Post Production Part 5 - Creating the Credits

Because if the fact that our animation seemed to work better without credits showing over the top of it, and because it only reached one minuet exactly, we decided that we would put the opening and closing credits on either end of the animation. At this point I already liked the idea of the audio also stretching over the credits, and the idea of having juts a plain background didn't seem very appealing because it would't really fit with the animation. I decided this was a possible opportunity to refer back to the water backgrounds that I had made.

After some experimenting with the different backgrounds, it made more sense to not use the same background that had been used for the animated under water scene, because at the end it would look quite strange if the character were to vanish and the background stay. I decided to go for the background above, because it the brush effect I used allows it to look like bubbles. Having a separate background for the credits establishes the opening and closing of the animation a bit better. 

Creating the text

Quite ironically, I can actually write with a Wacom tablet better than I can draw, so I saw this as an opportunity to use my strength in this area.  

I decided that it would be nice to have the text the same colour as the mermaid, partly because black or white would have looked slightly too harsh on this background, but also because it seemed like a nice quirky addition to create a connection between the credits and the animation itself.

We also decided that it would be good to have the text itself fade in gradually, because jut having it appear as one looked quite harsh. Also, the gentle fade in fit much better with the gentle wave sounds in the background. (However, we did decide that at the end, we would continue the electricity sound effects over the end credits, to add in the comedy element.)