Finished Animation!

My final animation!

i am fairly happy with the outcome, as it turned out better than id hoped, there were a couple of niggles that i wanted to sort out, like the dropped frame rate making it look like its 'lagging' but i will reveal all of this in my evaluation.

Enjoy!!

Piecing everything together

My flat mate said:

"If you get a second monitor ... you will never look back!"

He was right!!!

Having a double monitor setup means it has doubled my work rate, having After Effects on the one screen and Photoshop on the other.

I was completing scenes on Photoshop then transferring straight to After Effects to piece it together, it has been absolutely fantastic and i just wish i had discovered this earlier on!

Here is my project nearing the finish!! it was the longest animation i have ever done so i couldn't RAM preview the whole animation, i had to preview it in chunks because of the amount of RAM it needed!!

But that didn't slow me down too much, but i can see how big animation companies need the most high tech computers to cope with the demand that the machine has!

late copy of my armature design!

My design that i was meant to blog a while ago!!

here is my design, the character is that of my other animation that i did for animation process and production!

The character itself is very plain, but it was mainly to learn the process of making an armature and how to apply those skills.

if i were to re visit this piece i would definitely draw in the armature itself, something like this:

this would avoid any difficulties in the modelling stage, and to get a good spread of material over the aramture, i did enjoy this aspect of the module, as i really like the modelling side of animation, and am looking forward to bringing things like this to life in the future!

Finalised Story board

Here is my final storyboard after tweaking it to make the whole project more manageable, also the script seemed a bit stern before, it wasn't very appealing and seemed quite demanding, so the new script and new scenes added/taken away, has formed to create my final board which i am quite happy with, it was too complex and i tried to squeeze too much into 40 seconds so it would look very sped up and hectic.

so what made me choose these styles?

 Half 1:

The use of colour
The more solid/ objectal the elements are.

Half 2:

The whole second half represents a chalk board and the elements being drawn onto it,

there are many reasons why i did this.

one reason being that some of the scenes were too complex to finish at a more realistic level with the timeframe in which we had.

but the main reason why is the contrast that appears in my animation, the first half being realistic (what everyone would consider problems in an upper class persons world) and the second half represented by a chalk board, similar to that of a school - teaching - people learning the reason of the charity!

Reference of plants germinating!

Here is the reference i used to help animate my first scene, its much slower than what i want but it gives me an idea of the motion in which the plant forms. how it unfolds and grows at different paces, and the slight wobble that takes place, all these element i tried to achieve with my animation.

St Francis Hospice

I see a pattern emerging!

As you can see there are alot of animations when it comes too charity videos, where they make the characters more likeable and cute. but in my opinion this is not the way to go about it, if it looks too unrealistic/ humerous, it takes away the focus from the more important message the animation is trying to portray! 

WAR CHILD

In contrary to my recent post, this video combines both smooth and very impressive animation, in conjunction with real life footage.

The organisation War Child:

the organisation is responsible for rescuing so many children from war stricken countries to avoid a terrible fate. and this animation is very emotional and deep and the animation style is very sympathetic to the organisation.

although i am very impressed i still stand by what i said, that it is a cliche to add footage that disturbs the viewer into feeling sympathetic, we need people to FEEL deep inside what is going on in the world.

a prime example as to how the simple animation style is alot better at making people feel is the video right above

Amnesty internationals own video

Here is amnesty internationals own video on raising awareness but mainly to celebrate their achievements over the past 50 years.

as you can see its very simplistic! much line drawing and block colour, which i think is crucial for a charity video, scare tactics and profound images arent the way to go in my opinion! because people have known for a while that some organisations use these disturbing images/videos for the wrong reasons. so from this i will stick to my second idea of keeping the second half very simple (graphically not animatically)

Colour test!

After animating a few seconds of my sapling growing, I was left with a decision as to how to colour it. it couldn't really be seen just with its black outline so it needed colour! I coloured a few frames just so I didn't wast time, here is the test. I am happy with this, I was worried that it would look too cartoony, but with the right shading and blending I think it will work well! 

My spark of inspiration!

Warning!!

some viewers may find this video disturbing.

View the first 20 seconds only to avoid disturbing language and material.

I apologise about having to post this video, but it is the only video that describes my wishes, and a similar outcome in which i want to achieve.

a viral video turned inspirational.

shrek is love shrek is life, was created by Catalystexe. his main occurrence in his videos is a very calm, deep and soothing voice over accompanied by an equally calm soundtrack.

this is exactly what i want to achieve with my animation, after realising i cant get morgan freeman, i will be able to edit my own voice recordings to achieve a similar effect.

permission request

the song i used was by a band called M83 , managed by:

Deutsch Englische Freundschaft

Who managed many european artists, so i wasnt surprised that it takes a very long time to reply, here is my request to the organization

initially i wanted to use a song called 'smother' by the band 'Daughter' but i found after putting it over my animation it didnt give me the desired atmospheric feel so i decided to have a listen to my playlist again to decide on a better soundtrack.

i understand how important copyright is, as it is a very complex law developing more and more to the increase in media and the internet.

My armature!

Here is my finished armature!

Made from wire, milliput and plasticine. 

As a first attempt i am quite pleased with my model, it was very interesting to learn how this is done and it has explained alot in terms of the benefits from creating armatures! how its a skeleton in which to mimic that of a human one, i will definitely be using them in the future. 

Hardship for charities

one of the main hardships for a charity is to...

Raise awareness!!!

apart from raising enough money to carry out their desires, the main aspect of the charity community is spreading word to the masses, despite the sudden rise in social media. and more and more organizations are utalizing these websites. but they need to spread like wildfire, so this is my aim to create my animation with that in mind. so i have changed the storyboard to display a different script.

First scene development

Here is the development for the background in the first scene

here is the first background that i created, as you can see it looks very dull and as i wanted to keep the first half of the animation quite realistic, the ground looks too blurred and a bit of an eye sore.

i developed the scene by adding texture to the scene, but as you can see it looks very odd, i needed to tweak a few things!

Now its starting to take shape, but still it looks a bit too cartoony!

after changing the colour of the sky you can see a considerable difference!

Added colour! which is the final composition for this scene, it adheres to the parametres in which i set, to keep it looking very simple but realistic 

Naff scene needed taken out

This scene .... was the bane of my life 

after much fiddling and deliberation i decided to take this scene out, the eyes were suppose to blink but it looked awful and i was ashamed to have it in my animation, but i think i tried to cram too much into my animation after revisiting my storyboard and it kind of worked out well otherwise id have a very fast paced final product 

Armatures in Wallace and gromit

One of my childhoods most favourite film, Wallace and Gromit, a stop motion animation by the studio 'Aardman Animation'

Their heart warming and charming characters could not have been created and brought to life if it wasn't for the armatures that were used as a skeleton for the models which allowed them to move without being damaged due to constant manipulation.

But as im sure you know, the vast array of characters in the films and tv shows means there needs to be very strange looking armatures or else the characters wont be very functional and the movement would look too floppy due to the lack of restricted movement. another reason why armatures are used, the body (be it animal or human) has certain restrictions, for example: you cant turn your head 360 degrees, and an armature is a guideline for these restrictions instead of guessing which could lead to unrealistic movement.

Just an example of some of the bizarre armatures used. 

I will definitely learn a thing or two from Aardmans use of armatures, one being that no matter how complex the character/ model is, an armature is always possible.

also the fact that it helps to refine a more human/animalistic motion in the characters you make.