A while ago, when my toddler was still a young baby, I was having lunch with some former students of mine. Somewhere in the background, a baby started crying.  To the 20-something designers, they found it distracting and annoying. Personally, I didn’t even notice it, as the father of a six month old baby.  I realized that my brain had quickly altered its perception based on my personal experience. We were all hearing the same thing, and yet perceiving something totally different.  To me, this is the essence of perception: the effect of experience and individuality on what a person realizes from their senses.

For those struggling with the skill to create and recognize artistic aesthetic, I find that it is often this lack of artistic perception that is holding them back.  I think many fortunate souls are born with an enhanced sense of this vision, which is half of the equation: individuality.  On the flipside of this, it is experience that is key to altering perception.

When listening to music, a musician, depending on experience and training, hears things like key, mode, counterpoint, arrangement, tension, resolution and more.   Art has a similar palette that mimics music, such as order, interval, tension, space, light, color and much more.  To be an artist and designer means to combine your individuality and develop your experience to find tune your perception of what you create, as well as what you see.  Just like the music student that practices every day, and listens to a broad range of music, the designer must exercise their artistic muscle every single day, by creating, watching, and exploring.

This is why artists should watch something new every day. Keep a wide range of books, websites and (yes, put on your shoes and socks) museums on their to-do list.

Here’s just a few places to get great daily inspiration:

http://www.motionserved.com/

http://motionographer.com/

http://ffffound.com/

http://typeinspire.com/

http://showreelarchive.com/

What do we consider? Consider the excellent language of aesthetics as dictated by Paul Rand:

…order, unity, variety, contrast, symmetry, asymmetry, rhythm, harmony, dissonance, rhyme, interval, regularity, coherence, tension, balance, proportion, scale, weight, texture, line, mass, space, shape, light, shade, and color.

In addition to the language of art, motion designers have, quite literally, an added dimension to what we do: story, development, progression, motion, time, perspective. How do we use this incredible language effectively?

This is what you should be thinking about every day as a motion designer and artist.

I realize that expressions can be daunting, and some would rather copy and past useful code rather than learn the language. That’s cool with me. Therefore, I’d like to share with you my 5 favorite expressions. These are expressions I use in just about every project, and I consider them to be incredible workflow enhancements.

Download them as FFX presets for AE CS3 here.

Are you looking to learn more about After Effects Expressions? Check out my complete training series on the topic in the graymachine store.

1. Intertial Bounce

Essentially, Inertial Bounce creates a bouncing motion of any parameter from one keyframe to the next, based on its velocity. Being that true “velocity” includes the vector (or traveling direction in 3D space), the bounce happens in whatever direction the object is traveling. This also accounts for scalar or array values, so you’ll find that this expression works just as well on 2D rotation as it does on 3D position. It’s very cool!

This expression is a bit of a community effort. The seeds were certainly planted by the great Dan Ebberts, and then a modified version was posted on mograph.net. Although I’ve made a slight modification to it to make it a little more user friendly, it’s nothing that I will lay claim to as my own code. Nonetheless, it’s a great helper and I use it all the time.

Modify “amp” for the amplitude or how much bounce is present. The variable “freq” is the frequency, or how frequently the bounce occurs. The “decay” is like a friction or mass setting, a higher value means a shorter decay over time.

amp = .1;
freq = 2.0;
decay = 2.0;

n = 0;
if (numKeys > 0){
n = nearestKey(time).index;
if (key(n).time > time){
n--;
}}

if (n == 0){ t = 0;
}else{
t = time - key(n).time;
}

if (n > 0){
v = velocityAtTime(key(n).time - thisComp.frameDuration/10);
value + v*amp*Math.sin(freq*t*2*Math.PI)/Math.exp(decay*t);
}else{value}

2. Autofade

This is nothing brilliant, but it is something I wrote and use all the time. You’ll also find something similar in the After Effects preset “Behaviors” called Fade In + Out, which uses the Solid Composite effect and a custom interface. But, I like a simpler version that I use on Opacity.

This is a slightly enhanced version that I’d revamped since I posted it in the “Auto Slideshow” presets and added the option to use markers. If there are no markers, the transition variable is used (where is says “transition=20″, this is in frames.) If there are *2* markers, the first marker is used for end point of the fade in, and the second marker is used to define the start of the fade out.

//Autofade: Add to opacity

transition = 20;       // transition time in frames
if (marker.numKeys<2){
tSecs = transition / ( 1 / thisComp.frameDuration); // convert to seconds
linear(time, inPoint, inPoint + tSecs, 0, 100) - linear(time, outPoint - tSecs, outPoint, 0, 100)
}else{
linear(time, inPoint, marker.key(1).time, 0, 100) - linear(time, marker.key(2).time, outPoint, 0, 100)
}

3. Snap Zoom In/Out

This is a cool expression to use on text. It creates a “snap” zoom on the in and out of the layer by modifying scale.

//Snap zoom in and out: apply to scale
snapScale = 300; //percent of scale to zoom

trans = 4; //  transition time in frames
trans = trans * thisComp.frameDuration;
inTrans  = easeOut(time, inPoint, inPoint + trans, [snapScale,snapScale], [0,0]);
outTrans = easeIn(time, outPoint, outPoint - trans, [0,0], [snapScale, snapScale]);
value+ inTrans + outTrans

If you prefer to use Z space position instead of scale, try this one:

zoom = 5000; //distance to zoom
trans = 4; //  transition time in frames
trans = trans * thisComp.frameDuration;

inTrans  = easeIn(time, inPoint, inPoint + trans, [0,0,zoom], [0,0,0]);
outTrans = easeOut(time, outPoint, outPoint - trans*2, [0,0,0], [0,0,zoom]);
value+ inTrans - outTrans

4. Y Axis Jitter

This is from Lesson 5 of my expressions series. This creates a random jittery motion in the Y axis. You can modify probability to make or less jitter, and the pos variable to define how large the jitter is.

// Y Axis Jitter
probability = 8 ;  //higher is less likely
pos = 50;

val  = random(-probability-2, 1);
m = clamp(val, 0, 1);
y = wiggle(10, pos*m)-position;
value + [0, y[1]]

5 . toComp

This one you’ll have to watch a short tutorial for here, and you can read a lot more about it at motionscript.com. The idea is that you can apply the equivalent 3D location to any 2D location. This might not sound exciting. But, think of all the 2D parameters out there, like lens flare location, Shine source, beams, etc. It is probably my most commonly used expression.

But, the basic idea is this:

layer = thisComp.layer("Null 1")
layer.toComp([0,0,0])

Note: I intentionally left off the semicolon, as you techinically don’t need it in this case. Therefore, all you need to do is pickwhip your layer where the “layer =” variable is.