final crit feedback

The final crit was a good opportunity to properly show my finish piece to the class. It makes a big difference showing everyone your work formally on a big screen compared to showing clips on a monitor. Doing this allows a large group of people to properly evaluate the animation. I found the final crit very useful I was given a few points that would clean up my animation which I plan to implement before the final deadline as they shouldn't be too hard.
The movement of the horse didn't look quite right looked like it was coming towards the camera, some of the layers in scene were not scaled up quite right. These should be easy fixes, however one problem was that the title at the end is not up for long enough which I may be able to rectify with careful editing but I'm unsure until I test. The other problem was that the horns at the end did not seem quite obvious enough since they are a big part of the final transition so I will try and brighten the surroundings up in photoshop. Other than the few point the animation seemed well received obviously if I could go back and do it again there would be many things I would change but I'm happy with this outcome and how much I've learnt.

Editing video & audio

The final stage of the animation is one that I feel can get looked over quite easily especially when putting it all together in after effects. I knew that it was important to have the music sync up with the changes of scene and what was happening on camera. I therefore decided to use premiere as its designed for that purpose unlike after effects. I spent a while trying to cut the video correctly and tinkering with the transitions so it all flowed how I'd originally envisioned it to. I rendered out what I thought was the final copy but after watching properly full screen I tweaked it a little further to make the finished piece.

video pre edit

The original track I'd wanted to use did not quite fit the animation. The intro sequence was the part I was after but it was not long enough and the ending of it was not conclusive enough. I therefore decided to chop the song up in logic so it would cater perfectly to my needs. I looped part of the start and also added a bit onto the end. This took a bit of time as I wanted the changes I'd made to feel seamless as its something that would be very noticeable if it was wrong.

choosing a typeface

I didn't factor in a font during my preproduction phase as up until recently I found the subject rather dull however when I was finishing the project off I finally realised how important it is to have a suitable type for the animation. I was unsure what I wanted to use at first so I browsed a large amount of fonts online to get a rough idea what I wanted. The font used in the title of the original comic would not have suited thing animation but I liked that it looked a bit scrappy and wanted to replicate that. A lot of the fonts I found that applied this effect well were tool large and bold which would not have fit this animation. I ended up settling on one sleeker text from online. The text in its raw form did not quite suit the visual aesthetic of the animation as the edges where far too defined it stuck in the frame too much. To rectify this problem I decided to trace the original text with the brush I used for the rest of the animation. This created a much nicer final font that suited the animation better. After this I applied some of the text effect techniques I learnt over ppp with some masking to remove the text nicely.

creating a church

After creating a house in after effects in 3D I moved onto the slightly more challenging creating the top half of a church. I  figured after create the house with relative ease the church would not be too hard to make. This was unfortunately not the case and it was a lot harder than I thought it would be. Creating the 2D assets was fine however putting them together was a lot more difficult. Because i wasn't just moving on the triangles on one axis like putting together a cube it meant rotating very difficult. I realised you were unable to rotate the actual anchor point its self so once you rotate (or orientate) 45° in one direction you are unable to do the same on a different axis. After hours trying to figure out how to move the triangles together I had to move the anchor point so it was right at the bottom then I used the rotate tool on the axis I wanted to move the triangles into place. Like a lot of problems I've had to face in after effects its mainly been down to not knowing how to do a certain process which is the same for this. The building of the 3D structure is relatively simple and if I did it again I could probably do so in 5 minuets but first time round took a lot longer.

Using masks in after effects.

After taking inspiration from the title sequence for Marco Polo I wanted to have a growing and shrinking effect in my animation where it looked like some scenes were being made as the viewer watched them. I figured the best way to do this without having to drawing out a stupid amount of frames would be to use masks in after effects. I used the masks to delete bits or add in layers during the video and after playing around with the feathering could create some nice effects. I first masks on the rolling road shot. I thought it would a good effect to try and utilise, below was just a test I found there was lots to tweak the masks with such as feathering to get what I wanted out of the scene.

Changing a scene

One of my scenes I knew would be challenging to do but it wasn't until I actually tried to animate it that I was a bit over ambitious with it. The scene was a character hitting the frame with his gun, however I'd plan to do with all the movement with layers in after effects because of the shading style of the animation it meant that I couldn't draw each frame separately as it would look too messy. I tried doing some tests with the basic structure in after effects however it just looked wrong and at this point I figured out it would work. I decided to change the motion of the entire scene. I kept the same framing of the composition but changed the overall movement. I decided to make the character stomp on the camera as I thought the motion would have a similar effect on the viewer but would be much easier to set up. I tested it out in after effects and I liked the motion so I went and finished the whole scene

effective character shadows pain

For one of my shots I wanted sweet tooth looking over the graves of his parents. I could have had just a silhouette of the character in the foreground but this would have disrupted the overall composition. I therefore decided to have just the shadow of the character moving across the graves. The only dilemma I had with this was getting the shadow of the character without having the actual layer visible. I could have just drawn it on as a separate layer but I wanted the shadow to move like a time lapse. I ended up spending a long time trying to position the silhouette layer so it was not visible but the shadow was. I did do this eventually after a lot of tinkering with the position and the light settings. To my ultimate irritation I later on figured out that you could turn off the the layer to only show the shadow in the layer properties which would have saved a lot of time. At least I learnt this existed though making the mistake so I will know how to do it if I need to again.

animating a rolling road shot with trees

The next shot I started working on was a moving shot going down a road. I wanted to have trees moving past the camera with some parallax. I thought this shot would be relatively simple to do however I ran into problems fairly quickly with it. Before I tested it I thought lots separate layers moving at different speeds would work well to get parallax however the final result was rather disastrous. 

The trees moving too fast in conjunction with the foreground so it looks like the trees aren't attached to the floor. I needed to redo the scene composition completely to fix this problem. I made the road in the back ground a separate layer and made the foreground the same as the trees so there wasn't the same movement as the first attempt. I also carried out a lot of the motion using a camera rather than moving the layers them selves as this kept the overall composition whole whilst also providing parallax.

Crit and Presenting

We all had to present our pre production work to the class to get feedback on our initial ideas before we actually started animating. There were a few of my ideas I was unsure about so this was a very useful opportunity. The overall feedback was relatively positive, there were just a few points that needed refining or more added too. The first was the running time of the animatic, one of the scenes with a man butting the screen with a gun was held on screen for too long so another scenery shot was needed. Although this was more work it was the right decision as it interrupted the flow of the entire composition. My storyboards also lacked style, they had the shots summed up but were simple sketches so I needed to refine and set my visual style for the project. After those my project was given the go ahead so I could start working on animating.

After effects lighting and shadow test.

I had originally planned to draw all the shadows coming from the trees but I realised these would not move very nicely or easily with the camera motion. We were shown lights in after effects in our tutorial so I thought it could work quite well for this animation. It was here that I learned that the shadows work really well if the 3D layers were put together with a good distance between each other. I also found that moving a light meant I could get moving dynamic shadows that made the scene feel more animated. I will definitely being using lights a lot more through out this animation.

Further 3D layer experimentation

For the first scene I wanted a side ways 45º pan which required the house in the centre to be a 3D object. I was very unsure how to do this at the
start other than I new I'd be able to position 2d layers together like putting together a box. I was however concerned with everything lining up. This is where maya came in. I created the house as a simple polygon in maya then made a uv map of it so it was flattened out as a 2D plan of the original. I could then reassemble this in after effects. The result was in real life only half a house but created the illusion to the camera that the whole thing was there and in 3D. This method also allowed me to keep the style of the 3D objects in line with the rest of the animation.

Testing brushes and 3D layers

I was originally going to draw this animation in pencil or some form of physical media however I thought it would be a good idea to try a bit of "painting" in photoshop as I had not really done much with this. I hadn't really used many photoshop brushes other than the standard stock ones and did not realise that the selection available. I used a lot of online tutorials surrounding brushes and attempted to make my own pencil brush however I found the best results with one of the stock brushes in photoshop. I did learn a lot about the brush settings whilst making my own brush which meant I could tweak the stock brushes to the exact look I wanted them to give. I also used this first scene to put an after effect tutorial on 3D layers to use. I hadn't done much with after effects 3D layers but I wanted to get believable parallax in my shots and this was the best tool for it. For this first shot I just tried to move a camera through the layers, this process laid the foundation for the rest of the project.

storyboards and animatic

These were my final story boards for the project. They are the product of all the post it note storyboards I did. I'm happy with the shots I've chosen however I have not finalised all the camera movements as I'm going to do aftereffects for the animation I think I will change some of the movements slightly to what looks best.

I then created my animatic after I'd finished story boarding. The most important thing I felt to start with my animatic which I actually decided upon before story boarding was the music that would accompany the title sequence. I wanted to choose a track early on so I would know ruffly how the track would flow. I ended up choosing a bluegrass song which is relatively quick paced but is not too joyful. The song should help keep the flow of the title sequence whilst also helping promoting the themes. I cut the animatic together in after effects however I feel I should have use premiere as its easier to match clips to sound in the software. I cut the song using audacity to elongate the part of the song I liked however I did this quite quickly so I will redo this to make sure it sounds the same as the original. 

main points/title research

I looked a quite a few different title sequences from both post apocalyptic genre and many others to gain an understanding to what makes an effective title sequence. The four that I found were both the most effective and had themes I could apply to mine were the following:

The first one I can across was the Marco Polo title sequence. The TV show is about Gengis Kahn and an Italian man who is captured by him. The sequence is one of the best Ive seen mainly because of the media they chose to use for it. Is set out like a old master Chinese ink painting but the ink moves across the screen and paints scenes from the show autonomously. Use ink fits the genre and tone of the show incredibly well and is also visually stunning. They animators were clever with how the ink revealed the full image. A the ink spread to create an initial image but then spread further to reveal that the images have a more sinister tone.
There was also a behind the scenes video on the title sequence which was very interesting to see the working process behind the title sequence.
http://www.artofthetitle.com/title/marco-polo/

The next title sequence that stood out to me was the True Detective title sequence. The TV show is about to detective in Louisiana whom are following  gruesome murder. The title sequence fits the 

themes of the show very well which became clear to me at this point how important it is for the title sequence to set the tone correctly. The title frame composites characters silhouettes and translucent portraitures with backgrounds from the setting of the show. The sequence flows very nicely there is constant smooth motion throughout.

The twin peaks title sequence is pretty renowned for being an effective one especially for the eerie sound track created by David Lynch. The sequence itself its actually very simplistic there isn't that much motion in the shots that are there but its incredibly fitting with the music. The little subtle movements and shots chosen highlight the remoteness of the setting in twin peaks which is something I could definitely apply to my title sequence.

One good title sequence that was very different from the others was a fan made trailer for the walking dead. Since I'm doing an adaptation of a comic I thought this would be very relevant to what I was doing. This title sequence is almost like a music video which works really well and highlighted the importance of the music used and how the animation fits to it. The title sequence uses sections of the original comic cut into different layers then the camera moves through the scenes. Something Ive found is that environmental panning shots are heavily used in title sequences not matter what the media used is. This is because the main function of a title sequence is to portray quickly the tone and the setting of the show/film.

mood boards

I started to mood board ideas around post apocalyptic, forest and plague themes. I wrote down lots of key points of the genre and points I felt were important to get across in my title sequence. I tried to pin point the key themes within these images to input into my work. I found doing my mood board on paper very effective compared to doing it on the computer as it was easier to make notes on them and easier to refer back to them. It also meant it was easier to refer back to the images when I needed them. I referred to the images a lot whilst I was story boarding. 

Starting to storyboard

I started storyboarding my initial ideas for the brief on post it notes. I used the themes in my mood boards to help create them. I used post it notes as they are close to a 16:9 aspect ratio and its good to make sure my ideas are a suitable scale to fit the screen. I like to draw out lots of possible storyboard ideas (post it's are great for this) and then pick ones at the end to refine or combine mulitiple ones.