4. Paper Plane

The Idea

This time I didn't have an idea straight away about what to create in response to Craig's very nice corporate identity piece for the new Polair airlines. Rather than fret about it though, I decided to leave it for an hour or so and work on other things. Later, while showing Craig's post to my family, it eventually did strike me that I wanted to make a paper plane emblazoned with Craig's new branding. I have also been looking for a video project to work on anyway, so I decided to combine a bit of old fashioned, school-boy hand-drawing and folding skills with a bit of high-tech computer animation and video editing.

The Technique

I used to make endless numbers of paper planes as a child, so that part of the task was just second nature to me. I have also always enjoyed the challenge of creating a 2D design that becomes folded into a 3D object. As a child I also used to make little paper houses folded out of one piece of paper that could I could then use while playing with my beloved Hot Wheels toy cars. 

So here was a two directional challenge: how to get my hand-made airplane into the Motion 5 software to animate a title in 3D and then next how to line up Craig's airplane logo and design on to a flat illustration that would then be folded to become a flying 3D creation.

Motion

Motion is a motion graphics, animation and special effects software package made by Apple. Less than two years ago if you wanted to use Motion you needed to buy the entire Final Cut Studio package for more than £700. Things changed drastically when Apple decided to switch from selling it's software packaged on install discs and instead offer it up for download only from it's App Store. Unbelievably, Motion now costs only £34.99 even though this program is much more in-depth and featured than even the Final Cut Pro software which it so well compliments when creating titles, transitions, special effects and more. Motion projects can be in a 3D space although it is not a fully 3D piece of software, the difference being that Motion just supports 2D objects which can be manipulated in 3D space, which is of course excellent for my use of animating a piece of paper.

Airplane Construction

To align the airplanes graphics in the correct location, I first made a plane which then was unfolded so that I could lightly sketch where I wanted the name and logo. I then scanned that sketch back in to Adobe Illustrator where I overlaid Craig's work and created the swooshing colours to match Craig's design. This was of course then ready to print and fold into as many airplanes I would would like to create. That process was caught on video with help from my daughter Maggie and then the whole thing was edited together in Final Cut Pro.