MY FINAL ANIMATION... FINI!

So this is it. I think I'm happy with it, as is it meant to be this simple...  but now I do think maybe I could of done something a lot better.. But now that I have learned so much about After Effects and everything I think if we were to do another animation I would be a lot more confident than I was with this one.

Last additions...

Looking at my animation so far, there still isn't that much to it. So, I thought I would go ahead with the idea of making it look a bit three dimensional, giving it a bit of depth.

This is how I did it... 

With help from Johnny, New Layer> Camera... and clicking the button that turns it 3D ad playing about with it, we managed to get it moving how I wanted it to, and by changing all the key frames to 'easy ease' it made all the movement smooth and not jerky.

We still however thought that there wasn't much happening, so ....

So I came up with this idea after Johnny showed me a few more technique in After Effects. I wanted to try and get the rings moving forward and getting bigger and then going out of the frame. I need to try and get it go more in time to the music, maybe the drum beat or something that's a bit quicker. 

I think this really adds a lot more to the feel of my animation. By changing the opacity of the rings, and keeping them similar colour ( a lighter shade of orange) I don't think it takes too much away from the drawn line, as you can still see it through the lines. 

I think this concludes it... I'm not adding any more to it as I didn't want it to be busy and hectic, the aim was to keep it quite simple. 

Time to render. 

Camera Movement ...

At the moment, I think my animation is a tad boring, maybe a bit too simple.
After talking with Matt, he showed me how make it look as if the 'camera' is following the lines at it appears, with some zooming in and out as well...

This is the one that me and Matt did together as he was showing me how and what I could do.

Then I had a go on my own starting fresh. This is just the first section with the line drawing the pictures. Now I'm going to reopen this in After Effects and add the rest onto the end.. so the 'la la la' and 'by Ellie Langley' ect. I'm going to try and get the La la to come off from the line that the above ends on..

Well, this is 30 seconds! SPOT ON. I think this looks really good actually.. BUT is it good enough? I think maybe there is a little more I could do to it.. It still seems a bit too simple.. Although that is intentional, I don't want it to be TOO simple.

Once more.. wait until tomorrow and check with Matt or Johnny.. Maybe I should make it a bit three dimensional so that it looks as if it's moving closer or even further away? Worth a try anyway!

More In After...

After the first couple of experiments, I thought I'd build it up a bit more, maybe more on the page, getting the time longer and more happening on screen. Maybe have the image appearing and filling the page, like so:

I tried to get the timing to look like it flows with the music, but I'm not sure if this one is that good really. I do like the idea of having it all build up in one frame until it ends as a full image kind of... 

I think the writing works especially well with this technique, as it is like my handwriting of writing out my name, it works well with the continuous line too. Happy with the text. 

Going back to my original storyboard, my initial idea was the the camera would follow the line from one image to another, rather than have it all on the same bit, so try this out first I drew out each bit separately in different compositions, so then I could put them all together in order. 

First section - BONGOS.

Second section - THE FACE.

Third section - HAND AND JEMBE.

Forth section - LALALALALA

Fifth section - BY ELLIE LANGLEY

Sixth section - FLAT LINE.

Then I put them all together in the right order.. making this:

 I like this more than before, as by making it move on from one image to the next makes it look a lot more interesting, I feel like it's starting to really come together, even though it still needs some work.

Time Time Time

Now I need to think logically and work out how long each section will be to get the hole animation as close to 30 seconds as I can, without making it look silly. The timing also needs to go with the music, my main link up in timing with the music is when the voice starts to go 'La la la la la la'. This is going to link with when the letter start to appear spelling out 'La la la..'

I worked out, with six 'scenes', and 30 seconds, 30 divided by 6 is 5, so each one around 5 seconds ish.. some less some slightly more.

When I showed  a course mate my animation so far, she said it reminded her of a Bruno Mars music video...

I LOVE THIS ... not the song! But the way they made the tape form the letters and then the drum! I really like the way it has been animated.

In After Effects ...

As I thought the one that I did by hand drawing and using the stop motion technique looked a bit messy and unprofessional, I got Matt (tutor) to show me how I can draw in After Effects and give the illusion the lines is being drawn extremely easily.

First open a new Composition, and name it.
Then import an image, in my case, I imported this image to use as a template:

By double clicking the image, it opens in a new layer... Then using the BRUSH TOOL and 'paint' I just drew directly onto the top of the image, trying to follow the lines.

... Then back on the Composition, into Effects>Paint I changed the 'Paint on Transparent' to ON, so the image disappears and leaves the line that I just drew.

 This is what it looked like without the image behind it. I wanted to try and keep the quality of the line, as that's what's nice about my line drawings, so I used a graphics tablet with pen to draw my lines, as this meant I could keep the same movement as drawing with a normal pen, rather than struggle with a mouse that doesn't have much room to move. This was the first time I have ever used one, slightly hard at first, but practice makes perfect!

Then, if you Ram Preview it, it shows you the line appearing. Like so:

As this was my first attempt, and I just wanted to see what it looked like and if it worked well, I didn't think too much about colours. Green was my standard background colour in After Effects and the red was so it would stand out. I do really like the effect though, I think it looks much better and smoother than my stop motion attempt. Now I just need to play about with it a bit more and see what else I can do!

I decided to just keep drawing out over the same image quite a few times so that I got more comfortable using the pen and tablet, and I gradually got neater! I also changed the colours, to a deep orange and a deep red. These are both colours from my mood boards, and I think they are slightly tribal-like colours.

This one is 15 seconds long, as I increased the drawing speed after I had drawn it. This is half of the time that my final animation needs to be. This has helped give me a much clearer idea of what I'm doing. Also I think the line in this is much better, I need to keep my hand steady and swift while drawing to keep the line.

I thought I should see how it looks with the colours reversed as well, so I drew orange onto deep red. However, I really like the dark red against the orange back ground. The deep red is a bit too dark for the background really. I'm really happy with the colours I have chosen, though I will stick to orange background.

The Illusion of Appearing.

In a previous workshop, we were shown a way to make it look like the line was appearing or being drawn. I thought I would have a go with one of my drawing to see if  I could do it that way. 

Firstly I opened up the image I wanted to try and 'draw'.

Then opened a new layer on top, giving it a colour so that I could see it easily.

Then I changed the opacity of the new layer, so that I could see the lines of the image underneath.

Then using the Pen tool, I followed the line underneath, drawing onto the new layer/

Then Effect > Generate > Stroke to open up a new menu so I can edit the size of the stroke, and where is starts and ends...

I was following the instructions that I had blogged previously, as I knew I would want to try this out.

HOWEVER it turns out that I  must of missed something MAJOR, as after I had done everything I thought I needed to, for some reason... it wouldn't work.

I'm not sure what I did wrong.. or what I missed out.. But I could not work it out so at this point, I gave up.

To My Music...

I realised that so far I have not done any experiments along to my music, so this one here is just that. I have used drawings that relate to my song and that I want in my final..

           


This animation is 245 photographs, at frame rate 8 and is less than 10 seconds really. I think I've managed to get the timing quite nicely with the music, although I know its certainly not perfect.
 I did however manage to get the 'la la la' bit in good time HOWEVER blogger would not let me upload a quicktime video onto here, so I had to save one as a mpeg4 as well, and for some reason when I watch it back the sound is out. Not sure why this happened. It feels like blogger sped up my video as well.. :/

I think this is my best one so far, I would also like to try and do one that shows my hand drawing it as well.

Bongos... attempt 1

I thought I would do a little experiment of my actual animation, as I think I will start off with the bongos, I tried it out. To make sure I managed to get them in proportion, as it's hard when drawing bit by bit with no outline or anything, I used tracing paper for this one. I drew them out on a white sheet of paper first, and masking taped it at one end, and then did the same with the tracing paper on top, but at the other end.
This way I can have the paper underneath the tracing as I draw each bit, and then just flip it out from underneath to take the photo. It was slightly tedious but I think it worked quite well.

I really love this, but they do seem to keep coming out a bit blurred at the end, and they just look quite bad. I think that if I managed to do it all using After Effects then it would look a lot more neat, bold and professional.

For this one, I took 125 photographs all together, and used the frame rate of 14.

I need to get help with using After Effects to create the illusion of the lines being drawn, as when I tried with referring to the work shop and my notes, I think I  missed something out as it does not work. GET HELP.

TOAST

This is just another little experiment I did. Expanding my new found love for STOP MOTION. It was breakfast time and I was getting in the frame of mind to get on with my work!!

I love how stop motion can make the most simple things EXCITING!! Although for some reason, my animations look fine on After Effects when I'm making them, but then when I open them in realplayer or windows media player, they seem a bit small and slightly distorted. Maybe I have it set on AE as a small composition .. check it out.

In a previous project I had bin working with purple ink in a jar of water, taking photos of it as it flows down through the water... I took lots simultaneously as the ink was moving, thinking it would make a cool animation if I ever got round to putting it together! I just came across these photos again and thought., perfect timing.

This is the shorter of the two, it would of bin better if I'd of got lots more photos and had it going on for longer, like the next one.

This is more good practice for me for using After Effects, I feel like I'm getting a lot more confident with using it, although there is still a lot for me to learn! I feel like I can use this program for most simple things by myself.