The animation process as a whole was ultimately my responsibility because I was the most familiar with the nature of animation and applying it to the work. I was also the most aware because of studying not he animation degree course about the different techniques and approaches, and the time they took to complete. I tried my best to make sure I didn't let anyone down from the animation side of the project. Ian is quite proficient using After Effects and he also pitched in and did some of his own animation with the scenes he created himself. This made sense because he probably had in mind when he was creating the scene how it was going to move. I did try to help him if I could if he needed anything, but overall between the two of us the animation process went quite smoothly and I'm happy with the overall results. The easiest of the three animations to animate was the first story, the American one. This was because everything we had in mind for the movement was simply a case of easing up, down, left or right. There was no complex movement throughout this piece, and since everyone did a great job of preparing the assets and separate elements to move it was a relatively quick process to get everything moving, at least quicker than we first anticipated. For example, in the scene below where the main character closes his eyes and displays an expression of content or happiness his eyes transition from being open to closed. This was the kind of simplistic almost gestural quality that I think gave our animation some subtle and enjoyable moments. They also give the audience obvious pointers as to what is going on, and what to expect. To create these scenes we simply prepared the character with to sets of eyes, one set open and one closed. I then overlaid them and switched them out by altering the opacity so the set of eyes underneath came through to the front and the transition from open to closed can then be seen on screen. It's a very primitive way of animating given the range of tools available in the software but it did the job quite well and it had a certain flair that I liked. I think coupled with this it was an advantage that the animation was simplistic in some of the scenes because it advances the story in a more direct way and gave us the ability to fit the content more comfortably under the 20 second time frame. With other scenes I applied more advanced functions of After Effects. In one scene, shown below, we wanted to show food cooking on a grill for a quick time before advancing to the section where the character is confronted by his food. I wanted every scene to have at least one element of movement to keep it consistent and for this scene we had the food sizzling on the grill. To make it look as if it's cooking and the oil on the grill move I used the 'wiggle' expression to alter the frequency of movements per second. The two numbers in the expression represent the number of movements per second and the number of pixels the object moves, so after playing around for a short time I achieved a good balance wiggle(50,2) which was 50 movements per second over a distance of two pixels. I then key-framed the scene accordingly before moving on. In reflection this was the easiest of all the animations to animate because it was more obvious to me what could move and everything was prepared quite well for the animation stage. There was probably other elements that made this particular animation go so smoothly such as the pressure being lower as it was furthest from the deadline for example. It was enjoyable to make however and I really liked the assets and scenes we created for this animation as a group.
The second animation that went through the animation process was the Asian narrative, dubbed 'The Quest'. This was harder for a number of reasons, such as their being a less obvious way in which movement could be used to tell the story and I ended up using camera movement in order to advance the scenes and make the animation more appealing to an audience. Ultimately I think with all of the animations but this one especially, the animation was limited by the assets themselves. When working predominantly with Photoshop and After Effects like we did, everything that's on a separate layer can be moved individually to everything else. Given this, the more separation we had between layers and objects within a scene the more experimentation and freedom there was when it came to the production process and making everything move. My favourite scene from this piece is the final scene in which all of the food is laid out on the table and steam is rising from it all. The steam was moved by simply altering the position and opacity, however I wanted to go one step further as in itself it was quite simplified and didn't do the scene justice so to add a little more to the movement I used a function in After Effects under the effects>distort option called 'ripple'. This takes the object and creates a ripple distortion within it, which actually worked really well with the steam and gave it a lot more movement that I wouldn't have been able to achieve with any of the other options, and essentially gave the movement a little bit more complexity. I tried to add as much subtle movement in as I could in other scenes, and used tracking shots several times to demonstrate some of the smaller details within scenes and add some interesting scene transitions to tie the moving camera shots together. I wanted to avoid completely still images unless they were necessary, in order to keep the audience interesting in the movement and direct their attention even for just the short time of 20 seconds. Another scene I liked that required a little bit of experimentation on my part was the shot of the restaurant exterior. For this scene I had the idea to have blossom moving across the screen as well as some of the more subtle movements. To do this I took a short video clip of blossom blowing on a black background. I think altered the blending option of the video so that the blossom could be seen overlaid on the restaurant background. This worked quite well, and I think it added a nice touch to the scene, making it one of the more successful sections. Sometimes I found myself adding very subtle elements of movement even if I felt they wouldn't necessarily be noticed. Using the restaurant scene as an example, the main focus point at the start of the scene is the restaurant but as the scene progresses the blossom takes over and I think that becomes the main focal point of the audience. However, I also made the hanging charm in the restaurant doorway sway side to side as if it was being affected by the wind, and also the cats tail move. These aren't so noticeable in the grand scheme of the scene but potentially add in an almost unconscious way to how dynamic the scene is when being viewed. By this I mean that even if an audience isn't looking directly at it, they can still see it in their peripheral and thus brings the scene to life just a little bit more.
The final animation that was animated was the piece set it Paris, 'From Rags to Riches'. I think in terms of the animation and charisma that the story has this would have to be my personal favourite of the three. I believe this is possible due to the variation in the movement across the scenes, and the incorporation of the character and the way he interacts with the surroundings. There was some problem solving involved in this piece because the assets were very simple but I wanted to portray the character walking and washing pots and doing other kinds of quite complex movements. To approach this, we had to frame the character and the scene in certain ways. When he is seen walking to and from work, we had him in the foreground and the shot cuts off his lower body. I actually think that as well as solving our problem of having complex movement reduced to something quite simple, it also looked a lot better than having him in the background. For this scene I also used the 'simulate' function in After Effects to produce some rain. Adding rain here adds another layer of depth to the scene, and element of drama. After Effects also gives complete control over these kind of effects and I was able to alter the number of raindrops, speed of the rain, and the angle based on wind and wind speed to suit my requirements for the rain, and what overall effect I wanted it to have. The movement of the character in this scene was a simple case of moving up and down as if he was walking, but it gave a clear impression of what was happening and considering how easy it was I was pleased with the results. Due to the story we had produced, one of the scenes shows our character washing a stack of pots at the bakery he works at. To do this scene I suggested that the characters upper and lower arms as well as his head and hands should be on separate layers so they can be moved independently of one another. This gave me the ability to move them and make it seem as if he was washing up more realistically. Scenes like this took more time and a little more adjusting than some of the more straight forward scenes but I think it was worth it overall given the added complexity it gives to the animation as a whole. A scene that Ian produced that I really liked depicted the changing of seasons. It was done by trading out separate trees for other ones based on the season, so autumn trees, winter, summer etc. I think it's a great way to depict the changing of time, and it was done really nicely. The hardest scene for me to animate personally throughout this entire brief was the walk cycle of the main character here. This was because the character was limited by only have two arms and two legs as pieces that could be moved, also his left arms and legs were obstructed by his body so I had to pay attention to what areas were being revealed. The walk cycle was created by moving sections independently and adjusting until the movement worked and was smooth, but there was also some rigging involved. I created a null object in order to parent the arms and legs to, which was parented to the torso. This meant that is his body was moved, the separate arms and legs would move with it but also move on their own with the rotation and position keyframes I had allocated to them. This process of parenting meant that the objects stayed connected whilst the character was being animated.
Overall I think the movement for the 'Rags to Riches' animation was the most successful of the three, but they all have their own elements that I like within them. I learnt some new techniques not only about different functions which I hadn't used in the past such as the 'wiggle' expression or the distortion effects but also layering video clips using blending options and finally I have learnt the basics of rigging a character in After Effects which in turn I believe has opened a range of possibilities regarding my future work in After Effects and what I can create with the software. In reflection this has been a process of experimentation and problem solving that I hope has delivered some interesting and charismatic movement within the animation of the artwork we were able to create.
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