This was a personal project that pays homage to my coffee addiction.
The cup's design took months of work and various edits before arriving at its final design. These are the style frames and animatic from the first version.
After exploring ways of trying to make the cup's motion more fluid, I decided that the arms, solid black outlines, and multiple coffee layers needed to be removed. In order to give the composition a more textured feel, I added a gradient ramp, fractal noise, tint, and a slight drop shadow to the body of the cup. The coffee itself contains the same effects, but no drop shadow.
The cup and the coffee were animated using shape paths, and the gradients were keyframed to match their movement. For the sun and moon, I used the expression position+value; to make their gradients stay in place.
