The Final Piece April 13, 2010

This is my finished piece for the post-production techniques project. Overall I am quite proud of this project, it’s turned out better than I thought it would have about a fortnight ago when everything went wrong, but having worked non-stop since then I believe I have managed to produce something that is of a quite reasonable standard.

To begin with I felt a little mixed about this project, having already thought a little about it before the brief was changed I was all of a sudden stumped when it came to thinking of something that involved something so simple as post-production, which, when you think about it, is everywhere. I couldn’t really think of anything that I felt was good enough or doable in the time limit. I also wanted to have an original idea as some of the ideas that I had original thought of involved remaking parts of games or films which I decided wasn’t good enough, I wanted to have an idea that was my own. Yes, I did take inspiration from another video but I haven’t copied it, so it’s a different thing than making a game in a real life situation, in my head anyway.

It wasn’t until I saw the Cyriak video that I decided what I wanted to do for this project and I’m so glad that I decided to take inspiration from that because I wanted to do something that was a little more ‘grown up’ than my last projects, but still had an element of fun within it. I think that my projects need to have this element to them as it helps me to have a little more fun with them and to make it my own. I’ve learnt over this year that I like to have fun with things and that while I have enjoyed projects in the past that have been series to me, animations are more of a fun thing. I’ve made plenty of documentaries and things like that and to me, they require the sensible edge, but with making animations for me to keep my concentration with it more than anything I need to make fun things so that I can keep enjoying them while I’m doing it. I think a serious animation will probably kill my brain. Quite similarly to how this project has killed my harddrive!

From this project I have also learnt that I need to keep faith in my ideas. I ended up going back to my original idea when things went wrong too much. So actually, if I’d stuck with this idea in the first place then I would not have had all the hassle in the middle and the panic of what to do next. While I believe my work’s not up to the standard that it could be if I had stuck with the idea from the beginning I am proud of what I have achieved over the hectic fortnight of ‘whatamigoingtodonow’ and while I will always have the thought of what could have been achieved I’m glad that I have actually got something worthy of handing in! I’m done with evaluating now, time to relax for once.

Sorting Out Sound April 13, 2010

I’ve hunted through Freesounds and found a couple of clips to use for the diegetic noises on my piece. I’ve got a walking sounds and a smashing sound for when stuff gets hit in the piece. I then had a play about in Audacity and have possibly made the worlds most annoying tune.

The Final Few Seconds April 13, 2010

The final few seconds of my animation are arguably the hardest few because I have more than one thing that I need to animate, which isn’t exactly that hard but it does require some concentration.

I have made two renders of this section, one before I add in all of the little bits and pieces and one after to show the difference and the stages that I have done it in.

I’ve changed my mind on the flying about parts for the final section, where I was previously going to use small cartoon-y drawings I am now just going to cut parts out of the background and get them to fly around instead as I found that the cartoon images really didn’t fit in all that well so instead of scrapping this part completely I chose to cut parts out instead. This means that I have less variation in what is flying around but it means that the look is the same throughout and I think I would rather have this as it is more aesthetically pleasing than the random little drawings (that I didn’t like that much anyway…)

Putting It All Together April 13, 2010

Ok, so I’ve exported all of my files as JPEG 2000, for a reason that I actually cannot remember anymore, and now I’m putting them all together in Premiere so that I can have them all in one sequence and then put my audio clips in over the top as there currently is no audio.

I think that I may also cut out the establishing scene and the part where the two join together as it looks a little bumpy and I much prefer the piece from about 10 seconds onwards. I’m still not sure about this, I may just go ahead and do it and see what it’s like, but keep an original version just in case as well!

The Little Fiddly Bits April 13, 2010

In the final section of my animation my character is knocking things around with his baseball bat and they begin to fly away in the background and sort of spin out in a slapstick kind of way. The things that i have decided will be flying around are a couple of houses, some trees and some people. This is the reason why I need to find some smashing noises and I think I will also try to find a wilhelm scream for the people being thrown about. The drawings aren’t great, they’re definitely something that can be improved on but they’re also going to be quite small so I don’t think that it matters too much that they aren’t ultimately clear.

Testing My Sequence April 13, 2010

I wasn’t sure whether or not I wanted to keep the flying objects in my project so I made a rough render without them to see what it would look like.

I’ve decided that I think this is too plain really for it to be acceptable as a final piece so I am going to rethink how I am going to put in the flying pieces and then have another go.

The Next Step Of My Stop Motion April 12, 2010

The next step of my stop motion is the central section of the piece, which is about 50 seconds long. In this part the character will be walking down the road and swinging the baseball bat.

I was going to render out just this section but it makes a massive file so I really cannot be bothered to deal with it, and neither do I really have the room on my harddrive, serious clean up once this project is done!

My Establishing Scene April 11, 2010

This is the establishing scene that I have animated for the project so far:

So The Stop Motion Begins April 11, 2010

Ok, so I do love stop motion, and I really am wondering why on Earth I didn’t do this to begin with. In all honesty actually, it is what I originally set out to do, however, the way I thought about doing it had made it seem an awful lot more difficult than it had to be and I was pretty much just making life harder for myself for no apparent reason (as usual). Long train journeys have helped me to get a hell of a shift on because there’s nothing else around to distract me. Perhaps I should just sit on trains all the time, then I’d probably be a lot more productive a lot more often.

I’ve finished my first five seconds of animation and I’ve got a few rough storyboards coming together, I keep changing them so I’ve kind of started doing them as I go along so I don’t have to keep changing them all the time so they don’t look entirely random, but when I have finished/coloured them I’ll upload them all with the individual scenes that they correlate to before I whack them all together and give them a soundtrack.I’m still not too sure what I’m going to do for a soundtrack, as far as I’m aware copyright issues don’t apply for this one as they did in the 2D animation project, nonetheless I’m going to make as much of my own sounds as I can.

I’ve figured out that I only really need the sounds of footsteps and then some random crashing/smashing/banging noises for the main action sequence. However, I think that it will need a little more in order for it to be slightly more entertaining (this is of course, providing that it’s entertaining in the first place!). So I need to get some inspiration for the soundtrack for the piece. I’ll see what I can rustle up, failing that I’ll see what I can do in terms of finding someone to make something for me. Problem mostly solved.

My Original Footage April 11, 2010

This is my original footage for the project:

With this I will get my character to appear from around the corner and walk down the road. When it walks by my car I will get it to turn around, glance back at the camera, then jump over the row of houses. Once behind the houses, my character will begin hitting things in the background and they will fly around in a childish/slapstick kind of way. The character will then turn around and walk away and I will scale it down to simulate this.

Here are my storyboards for the project as well: