Evaluation of AF:201

Before this project I'd never fully engaged with animation or the software needed to create it, so this project was full of new experiences for me. Initially I was very worried about the time-scale the project was supposed to be completed in because of the amount of learning software I had to do. Once I started using it I found After Effects very easy to grasp as its very similar to other Adobe products.

The project also gave me the opportunity to record sound to a high standard, something I've also never done before. Learning about what microphones and other hardware and software to use was a very interesting experience and I look forward to applying my new-found knowledge to future projects.

On thing I did find very hard was how quickly we had to generate and commit to an idea due to the short project time. It meant that any ideas I didn't feel fully invested in had to be scrapped immediately. I think the ability to not become attached to potentially bad ideas is something that this project has taught me, and it will be an advantage to me to make it standard practice.

Overall I really enjoyed this project as it gave me the chance to try many new things as well as open up new areas for me to develop my skills in.

Post Crit Changes

After considering all the points raised by my class and tutors, I made the following changes to my animation. The bass frequency in the soundtrack was reduced slightly for the duration of the first part of the voice-over, after asking a few people they felt the voice conflicted less with the music and was clearer and easier to hear as a result. At the point where the cactus is knocked by the chair, I moved the keyframes at the point of contact further back in time to even out the speed that the two move at, in relation to each other. After trying the globe tracking in front of the rails it rolls down, I decided that it looked much better that way as it gives the impression that the globe is coming towards the viewer, creating a slightly more dynamic look. The biggest changes were made to the very end scene. I upped the brightness of the cables supporting the picture by 35% because they looked to prominent and didn't sit well in the overall colour scheme. The motion of the cable was completely altered to swing more naturally and knock against a small peg to make it look less like it just stops in mid air.

The 2 changes that didn't make it to the final version were making the cactus fall of the end of the carpet rather than the room, and using the rope to swipe in the text. I felt these didn't add anything to the animation as the cactus change would mess up timings and look unnatural, while the lope doesn't naturally swing far enough to swipe the text in a way that fits the timing of the voice-over. Below is the final 30 second clip I will be submitting:

 

 

Crit Feedback

After presenting my animation the rest of the class and my tutor Andrew the following points were raised and recorded in my sketchbook during the presentation:

• Plain background works well.
• First 2 parts of the voice-over fight with the music (perhaps duck the bass out in the music in time with the voice)?
• Cactus moves too fast when hit by the chair and falls too late, should fall from the end of the carpet.
• Globe should pass in front of the rails it rolls down.
• Movement of the picture swinging at the end looks unrealistic.

I will try all of these suggestions out in After Effects and evaluate which ones add to the animations and which ones detract from it. Sadly there is no time to present my changes to the class so I will have to rely on my own judgement when deciding whether to change certain elements.

Pre Crit Design

After careful deliberation I decided to bring 3 versions of my final animation to crit, 1 with a full voice-over, one with a partial voice-over and one with just the soundtrack. I will present the full voice-over one first and leave it at that if everyone validates my choice. For ease of playback and file transporting I downscaled my video to 1280x720, which should still preserve quality to an extent, the final submission will be in 1920x1080 format. The issues I intend to raise for discussion in the crit are as follows:

• Is the start attention grabbing enough?
• Is the movement of the globe realistic? 
• Does the part from the falling cactus to the rope swing flow in a visually pleasing way?
• Do the soundtrack and voice-over conflict in terms of volume and tone levels?

Below is the version of my animation I will present at the crit:

Anchor Points

While animating this project I made proper use of anchor points for the first time ever, despite being aware of them for a few years now. As I've never really used software for creating moving images that much in the past, most of my previous experiences have meant that I've never needed to use them much. They became a very useful tool for defining centres of scaling/vanishing points as well as axis of rotation.

When designing the pre-comped element of the globe>brackets>candle>canon portion of my animation they became essential to carry out what I was aiming for. Because I was modelling something that was possible to build in reality, as long as I made sure to align the anchor points with the axis of rotation on every element, animating the complex design would become very easy. Below is the full animation element consisting of 10 moving parts in total:

Once I'd gone through and lined everything up, all I needed to do was define the start and end points for position and degrees of rotation and the animation was tweened exactly as it would behave in reality.

I very glad that this project forced me to utilise anchor points as its something that I think I will make extensive use of in the future, both in moving image and static image design.

Pre-Comping

To keep things nice a organised while animating, I used a technique called pre-comping to nest any looping or composite animation elements. A good example of this would be the fan animation:

The fan was first drawn twice in Illustrator with the fan blades facing opposite directions. These 2 images were then dragged into a separate composition, lined up and then made to alternate using 100% and 0% opacity on individual keyframes spaced one frame apart. These keyframes were duplicated around 10 times.

This composition was then dragged into the main composition, and time remapping was then enabled so I was able to use the looping function.

The loopOut()function was then used to keep the composition looping indefinitely, with a single keyframe being removed at the end to keep the loop smooth without a pause every time it restarts.

 Below is an example of the fan animation looping in after effects:

Creating Depth

Because almost all of my assets are 2D .PNGs I decided to add a bit of depth using the drop shadow tool in After Effects. I initially planned to use identical settings for each asset but sadly the parameters seemed to be based off the image size, so the same settings produced wildly different visual effects. In order to combat this I started with red red ball and just tried to match everything by eye as best as I could.

Overall I think I managed to keep things relatively homogeneous, or as close as is needed given that individual elements are only on screen for quite a short time, meaning a perfect match is not as essential. Below is a screen-shot of the effect being used on the work in progress:

Recording Voiceover

After deciding to have a partial voice-over for my animation I began to make preparations. Thankfully I work with internationally renowned voice actor David Barrie, who has voiced numerous educational tutorial packages as well as being the singing voice of Kinder Egg Australia.

I drew up a basic script to make sure we nailed all the aspects of the idea I had in my head, and to provide a reference for Dave to use to do whole takes of all the material, as well as make his own notes. This was to maintain volume levels and overall tone of voice from start to finish. 

All the audio was recorded using a basic condenser mic mounted on a boom stand, with a pop screen and wind filter used to minimise sibilance and smooth out the dynamics. I used my MacBook's built-in soundcard to record in uncompressed AIFF-C format, which will be converted to 128kbps MP3 for maximum compatibility with After Effects and minimum file size, without sacrificing a meaningful level of quality.

In the end we recorded 10 full takes of the script. The 3 best were then chosen and will each be trailed during the final steps of animation to see which one works best.

Drawing and Researching Assets

Before I started on Illustrator I did some research into some of the objects I would be using in my Rube Goldberg machine. Once I had a good idea of what they looked like I drew them out before  converting them to Illustrator drawings.

Asset Resolution

To make sure that all my assets maintain high fidelity when zoomed or scaled I created them at a much higher resolution then the size of the final animation. I decided to use a 4k equivalent artboard in Illustrator:

At first I thought that this would mean very large file sizes but as I'm working with un-interlaced .png files with very clean and simple artwork it presents much less of a problem. The file sizes for each element are mostly under 300kb with a few exceptions from things like complicated lighting and gradients:

Assets

To help with the creation of my assets I created a list of all the individual elements I need to create in Illustrator that will be used in my final animation. I printed the list to stick in my sketchbook and will cross off each once as its finished to keep a good visual guide on how many more need making. I believe this will help me manage my time much better than on previous projects where large amounts of finals needed to be generated. All the files will be stored in a separate folder called 'Assets' and file labeling will be used to show if they are finished or in progress. The following is the list of all the assets I need to generate:

Kinetic Text???

For a while I experimented with the idea of have some kinetic text added to a few scenes, mainly the one where the ball rolls down the rails. The choice was between the kinetic text and having a voice-over but given the reception and feedback around my animatic during the pitch the voice-over will be the route that I take.

Pitch Feedback

After pitching my idea to the class I received some feedback and validation from the rest of the class:

• Music works well with animation style and idea. No changes needed for music.
• People prefer the way the cannonball/cactus move in the animatic. For the final animation I will just have the moving elements centred in the frame and 'shake' them with speed lines.
• The class thought that a voice-over throughout. I will only script and record a voice-over for the final scene, having it say 'Furniture recycling- get the ball rolling' as the camera pans out.
• Visual style works well. No changes needed. 

         

Animatic

As part of my ideas pitch we had to create an animatic to show to the group. For mine I drew loads of 16:9 boxes in my sketch book, drew the story board into them, scanned them all in and animated the jpegs together using Adobe Premier Pro.

In order to make it slightly more dynamic I reused and animated the same frame several times, using zooming and panning. 

Final Music Choice

After lots of deliberation I finally decided on a soundtrack for my animation; Lets Go Surfing by The Drums. I chose this song because it fulfills all the criteria I set when I started looking for one, it has fun and quirky feel and starts immediately with a catchy and interesting melody, gabbing the viewer/listeners attention right away.

Exploring My Chosen Animation Style

In order to get a better idea of what my final animation will look like in terms of visual language, I decided to use Illustrator to mock up a few assets to help inform the production of my animatic;

I stayed with my original theme of plain 2D shapes made more interesting using gradients and drop shadowing to make them stand out as 2D shapes in a 3D space. Overall I think it works well visually but I need to slightly simplify the colours or shift them towards a more pastel scheme.

Research into Animatics

To better understand animatics before I made mine I looked into a few and then compared them to the final animated outcome. The one I like most was the one released to promote the Gorrilaz single Dirty Harry ahead of the full and finished video:

This example uses detailed drawing but very simplistic cuts and movement to illustrate the timings, paying particular attention to the beat of the music which ties things together really well. 

When the two are compared side by side its very interesting to see what shots were moved around, had timings changes or removed all together. After watching both its clear that creating an animatic for my animation will give me a much clearer insight into what will work and what wont.

Animated Rube Goldberg Machines

To get a better idea of how to animate my Rube Goldberg machine I explored how other people have done it in  the past. I struggled to find 2D(ish) versions in YouTube as they were mostly very badly done 3d animations, this one is one of the few 2D ones I found:

I quite like the hand drawn style but the motion seems slow and not very dynamic, this is something I'll have to make sure to avoid when doing mine. To achieve this I will animate a better sense of weight and gravity to the objects in my machine.

Music Choices

As far as music goes I chose to use something cheerful and light-hearted, to reflect the positive and uplifting feel of my animation (as the brief requires you to not be lecturing or negative). The front runner in my short-list is a song by the English producer duo Lemon Jelly called The Staunton Lick:

The segment I'll most likely use will be from the 0:41 second mark, to allow a single bar of guitar and bass before the machine starts when the drums come in.

The next song that sticks out for me is Lets Go Surfing by The Drums:

This ones fit perfectly for what I intend to use it for, the only problem is that its been used a few times in existing ads to give an upbeat/quirky feel. I'm still trying to decide whether this validates my choice or makes it the clichéd. If I use this I'll most likely loop the first few segments to try and create an instrumental version of the intro and first verse.

Initial Research Into Music Choices

To start off my research into what music I was going to use for my animation I scrolled through my entire 12000 song iTunes library and YouTube history to try and find songs that I thought worked well. The 2 main things I looked for were immediately interesting lyrics/patterns and a light-hearted and slightly quirky feel. I settled on the following selection:

I will make my final decision by listening through each one and trying to imagine the animatic and reading the voice-over out loud, although this is subject to change once I have something more solid to look and play the music along with.