Becoming familiar with Animate CC

After deciding to use a new piece of software to create this animation, I knew I needed to begin production sooner rather than later. I decided to use Animate CC for two reasons, 1. because it appears to be very popular for animation studios, 2. because I decided it was time to step out of my comfort zone as an animator, because up until this point I was becoming too comfortable with Photoshop.

I began by watching tutorials and simply playing about, in order to get into the flow of using it. This payed off pretty quickly, as I was able to begin animating quite soon after this!

Benefits of Using Animate

After I was in the process of animating, I realised that Animate was in lots of ways much better for 2D animation, the main reason was because my line work was being smoothed out. This prevented me from spending ages on perfecting everything. This saved me a lot of time, and allowed me to work at a much swifter space than previously. 

Soundtrack Development

Through out the development of this animation, Will and I decided that he would provide me with one subtle track for the background & one similar yet more full track for the end credits. Over the course of the pre-production stage, he sent me developments he had made & I was frequently providing him with design work, because he wanted the developments to help fuel his ideas for sound. 

Recording Dialogue

After realising that my friend who studies acting in London was unable to make it to Leeds, I decided to get some other animator's involved , especially since I had used two of these individuals for voice acting in on a previous project.

In terms of dialogue, there needed to be three separate voices: the dreamer, the policeman & the girl.  All of which only have one line, apart from the dreamer, who has two main lines as well as reaction sounds. I decided to use Max for the role of the policeman, Lauren for the dreamer & Emma for the girl.

How it went

The process of recording the audio was quite easy, because I left the voice actors to play about with the lines & approach them in different ways. This then left me with lots of samples to choose from, which was very beneficial because it didn't mean that I had to commit to one particular line out of many.

Animatic

After my storyboard panels were complete, I was able to edit them together accordingly to produce the animatic. I also then was able to edit in the line work I had animated so far. 

I also edited in the sound, however at this stage I was aware that it could still need to be altered.

Background Development - change in direciton

Bird's Eye View

Through out this animation, there will be three main environments, because they will be frequently changing. In order to get a clear understanding of the layout, I decided to produce a bird's eye view of each background. This is because there will be lot of different shots of each room, so I needed to have reference on what would be visible where, and to keep it consistent. 

After deciding to create the backgrounds digitally, I got cracking. I really loved the idea of giving the backgrounds a bubbling effect. The way I was originally going to go about this, was to draw each background out twice. However, after making a list of the necessary backgrounds needed, it didn't seem logical to spend double the time on backgrounds. 

Change in method

In order to save time, but to also achieve the same outcome,  I decided to create one of each background, and to then add a wobble in After Effects, because the visual outcome of this is basically the same as what I was going for. 

So far, at this point I had only created about half of the backgrounds needed. Instead of getting all of them done before I began animating, I decided to be progressing on both at the same time, to ensure I didn't fall behind. 

                           1.

                           2.

                             3.

                            4.

                               

                              5.

                               

                               6.

Reasons for colour schemes chosen

When I think back to the dream this animation is based on, I remember quite vividly that there was a lot of daylight streaming into the ice-cream shop, and there was a lot of purple! So I knew that it would be vital to incorporate some clear rays of sunlight coming in, but this is something I decided to go back and add in later on in the process. 

Storyboards

Below is my final set of storyboards for this project, I decided to keep it pretty simple because the purpose of this was to simply highlight what is happening, and to then inform my animatic.

At this stage, the titles and credits are not included in the storyboard, because I know I want to do something a bit more creative with that. However I do know that the title will appear on it's own at the start & the credits will be shown independently after the animation has come to an end.