Anchor Points

While animating this project I made proper use of anchor points for the first time ever, despite being aware of them for a few years now. As I've never really used software for creating moving images that much in the past, most of my previous experiences have meant that I've never needed to use them much. They became a very useful tool for defining centres of scaling/vanishing points as well as axis of rotation.

When designing the pre-comped element of the globe>brackets>candle>canon portion of my animation they became essential to carry out what I was aiming for. Because I was modelling something that was possible to build in reality, as long as I made sure to align the anchor points with the axis of rotation on every element, animating the complex design would become very easy. Below is the full animation element consisting of 10 moving parts in total:

Once I'd gone through and lined everything up, all I needed to do was define the start and end points for position and degrees of rotation and the animation was tweened exactly as it would behave in reality.

I very glad that this project forced me to utilise anchor points as its something that I think I will make extensive use of in the future, both in moving image and static image design.