My reaction to reading this:
The idea is that if you use colors that occur in nature (like bird color), you can save yourself the headache and worry of using online color generators for your designs. I've also seen this from other designers using existing furniture colors or interior design posts.
To test it out, I googled "Rare Birds" and "American Birds" and grabbed a bunch of photos. I sorted each bird into 5 color samples. Using the eyedropper tool in any design software, grab a color that's the closest white or gray, a color at the top of the bird's wing, the bird's stomach, the darkest color, and the bird's beak color.
Here's an example of a robin:
Here's an American Kestrel:
Seriously, I did this for a lot of birds. Here's the rare Alabama Cardinal:
Short story long, I took this idea, grabbed these colors and turn them into a design, and cranked this out.
Trying to shoot a video or even setup a decent looking Zoom call setup? You don't need a lot of equipment to setup a "Talking Head" video shot. In fact, you might not need anything except a phone and a table or bookshelf.
To get started, tilt your phone sideways and stack it on some books. I used 7 encyclopedias that ended up being 10" tall. With the top book pushed back, I leaned my phone at a 45 degree angle and created the perfect desktop tripod.
I also took my phone and set it on the top of my kids' bookshelf. The shelf is 7' tall, so the top shelf puts the phone about 6' off the ground, just a touch above eye level.
Okay, in the sake of honesty, as much as I want to tell everyone I'm 6' tall, I'm only 5' 11 and 3/4". This used to bother me in high school and college, but I've come to terms with it. However, when I have to put my height on something like my drivers license, there's only room for 3 digits, so you bet I'm putting 6' 0" on there. DEAL WITH IT.
Now, both of these methods apply to my height specifically, so it's going to vary for you. The key is to aim for eye level or just above it. This makes your head look good. Trust me on this. If you go too far below or above eye level, you can accidentally create unflattering or distracting images.
Also, in both these instances, the desk I used and the bookshelf were within a few feet of a window on a sunny day. This ended up giving me good lighting too. These shots aren't anything great, but they're steady, evenly lit shots. If you shooting a quick video for something, this would come across as passable, and isn't that ultimately the goal?
While it's tempting to feel the urge to buy tripods, phone mounts and clamps to make a good looking video shot, simple is just better. With this method, you can make decent video shots without breaking (or even touching) the bank!
How to create a basic title animation in Premiere’s Essential Graphics:
1. Create new sequence. Open Essential Graphics window and click the “New Layer”, and select “Text Layer” from the dropdown.
2. Hit “T” on the keyboard and edit your text. Then position the text by moving it in the Align & Transform panel, or use the Selection tool to click and drag the text layer in the Program window.
5. In the Effects Controls panel, uncheck 'Uniform Scale' (so you can only animate the Horizontal Scale) and set Anchor Point to 0.0, 0.0. This way the shape animates from the bottom left corner. (Move the shape back into position if the anchor point change shifts out of place).
6. Animate the shape by adding keyframes under 'Horizontal Scale'. With the time marker at 15 frames (00;00;15), click the stopwatch next to Horizontal Scale.
Then move the time marker to the beginning at 0 frames (00;00;00) and click the stop watch again. Select this new keyframe (it should turn blue) and change the Horizontal Scale to '0'.
7. Select both keyframes, right-click on the highlighted keyframes and select “Bezier”. This makes the keyframe ease in and out of the animation and eliminates a harsh and un-subtle start and stop to your animation. Trust me, you're going to want to do this
8. Now add a mask for the text to make it animate on. In the same Effect Controls panel, select the “Create 4-point Polygon mask” tool under your Text layer.
9. Anything inside the mask will be visible and anything outside the mask will be hidden. To animate the layer on, move the time marker to the end of your animation (in this case 10 frames after the last keyframe of the rectangle shape, so frame 25 or 00;00;25).
10. Click the stopwatch on “Mask Path” to add the last keyframe.
11. Move the time marker to 10 frames after the Rectangle’s first keyframe (which in this case is 00:00:10, or 10 frames).
12. Select the mask in the Program window and slide the mask to the left. This adds a keyframe at (10 frames after the Rectangle’s first keyframe). If you hold the Shift key, the mask slides along the X axis. Unfortunately, you can’t add a Bezier interpolation to masks in Premiere for some reason. Go figure.
Now you can take the text layer and drop it on top of any video or photo you want. If you end up changing the text, all you’ll need to update is the size of the rectangle and the mask of the text layer. You can also customize it by changing the color of the shape, the speed/time of the keyframes, or even the shape.
Now the world’s your oyster and you’ll be animating text layers to everything.
