At long last, I'm nearing completion of the Hawk Animation. I had to take a short break from this to finish a few freelance projects, but now I'm all in on getting this bird done!
I'll share more snapshots of my other work in future posts. Exciting things are happening!
Today my goal is to animate the background below, which is of Big Slide, the tallest mountain in the Catskills. As I've said before, I'm always amazed by how few people in New York City are aware that this whole part of the state exists, and that it's actually not far.
My process for this shot is similar to the NYC Skyline in my previous posts. I drew each mountain on a separate layer in Photoshop, and once in After Effects, I'll move them from left to right. Everything close to the camera needs to move faster, so the mountains in the way back will hardly move at all but the grass in the forefront will basically be a blur.
Recently I came across the seemingly obvious but also brilliant idea that, instead of naming every new file as something like hawk_FINAL.mp4, I could simply use a number.
Here's Hawk_v4: