Fall Leaves Animations

After coming back from my trip to NYC a couple of weeks ago, I really wanted to create some kind of project to reflect my experience there. I went through all my photos, and found out that central park and the fall colors is what really interested me the most. Fall is my favorite season, and I always love watching the colors of the leaves change and hit its peak. But also watching it fall and reach its inevitable decline is fascinating as well.

So, I wanted to create an environment that showed the process and the life of a leaf. As I was experimenting with some effects in After Effects, I stumbled across a cool effect that could be produced with a single leaf. So I started playing around with more settings and came out with some unexpected results. The final piece is still in progress, but I thought I’d share some pieces of the process.

Leaves Animation #1 – first experiment

Leaves Animation #2 – changing different parameters of #1

Leaves Animation #3 – just going crazy here

Leaves Animation #4 – took everything I learned from the previous three and build an opening and closing sequence

If you’re interested in a more detailed explanation on achieving this in After Effects, just email me.