Day 20 of 100 Days of Motion Script "Ride"

Got a little lost in working on this one. I knew I wanted to have "ride" coasting somewhere, and originally I had it on a skateboard. Trim paths, however, is a perfect opportunity to show a path of a snowboard. I started with the Illustrator file, creating a scene with three layers: the white hill with small trees and sky in the background, the type, and the gray snow in the foreground. Because things move faster the closer they are to you, I made the foreground a little bit longer than the background. Having the curves appear seamless was a little tricky, because when I looped the composition, it kept cutting to a different scene. I went back into illustrator, and ensured that the paths started and ended at the same height. I also had to duplicate these setting layers to give the proper clearance for the whole scene to reset itself. The word was given some wave wiggles on the paths, and the original was duplicated twice to make the right and bottom edges smooth, but it also left the whole word a lot bolder than I intended. After all the scenes were looping properly, I added the gray and blue trim paths. The keyframes were placed randomly, and then I discovered a pause in the trim paths that lead me to making this whole word jump. I started with position, to ensure that it left the ground as soon as the trim paths ended, and landed when they picked up again. I also added a little anticipating squish before the jump with a scale null. It took some watching, because the scale and position keyframes ended up not being completely in sync. I also had this bright idea to have the dot on the i bend forward with the jump, and catch some zero gravity as everything fell back down. I'm so glad actual snowboarding doesn't require this level of consideration with every second. Now, to find a time and place to get back onto the slopes...