DSanders Animation

This the final rendered/ finished FMP animation for the project, here I have adapted on the previous video as I have made sure that the video has been rendered with a  Quicktime file rather than a AVI file. As before hand I rendered the videos in after effects using an AVI file which made it harder to render the files properly as half of the video compositions didn’t render at all. This time I made sure I changed it to Quicktime and Photo JPEG which has dramatically improved the rendering quality of each of the video compositions. Furthermore because of this I have added a lot more of the footage I animated in after effects, providing the full animation compared to selected parts of it. However due to time approaching on the deadline I had some issues when making all the scenes I Intended to make in the storyboard. But this is due to me being slightly too ambitious putting too much work on my self making a 10 minute animation above, rather than a 1-2 minute animation.

Nevertheless I like how this animation has come out, as I have spent some extra time going through each of the compositions adding sound effects, vocals and timing to make the animation more appealing for the target audience. Plus when going through each of the individual scenes I have considered more of the character movement, using the 12 principles of animation research I had collected in previous posts. This helped me because it allowed me to consider the characters in a more interesting way, compared to a typical robot character, so by adding human timed run cycles, to make the characters look more like advanced robots. But of course I have kept the animation to have a majority of robotic movements as they are robots, so that particular style of movement is natural to those characters.

By using a combination of After effects and Premiere pro I was able to produce this final video, as I used my Photoshop rigs in After effects to animate the characters using the anchor points and puppet tool to make each of the individual layers in the Photoshop files to move accordingly. Plus I also rendered the animations in after effects to get an effective, HD quality to the animation, by adding some basic effects and sound to help me with the animation process. For instance I used the computer’s dialog to add the audio waveform effect onto the mouth to show that he is speaking, which will help the audience to identify who is speaking in the scene. But the majority of the sound was added later in Premiere pro to help me get the audio in the specific places without having to continuously render the animation to hear the sound like in After effects.

I think for next time I could add some colour correction to the animation to make some of the scenes look more softer or give a particular feeling to the audience making them immersed in the scene. However I think that the sparks effect has come out nicely and fits with the animation, allowing the audience to clearly see what is happening in the scene without getting confused. I think though I should have added the scene where the robots get dropped off into the factory to help show the audience how the robots ended up in the factory in the first place. But other than I think the animation came out really well, with a few problems along the way I finally got to my final idea for the animation.

Evaluation

This is the evaluation for the FMP, here I have documented my development throughout the project, reviewing my own work across the project helping me to see where I can improve for future reference. In this document I have answered a series of questions relating to final animation, providing some insight into how I managed to choose from my original ideas and make them into the final production. This project has allowed me to develop and learn more about how I have seen myself develop other the course of the project, learning new skills and techniques to help me improve my own ideas. This Evaluation shows my awareness of how I have used time well to make the animation in time for the deadline but also how I have missed out on opportunities to work on certain aspects of my animation because I have been focusing more on one thing. But overall this Evaluation explains is more detail how I have managed to reach a final animated short from a simple idea and a few sketches.

This is my final animation, created using rigs drawn in Photoshop, which are then added into adobe after effects for animating. Unfortunately I have not been able to complete this animation sequence because I ran out of time for the deadline. I think the reason is I have tried to do too much in the time that I was given making it harder for me to complete my original final idea. Therefore I have had to take out the ending of the animation as well as some scenes because I was not able to complete them. Furthermore due to my computer being very slow I was unable to render some of the scenes properly meaning that some of the scenes have become very jumpy. However some of the scenes have actually come out quite well considering making this animation quite unique with my personal style of artwork and concept art for the characters and environments. Finally there may not be any sound in this animation as of yet because once again I have run out of time for the deadline to meet the requirements that I wanted. I think the reason for this is some of my time management wasn’t as effective as I wanted to, as sometimes I would set-up a specific time to get a part of the animation done by, which then doesn’t reach it because it takes longer than I expected, making me fall behind in my schedule.

Client Meeting Minutes Sheet #1

Client Meeting Minutes Sheet #2

Client Meeting Minutes Sheet #3

Client Meeting Minutes Sheet #4

These are my 4 meeting minute sheets, showing my documentation of the meetups with my client. At the start of the project we were assigned a client, who would help us to develop and overview the production of our animations, giving advice for improving some parts of the animation or sketchbook work. I have meetup with my client 4 times as you can see above. Within each of the sheets I have created developed some parts of my work based on the advice from my client in order to help me improve my work in the best way. The process of meeting up with my client has allowed me to understand more about my idea, developing it so that it is more appealing for my targeted audience.

Furthermore having the client to help me through the production of the project I have been able to gain some interesting reference videos and other useful books and studies that can help me later on when animating my scenes for the fmp. I have tried to spread out my meeting minutes to once every week or 2 weeks, to allow me to take on board what the client has said and then add it to the part of the project that was needed to be improved, providing me with the opportunity to expand on what I have learn’t from my client.

These are the various voice overs and sound effects that will be used in my final animation, but these voice overs have been edited in Premiere pro CC to make a robotic voice effect. This was quite simple to make by combining the original sound with the Flanger and Pitch shifter effect in Premiere pro CC I was able to play around the pitch and robotic voice deepness to help get a variety of different pitches for some of the characters including; the computer AI (good/ evil) Rbot and the detective. I have made this audio files so that I can add them into the animation once I finished, I didn’t want to use the original voice overs for the characters because they all sounded the same, as my voice sounds deeper on camera/ recording. Therefore by using the effects in Premiere I was able to get appealing robot voice for each of the robots, having the various pitches to make the robots unique in their speech to help the audience to recognise which character is which in the scene.

I have by using the effects for the robot voices I was able to create some presets for the voices that could add over the top of each of the robot voices to make sure each of the robots match the voice throughout the animation. AS you can hear I have chosen to use the  Pacific rim soundtrack for my own soundtrack as experimenting in garage band I couldn’t quite get the robotic music that I wanted so I has to use this. But I have reduced the speed of the song to 75% allowing me to get that robotic hammer and metal sound in the background of the robots being built. Furthermore I have added a Pitch shifter and flanger effect to help make the animation more appealing because the soundtrack helps to bring that mood of robots being built-in the background.

Anyway these other sound effects have been taken from a website called sound snap which allowed me to get some mechanical sound effects for the robotic arms and robot characters in the scene. Using these sound effects will allow me to make an interesting animation as the sound will help to tell the story to the audience of what is happening in the scene. Plus the use of the evil robotic voice of the Computer AI will help the target audience to feel immersed within the scene, providing them with opportunity to feel the characters expressions.

These are the different animation re reference I have watched and used for the different part of my animation. Using these references has allowed me to develop my original ideas for the animation presenting new ways to animate the characters in the scene. The first animation is a reference to the AT AT in the Star Ware film Episode 5 as original I was going to use the AT ST but I thought about using the AT because the robotic legs have a powerful movement which shows the strength of the machine, so as the walkerbot is an interpretation of a military machine it should be useful for animating the characters walk cycle. The next reference is the video I found that could potentially be used to help me animate the conveyor belt. Although I am using a pre made drawing for the animation the video reference for the movement of an actual conveyor belt can help me to consider the mechanical movement that makes the conveyor belt.

The third reference is to the robot in the film the incredibles, this is useful because I wanted to see how they used the extendable arms to move the character around. As my extendabot has the similar style of arms so I thought watching this character could help me to develop my own interpretation, allowing me to get a realistic animation. Furthermore the animation of this character could be useful for the reference of the timing for the movement of the robot allowing me get a realistic looking movement. The next reference is for the Samurai robot, as by looking at the Jagers from Pacific rim I saw that they have a mechanical human walk, which is exactly what I want for my animation. So by looking through this to see how the character moves I can interpret it into my one animation to get that robotic/ human walk cycle.

Finally the last reference is for the samurai character as at the end of the animation the robots eyes will turn from blue to red, representing that good to evil personality change. However at first I was a little unsure on how to make it but by watching the tutorial I soon learned how to make it work for my animation. The very last reference is for the tutorial on how to make the spark visual effects that I wanted to add to the welding arms as they build the robots. I did not fully complete the tutorial because what I wanted to do was not as complex as what this tutorial showed me, but none the less the tutorial allowed me to use it as a reference as I experimented with the different effects e.g CC particle world to help me create the effects in after effects. All of these video tutorials and film references have allowed me to develop and understand a little bit more about how my characters work allowing me to refine my animation making it look a little more natural for a robotic movement.

I have also added some photos of the book the animators survival kit by Richard Williams which I used as reference in my animation to help make the walk cycle for the samurai warrior. These pages were helpful because it allowed me to reference the pages for each of the key positions of the arms and legs, allowing me to construct a simple walk cycle and jump for the animation. This will be used in the animation to help me create a walk cycle that has suitable timing and looks realistic for the robot. Although the robot is a rig I will us the anchor points and pivot points to make the legs and arms rotate in similar positions which could make the animation look realistic for a robotic character.

 

This is some general notes that I have taken to develop my understanding of animation in after effects. As I know the basics of the software, however I do not know the animation side of after effects very well so before animating I made these notes below to help me with the different tools and key points I need to consider for the animation. This information has been given by my tutors and my older brother to help me use the software for the animation. I have started to animate some basic scenes for the animation, as I have made the blocking for the animation, making the key positions of the characters in the scenes providing me with the opportunity to then go in and add the in betweens. As i will have a basic animation sequence that can be edited considering all the 12 principles of animation.

General points to remember

• Y key is to change the pivot point/ anchor point
• If move character (position) have that in one composition and have the actual animation in separate composition
• Import Photoshop files rather than JPEGs/PNGs

Rigging 

• File>Import>Photoshop file>make sure composition is selected in drop down or composition retain layers> make sure the edit option is selected
• Y key move Anchor point
• A key Anchor point
• P key to parent objects
• CTRL C to select multiple anchor points
• CTRL V to select past layer
• Rename Null objects to (name of object e.g. torso) Control
• Make separate folder in project menu for Master control which are for the original compostions (do not touch just duplicate if need to use it) then always duplicate the orginial file if need to use it in more than one scene otherwise will be same animation for all compositions of that type
• Alt click Stop watch to make a 3D layer for the camera, so the same with X,Y and Z orientation.
• Environments just import same as characters
• Use custom camera rig to bring this up go File>scripts (don’t rename it)
• Track in camera is for zoom
• Heading is orientation of camera
• Use the Null object to move camera (do not touch the camera layer)
• Use CC particle world for Spark effect

All of these notes will help me to develop my animation allowing me to create the final animation in adobe after effects. These notes will be used as reference to help me if I get stuck during the production of the animation.