I also combined opacity with the player lifting the trophy so that he faded into the piece before using the movement in order for him to run off the screen. I did this similarly to the rugby ball by applying two keyframes to the timeline both with different values on and over the same period, again this can be seen below.
In addition to this I also created the opening title sequence for the animation for when it was put together with the rest of the class' work. This was a simple animation using basic movement due to the time limitation of roughly 20 minutes to complete it. This can be seen below along with the final outcome of my animation. The transition effect at the end of both pieces was for when it was in the collaboration. It was using a rugby ball shape which grew in size over the last ten frames of the piece so that the whole screen eventually turned white. However once the Alpha Matte Inverted effect was applied to the main composition it meant as the rugby ball grew everything it covered and the ball itself became transparent.
Rugby League animation from Ben Bowden on Vimeo.
Rugby League title sequence from Ben Bowden on Vimeo.