Animated Documentary: Summative Evaluation

Throughout this module it has been a challenge and I've been out of my comfort zone because for starters the animation wasn't in my style, so I had to learn how to draw differently to how I normally draw. I've also been out of my comfort zone because this animation was done in 2D where as I normally specialise in 3D animation, so it took me some time to get used to drawing out every frame.

I feel like are final animation is how we predicted it would turn out to be, however it took us some time to get there with a lot of changes and fall outs along the way. If I could change anything or redo this module I'd try and stick to the work schedule that I'd planned and I'd also keep in better contact with my team mates so that I know that we are all on the same page and know that we're all doing the right thing. I also feel like if I had to re-animate everything again I'd animate it differently so that the animation is smoother and doesn't jitter as much as it does now, I'd do this by creating all on the characters assets on different layers in photoshop and then animate the character in after effects using the puppet pin tool, this way the animation will run fluidly.

Over all I have learnt a lot from this module and it's given my a great insight into the animation industry and how other people will work differently to me and how if I have good communication with my team things will run smoother. I also feel like are team click the best out of all the other groups, which taught me that no matter what group your in you still have to give your best and try your hardest to cooperate and compromise with the group so that the team is synchronized and works well together.          

Animated Documentary: FINAL ANIMATION

This is are final animation for this module, Molly finally gave me all of her work so that I could edit it all together. I also had to place some backgrounds in to her animation because they where just black so it looked weird compared to the rest of the animation. I'm relieved that this is now over and done with and no longer have to stress over the work or anything.

I'm happy with the outcome of are documentary animation and I'm pleased that the characters help portray the stories that Molly and I tell. I also like how the background animates to the emotions of the narrative of are stories and how the animation of the background increases when the story gets intents. However, if I could do this all over again I'd spend more time on the audio so that its clear but also has the right amount of emotion in it.

My experience through out this module was different from the rest of my modules because I my of made some things harder for myself and this was the first time I have been a director of a collaborative animation. I feel like my time management could of been better, and I also feel like I should of made more of an effort to keep in contact with my group as we hardly spoke throughout the module compared to the rest of the groups in are class.  

Animated Documentary: Editing Final Animation

Now that I've finished editing all of my scenes I decided to put the final scenes back into After Effects and put them in the animatic so that I can see what the final outcome will look like and if the scenes fitted in well with the timing of the animatic. I found that very thing was going well and the timing was correct but the only problem was that I've not received any of Molly's work other than three scenes, so I put them in as well however I'm still waiting for her to finish.

I also had an idea to do subtitles with the animation because I had word with my tutors and they said that adding subtitles would benefit the animation well because we'd have a wider audience of people who can watch are animated documentary. So I now had to edit in subtitles to are animation which didn't take too long but I did accidentally have some spelling mistakes the first time I rendered it out, however I've sorted it out now and there are no mistakes.

I feel like this animation work well even fill Mollys scenes aren't finished, I like the timing of the animation and it fits in well with the audio. I also like how the styles change slightly in between the stories because it makes each story seem individual but also emphasises the emotion of the stories as well. The only thing I'd change is probably the arrangement of the animation and make the stories intertwine more with one another. However, I do not like the final audio because I feel like my voice is to quiet and a bit croaky so I'd like to change it so my voice is more clear.   

 

Animated Documentary: Editing and Backgrounds

Before I can start editing the scenes together I had to fix a couple of problems with the background because Malachi did animate them but I had to reanimate most of the backgrounds that he gave me so that the backgrounds would fit in well with the animations. Also I had to reanimate the leaves blowing in the wind because they were stiff and not bending so they looked kind of robotic and none fluid. This took some time because animating the background made my laptop run slower due to the size Malachi made the photoshop files (he made them 3 times the size of 1920-1080p). 

The first thing I did was the leaves because they were the most important and noticeable part to the backgrounds. I animated the leaves using the puppet tool so that they can bend with a smooth motion path and look more realistic to the wind. This was an annoying process because I had to animate the puppet pins on every single leave separately just so that I could get a random look of the leaves blowing in the wind.     

After animating the leaves I then had to animate even more leaves because the leaves on the branch were doing the same thing and just being really stiff. So I had to again animate the leave using the same tool as before, I also had to move the branch itself further down in the scene because it was too close to the top and the orangutans wouldn't fit on screen if I left the branch where it was in the first place. I also had to slow down the clouds as well because they were moving across the screen to fast and they weren't in time with the rest of the animation.

Now that the leaves are all sorted out I then had to fix the tree, this meant that I had to place effects onto the tree like the turbulent displacement and rough edges effects, but I did also have to fix the clouds again because they were moving across the screen to fast so I just slowed them down. As well as doing all this I also had to change the length of each background scene because Malachi had made then too short so I had to elongate them to fit the animations.

All in all I had to change quite a bit of Malachis' work which I didn't really want to do but I had to so that the animation would look decent and not unprofessional. Don't get me wrong he's done a good job but there where bit that needed tweaking and changing so that is wouldn't look odd in the final outcome of the animation. Not only have I done this but I'll also be putting together the final edit of the full animation with Mollys' work but I'm still waiting on her to complete it first before I can get started on it.

Animated Documentary: Scene 8

In this scene the mother orangutan is telling the baby orangutan about the bad news and the she comforts him. To me this scene was simple enough to do however it did take me some time to do because I did have to think of how I was going to animate the characters in the scene. Once I figured out what I was doing I found it simple to animate it, I think the only difficult thing in this scene that I had to animate was the beginning where the mother swings round the child and sits him on her knee. This was because I had to get the perspective of both of them right when they were turning round and for me that was quite hard to do.

What I like about this scene is the beginning of it because it doesn't just start off with the child on the mothers knee, plus it looks more emotional if the mother has to place her child on her knee to tell him about the bad news. I also like how the background gets darker at the end to represent loss and sadness but I also had to make some changes to the background just to make it a bit smoother and fit in well with the animation. However, I don't like how the mother doesn't look down at the child orangutan then she is comforting him but I didn't really know how to make the mother look like she is looking down without cutting off bits of the face. But I am glad that I've done animating all my scenes and now all I have to do it edit them together in After Effects but before I can do that I have to wait for molly to finish her scenes as well.

  

Animated Documentary: Scene 7

This scene took the longest for me to do because to be honest I wasn't in the right mind set on the day plus I was at home and not in leeds which put me off a bit. It also took me the longest to do because I had to animate two orangutans coming in from a birds eye view, which to me is kind of hard to do so what I did was I looked at me previous shot of the mother orangutan coming in shot but then visualised it from above and tried to draw it out. This worked well I think for me but I did have to do it twice because I didn't want to just copy and paste the same animation for the other orangutan because it might look a bit odd in the final outcome. For the background Malachi and I decided to have a still background because it will draw more attention to the characters if the background is still and the scene is at a serious point and the audience doesn't need to be distracted by things moving in the background.

I also just lowered the contrast and brightness of the background so that it doesn't shine over the characters or just look a bit odd and out of place. In this scene I like how the baby orangutans come in to shot because its a nice flowing animation and I also like how one of the orangutans grabs the fathers arm and if just falls back down when the baby orangutan lets go. But looking back at this scene I do not like that the father starts off with his eyes open and arms up because he is supposed to be unconscious, so if I could change anything I would start the scene off with the father just laying still to represent this.    

  

Animated Documentary: Scene 6

In this scene the baby Orangutan is being comforted by him mother, so I had to make the mother come in from the right which meant that I had to do some kind of walk cycle fro the mother orangutan. What I did was, I went on to the internet and found some footages of orangutan waking around and figured out that all I needed to do was make the mothers arms come in and place them down and have the rest of her body swing in after the arms because that's how they walk around. With the baby orangutan I just created him in photoshop and put his limbs onto different layers so that I can use the puppet pin tool again in after effects.

For the background I again used the same background from scene four and five but I changed it by scaling it up so that it looks like it is a close in shot of the environment. What I like about this scene is the mother coming in because I feel like the movement does represent an orangutan walking in and it is quite smooth looking. Although I'm not liking the way that the baby orangutan is stationary at the beginning of the scene but if I could change it I don't really know how different I would make it to the original shot.

  

Animated Documentary: Scene 5

Scene five was one of the easiest scenes to do because there wasn't that much to animate. I created the character in photoshop and then using the lasso tool I cut out parts of the orangutan and placed them on separate layers. After that I imported them in to After Effects and added the turbulent displacement effect onto the the cut out parts of the orangutan and then keyframed there position and moved the parts out away from the body of the orangutan and then just made the parts fade away. This represented his emotions being scattered and not knowing what to do.

For the background I just used the same one from before but just placed a fast blur effect on to it so that the focus is more on the character, plus I think it adds a little something to the scene and I like the way it looks/make the animation feel. I'm not sure if you can tell or not but I also made the background fade darker towards the end of the scene just to add a bit more emphasis on the emotion of the scene.    

Animated Documentary: Scene 4

In this scene I drew out the baby orangutans ligaments on different layers in photoshop so that I could animate him in after effects because I though that animating him in after effects would be a better outcome than animating him in photoshop. However, I did animate the other orangutans in photoshop because there was not much movement with them. For the baby orangutan I animated him by using the puppet pin tool in after effects, this made the animation on him smoother but it did some ligament stretch a bit which is one down fall in using this tool. For the background I had to make the tree deform and look as though it is shacking because this represents the emotion of the scene and if the emotion gets worse so does the tree. So to do this I used the turbulent displacement and the rough edges effect in after effect and increased the amount of the effect towards the end of the scene because the baby orangutan sees the others crying and doesn't understand why.

I like how the baby orangutan climbs down the tree and I like how the tree moves in time with the scene i.e. it gets more distorted as the orangutan climbs down and sees others crying. However, I'm not too sure on the other orangutans because they seem to stationary, so I feel like I could of put some rough edges or turbulent displacement on them to make them seem more effective to the scene. I also had to slow down the animations on the background because they where running too fast for the scene and it just looked out of place. 

 

Animated Documentary: Scene 3

Scene three was one of the hardest scenes for me to think of how I was going to animate it because I mentioned fighting in the narrative, so I thought that I would have to animate something complicated like a fight scene or something. However, I came up with an idea to have the two orangutans will just push each other around instead, this way they look like they are fighting but its not complicated to animate. In this scene the two orangutans are play fighting but then suddenly the father orangutan falls asleep and the baby orangutan doesn't know what to do about this. I've also added in the backgrounds because Malachi had finished animating my backgrounds so I could drop them in, but I did have to make a couple of changes to the background just so that it fitted with my animation and so that it was fluid enough as well.

I feel like Ive done a good job of animating this scene and I like the first shot of this scene where the orangutans move to the left of the screen because it flows smoothly from scene two and it gives off the impression that the environment is larger and more interactive with the characters. I also like the part where the father orangutan falls backwards because it shows weight and force to the fall, which when I was animating that part I wasn't thinking too much about those attributes. The one thing I'm not to keen on is the part where the father orangutan falls asleep and the baby orangutan falls on top of him because there is a little glitch in the fall down and it's not supposed to be there and I think its something to do with when I was animating the scene in photoshop, however when I play it back in photoshop it plays fine so I don't know what to do about it. Overall I am pleased with the outcome of this scene but if I could do it again I would add another character to it because in the narrative I mention my mother coming in and taking me to bed, so I'd add this bit in to the scene.