My Completed Final!

This is my completed final animation, I'm pleased with the outcome...

Finishing A Final

To complete my final animation I put all my images, including the ones I had photographed previously at home and the ones I had made on photoshop, onto AfterEffects and made them into a sequence at a frame rate of 12 frames per second.

I cut the music to finish at 54 seconds so I therefore started it 32 seconds in. Because it was slightly between bars at the 32 second point I decided to fade the music in so that it was a gradual build up and it wasn't too obvious that it wasn't starting from the start, I think this worked well.

So my final piece has the music: Bach (JS): Goldberg Variations, BWV 988 - 01. Variation 1

And my story board now looks like this:

A boy climbing a tree

Climbs to the top

When he gets to the top he puts his head in the leaves

Then a bird flys out

Screen follows the birds journey as it flys off

As the bird flys off screen a new flock of birds fly on

Screen follows the flocks journey

Until they all fly back into the tree!

Continuing A Final

When I put my final images onto AfterEffects the sequence only lasted about 4 seconds, and even when I slowed the frame rate down it wasn't long enough and became to jerky and looked even worse. So I decided to take a few slides back into Photoshop and cut my characters out of them to create new slides to further my story.

I made 146 more slides using these cuts out continuing my story, so instead of a boy climbing up a tree and a bird flying out, the boy climbs up the tree and the bird still flys out but then a flock of birds come the other way and fly back into the tree. Even though I did the second section digitally, because I cut the images out of previous slides I think it blends in quite well...

Starting A Final

To photograph my slides I made my characters out of paper and moved them around on a piece of paper and took a photograph, I made my boy in a few positions so that I would be able to show that he is climbing up the tree (rather than flying up next to it)...

I made my birds in a couple of sizes so that it wasn't bigger than the boy when it came out of the tree and then I could use the bigger bird for more of a focus for the rest of the animation...

I made my tree in two separate sections too so that it would fit square to a horizontal piece of a4 paper, here is the top section...

I made all these characters and pieces out of paper and coloured them in felt tip pens.

I started photographing my pieces on a table, but I found it so hard to keep the camera in the same position and take a photograph with a steady hand. I decided to blu-tac my characters to a piece of paper on the wall in a place where my camera could take the photograph without any other objects in the way. To keep my camera steady I blu-tacced it to a table so I could just press the shutter without moving the camera (however blu-tac isn't the strongest so some shots are slightly blurrier than I anticipated).

Here are a few of my shots...

After I put these images onto photoshop they looked blurry, dark and messy so I put them onto photoshop again and changed the levels to brighten them up, I also used to clone tool to merge in the sections where i had accidentally photographed the wall in the background etc ...

This really brightened them up and made them clearer. I then put them onto after effects as a sequence...

Developing A Final

I decided to go with my fourth idea for a final. I liked how it was a little story and how I could use characters and make it a bit more fun. I also think this goes with the audio well, although it doesn't fit in with all three of my words, i think the simple colours make it look a bit posh and classic, there isn't really anything that makes it look like a Jane Austin/Mr Darcy story, but it does have the mischief that is in a Silent Film so I think it fits in there.

Although it's not black and white and an obvious kind of mischief I still think it looks like a Silent Film, as there is no speech and a tiny bit of mischief, it's also a bit random so I think it works for the theme.

Before I started making my final animation i made a mood-board of images relating to my final to give me inspiration for how to make my characters look...

i decided to make the character climbing up the tree a boy, maybe in a hoodie to show he's slightly mischievous, i think i'm going to create the bird to look like the way i've drawn it in my storyboards and i'm going to keep the tree and clouds slightly cartoony.

I started creating my animation using cell animation, i started drawing each individual slide, gradually moving my characters on each separate piece, to create movement ...

However, this was very time consuming and was taking forever yet getting nowhere ...

So i decided to photograph my slides...

Fourth Idea For a Final

My fourth idea for a final also continues with the bird theme...

For this idea it starts with a boy climbing up a tree, showing him getting higher, then as he gets to the top and puts his head in the tree a bird flys out the top, the focus then goes onto the bids journey showing it flying through the sky, with the image eventually fading as the 30 seconds is up...

I think this idea goes with my three words:

Posh - It uses simple colours

'Silent Film' - It tells a short story of the boy scaring the bird out of the tree without any speech, but there is an element of mischief coming from the boy

Again I don't think it really works with 'Jane Austin/Mr Darcy' ...

Third Idea For a Final

My third idea I experimented with for a final continued with the theme of birds...

For this ideas I had a few birds flying out of a box, then the focus is on one bird and her journey as she flys past trees until she gets to one certain tree, it then shows her going into the tree and there is a nest there with her family in...

I think this idea goes with two of my three words:

Posh - It uses simple colours

'Silent Film' - It tells a short story of the bird getting back to its family

I don't think it goes with 'Jane Austin/Mr Darcy' again though ...

Second Idea For a Final

After a review presentation about my first idea for a final it came across that my idea of birds coming out of a tea pot was a bit scary and creepy, and if I wanted it to work I should make it so that it leaves the viewer feeling like their skin is crawling.

This was not the outcome I was going for...

So I decided to experiment further, but still with the idea of birds, just to make it a bit more light hearted and to go with the music a bit more.

So my second idea for a final is to have a bird fly out of a cupped pair of hands and to follow its journey through the sky...

I think this idea goes with two of my three words:

Posh - It uses simple colours

'Silent Film' - I think it fits into the silent film theme as there is a little short story going on with no speech

I don't really think it works for 'Jane Austin/Mr Darcy' though...

Mini Animation

In a group of 3 we created a mini animation which we hand drew and put onto AfterEffects.
We created three simple characters, a bat, a girl and a boy. Our mini story was about the bat chasing the girl and the boy coming and saving her, then the boy and girl are happy ever after.
Instead of creating standard boy and girl, the boy looks a bit like a robot/alien and the girl is basically a triangle with feet, the bat also has a fun characteristic to it, this makes our animation more fun and silly.

To make our animation we had to draw a series of slides between us to create the story moving the characters only slightly on each slide...

Here are a few examples of what our slides looked like...

We then scanned our slides in and put them on AfterEffects and set a time for the slides to run together to create our animation, here is our final mini animation:

Rayograms

To experiment with different ways and methods of creating images and slides we went into the dark room and experimented with rayograms. To do this I bought in a few small items from home, placed them on the photograph paper and experimented with different light exposures to see which times worked best and which images worked best. Here are my results:

These are the first couple I did, they didnt work out too well...

I didnt put enough exposure on the end which is why it's bright white and you can't see the image on the right hand side.

This sample worked better, I got the spacing and the timing better to work out my exposures:

I decided to make bigger sample sizes and to include extra objects to see how different items would work and whether making it on a bigger scale would improve my experiments...

These worked much better

I moved away from these objects and used different objects to make images with just one light exposure instead of sample slides...

I used an earring and some coins to make this piece with one light exposure over the whole piece

I used my headphones for this image and again just one light exposure over the whole image.

I liked the idea of using rayograms to make a final animation, however I think this would be a very expensive method and would be very time consuming as it's hard to stay in the dark room for a long period of time.