p document and then uploaded it onto YouTube which you can watch above. To improve this, music in the background would’ve been a great addition, but for now I wanted a quick and simple animation which I could add to my blog. Hopefully these steps helped create your animation, or at least inspire you to make one. Make sure you subscribe to my blog for more design content.
Rachels Image Design 