Project 3: Final Animations/ Evaluation.

Here, are my two final and finished scenes from my animation. 

The aim of this project was to showcase my skills in a digital format, showing how well I could manage, produce, and eventually display my work in the from of an animation. 

I began this project a little unsure of what I wanted to produce from it, I knew I wanted something rather cute and different, but I wanted it to stick in people's minds, and this is why I added such a bizarre ending. I started off with the intention of creating everything in Cinema 4D, but soon after discovering After Effects I think I knew which one I preferred. I really enjoyed making assets and in particularly, the little walk cycles and loops of my characters, as I really saw them come to life and it gave them a lot more personality, which is what I wanted to show in my animation. 

I did encounter a few problems whilst animating my work, and one of those was finding my way round Cinema 4D: Although I have a basic knowledge of the program, and enjoy using it, I found it extremely difficult and problematic to speed up my workflow and get my way around the system without constantly needing to ask for help. 

I think if I were to do anything differently, I would have done all of my animation scenes on After Effects, as I feel I got on much better on that program and would have got slightly more work done. But I have really enjoyed this project and would like to finish off this animation later on in the year. 

Project 3: Week 8 - Finalising my Animations.

Finalising my Animations.

 This week both at home and at college I was finishing up with my third scene from my animation. Now that I knew what to expect from After Effects, I was quite confident in producing more work in a shorter space of time, and focused on getting the loops of animation as smooth as possible. 

Before that though, I started off by creating PNG files of pieces of scenery in my third scene, that was so that I could take those pieces and just put them straight away into my animation scene and not worry about having to cover pieces up or cutting out any white space. I did this with pathways, stones, trees and grass, and it saved a lot of time when putting all of my pieces together. 

I then focused on making my little fawn character, who meets an awful end towards the end of the animation. I made a small loop of her blinking and eating grass. And then made a 3 frame animation of her getting scared and jumping up to see what's behind her. I took time making this piece of animation because I wanted to emphasise just how timid she is and how reluctant she will be to go on this quest with the raccoon.
I'll also admit I surprised myself with how well she came out, I love how cute she is and how very Bambi-like she seems, which is what I was aiming for.

This is the final product of my work from this week. I got the scene just to how I wanted it and I think it looks cute as hell. I liked the way the colour scheme came out and how everything blends together well. I didn't want this scene to be too bright, put rather pastel and delicate looking, which I think is apparent here. 

Unfortunately, when it came to rendering, one of the files was missing from the animation folder, as I must have saved it onto the computer instead of my hard drive, and this animation didn't get fully rendered, I did, however, hand in everything I'd done for it. 

Project 3: Week 7 - Filming my Animations.

 Filming my Animations. 

After having a bit of trouble with time when trying to film my animation with cinema 4D, I ended up giving After effects a go to see if it would fair any better. And truth be told I wish I had used this in the first place!

I found that using After Effects was just as complicated if you haven't used it before, but once I got the basic grasp of using the layers and merging folders together I absolutely loved using it. I found that my artwork could be seen more clearly and could be fully appreciated without me having to put in artificial lighting in the backgrounds.



I also found that using After Effects was a lot like Photoshop, as I should have sooner since their made by the same company. But using the camera tool was completely different and I think suited me much better, as all I needed to do was alter the image and record that movement as a keyframe on the timeline, instead of having to actually whop out a camera tool. 
I could also go back and edit mistakes easily, take out any random points I had made, or adjust any assets more easily in a 2 dimensional space and a 3 dimensional one. 
This is the set up of my second scene. I found that the colour scheme can be appreciated more in this set up and all of the colours, as well as the assets works really well this way.

Making My Character Board.

When I began making my Character Board, I took into consideration what kinds of images I would want to use. I ended up choosing a few of the more detailed and, therefore, effective images that I had created during the research and development part of my work. I chose a sitting pose to be the main part of my character board, because I would be able to make this image bigger due to her sitting down, and then in turn would allow viewers to see more of her body and face.

I began to recreate this image digitally, using Adobe Illustrator, through the means of a master class introducing the technique of using the pen/line tool. I think this was a very effective way of lining this piece of artwork, because I had complete control in what the lines were doing and in what direction they were doing it, which also made the image look more professional. 

I continued using this process until I had a 
completely lined image, to which I could add
 colour, using the program Paint Too Sai. I have most confidence lining and colouring my artwork using that particular program, but I gave Illustrator a shot as I'd heard many good things about it. I added colour using the simple paint tool, then highlighted shiny areas and created shadows in more dull ones, this made the character look a lot more 3 dimensional and gave her a bit more personality such as mischievousness and loyalty. I also noticed that adding a singular line underneath her, made her look as though she was sitting on an actual object which looked very effective on the finished character board.


I then did the same technique to the other images that I put onto the character images as well. I was able to edit them into digital pieces of art in order to put them onto the character board. I chose images that I had drawn from scratch which

 looked best for the character board.




One of these images was the character "emotions," image. This image fits it's purpose well because it shows ultimate emotions from my character, showing happiness, guiltiness and sadness. I think one downside of this image was that the eyes are not exactly the same shade of blue as my main character, as they are a lot darker, however I still think the image serves it's purpose well.

I also wanted to include images that show the size, structure and sides of my character. I managed to make this model scale which showed all sides and aspects of my character which looked really effective in my opinion. One thing that I would have changed is the colour of the last figure which, for some reason, has become a lot lighter than the rest of the figures. I also noticed that the middle figures' face is a lot bigger than the rest of the figures which makes them look slightly distorted.
However, over all I'm very pleased with how my images turned out and think that the colours and designs were successful and work with the number of backgrounds that i tried them out with. There are some aspects that I feel bring it down and if I had the time I would change them, but overall I am very pleased with how they've turned out.