Pokmeon GIF: Alakazam

My obsession of Pokemon from childhood has seeped through the cracks of my adulthood. In order to grow in your field of work, you have to constantly practice and find new challenges. By creating my favorite Pokemon in Adobe Illustrator and animating them in Adobe After Effects, I can expand my skills and still have fun doing it.

Alakazam consists of 6 basic parts: Eyes, Head, Body, Arms, Legs, and Moustache. I first designed each element onto their own separate layers in Illustrator, then imported the .ai document into After Effects. The biggest challenge ended up overwhelming me enough to change the end result. I originally had the spoons bending outward when the Psychic attack happened, but After Effect's puppet warp mesh broke my animation halfway through. In the end, I settled with an outer glow to replace the visual absence of the bent spoons.