Final Animation!

This is my final title sequence from my chosen book, this is one I can safely say I am proud of! 

Final Evaluation!

During this brief, I feel I have really pushed myself and achieved something that I am genuinely proud of. I have become familiar with a variation of new skills, which I know I will keep with me and use with development in the future. The tasks we were set to complete using Maya, have really helped me because it has made me realise that once I understand what I am doing, I can produce models and animations with a variation of software. However, I did find myself struggling at times, so I often had to ask other students for advice and help. I have also been introduced to model making, which I found so interesting because I have always been so curious about the ways in which stop motion models are created. It was more difficult than imagined because it entailed a lot of intricate work with the wire to make the armatures, however the whole experience was extremely beneficial and enjoyable.

Through out the process of producing my Title sequence for Studio Brief 2, I encountered a lot of dilemmas, however some of them actually worked out for the best. One of the aspects of my animation that dragged out a lot of time was not only rotoscoping each clip, but also applying the colour and shading to each frame. My first rotoscoping clip was quite shaky however I decided to keep this up because it made it look quite edgy which is what I wanted. Also when other students watched it back they said that they thought it worked really well. Although the process of rotoscoping and shading took a long time, I honestly think it paid off! I did however have to do a lot of playing around and cutting out of certain scenes because I think I misinterpreted how short 30 seconds was! However after a lot of playing around I think I have incorporated just the right amount of scenes.  Up until the last minuet, all of my scenes were all on separate documents, so the process of bringing them together familiarised further on using After Effects, because I often shy away from the software. This brief really helped me in a positive way because it made me realise that if I put in the time and dedication, as well as have patience with myself, it allows me to produce some really good work! I found the pre production work to be really enjoyable because I have a love for all things scary and psychological, so the research itself was something I really took a lot from. This is the first animation this year that I can safely say the end result matches the vision that I had in the first place. It has also confirmed to me that producing animations of a more sinister nature is something I want to develop further. This animation didn’t have much focus on character design, it was more focused on environmental surroundings and the way in which this alone can set the scene for a story, and this was quite refreshing for me, because I often focus mainly on characters.

Final Crit Feedback

By the time of the final crit, I was feeling very happy with my final animation. However, there were some parts of it which, after discussions with the rest or the group, needed attention.

Audio 
I decided that I wanted to include some static sound towards the end of the sequence, to leave it on a spooky note. I encountered a rather happy accident, because the first time I tried to edit my audio, the file was corrupted and was very jumpy and static, so I actually kept this version to fade in at the end which I think worked really well!

Text
I also made some alterations to the text I used for the credits. Everybody shared the same view that it could have done with being smaller and a more appropriate font. In the end I chose a typewriter font because this fitted more with the ambiance of the story. Also, I played around with the amount of time the text faded in for, because the first time round it appeared a bit too quickly.

Production at its finest.

Once all of my rotoscoping was done, I focused solidly on getting all of the colour in there. My colour scheme is black and white, because I think that will make the animation that bit more creepy. I deliberately made my rotoscoping quite shaky because other students thought it looked quite "trippy" but this did mean that I had to individually colour each frame.

Happy accidents!

At first I did panic because I didn't think I had left enough time to get all of the colouring done, so this did mean that I rushed the shading slightly, however this turned out to work quite well. It meant that the colouring which I did was also quite shaky and it moved with the outlines, I think the lack of consistency and the fact that the lines are constantly moving makes it look very edgy, and other students did tell me that it made them feel uneasy, especially with the audio.

When it came to the point of putting all of my separate documents together, the best way for me to go about it was to export each piece of footage as an image sequence and that way I could open them all in after effects in the correct order. This was actually so much easier than I thought it was going to be, and I actually managed to get ahead of myself by a day!

After Effects proved to be the most suitable piece of software for me to use for this bit because it enabled me to fade the credits, and some other parts in gradually. I think if I had tried to do this in Photoshop I would have gone bit mad. 

Update on things..

A lot of my title sequence is going to be rotoscoped, so that is what I have spent the best part of two weeks focusing on. I am feeling pretty calm right now, I have found that creating to do lists is the best way for me to organise my time and what I need to get done.

Change in Style

Before beginning the rotoscoping,  had this vision in my head of things looking very smooth and sleek, almost as if it was juts live action. However, I began by being quite rough with my rotoscoping because I wanted to get an idea of how it would run, because I didn't want to spend ages on it and then find it wasn't exactly what I had in mind. When I played this rough bit of footage back, I realised that I quite liked the slight shakiness to it - It made the whole thing a bit more edgy and creepy, which is what I wanted from day 1, so I decided to keep my rotoscoping quite rough because when it is played back it looks slightly distorted.

Altering of shots

After playing around further with the order of the key frames, I decided to do so re-arranging. I felt that I had too many scenes in such a short space of time and I didn't feel that the audience would have the time to focus everything. I decided to extend and shorten certain shots, because there were some which I felt were more important than others. To help me with this I drew up a new rough story board.

I also put more consideration into where the actual credits would be placed.