After Effects Putting It All Together Part 1- The Park Location

Since I had a vague idea as to how my elements and characters were all going to fit together, had successfully managed to stop motion all my characters on their blue screens and completed and photographed all my backgrounds it was time to take my various elements into After Effects. Before really beginning I made sure that I set my composition size to hd sizing 1080 by 1920 and my frame rate to 15. As previously mentioned standard animations use 12 frames per second, standard quality television animations operate at 15 and Aardman creators of Wallace and Gromit use 18 frames per second. Because I was creating a stop motion on a smaller scale to Wallace and Gromit I opted to use 15 frames per second. 

Before Starting

When importing my jpeg sequences I had to make sure that I left clicked the image sequence in the project panel, interpret footage and main in order to specify this frame rate. This was important because it kept everything running to the same time which ensured my overall continuity.

The Park

I found it easiest to sort out my backgrounds first so then I could then place my characters into their environments so I started with the park. I imported my various park layers into After Effects got rid of the blue screen and layered them all together to generate a fully formed backdrop. After which I then opted to alter some of their positions in order to drag them across the screen to create the impression of slow movement.  Since I didnt have specific amounts of time in mind I kept my composition length to 10 seconds since I felt that this would be more than long enough and could always be cut down if need be.

The Fox
Music Notes

Before placing the fox in any kind of background I first had to deal with the issue of the music notes- since I wanted them to flow from his instrument I opted to create them digitally (they took about 15 minutes to draw) and began by having them appear, float and fade. I did this by simply using the transform tools and after establishing an order of my different notes I was able to copy and paste the music notes and adjust the positions to make them fit.

I created both white and black music notes so I had two versions, again I created 10 seconds worth of music notes that appear and by applying these to my stop motioned jpeg sequence it meant that this composition could be placed into others and moved as I saw fit whilst remaining self contained and easy to manipulate. So far introducing music notes was the fiddliest bit of the entire project and the most time consuming because it was such an uninteresting job.

Music Note Layers:

The Fox and The Background

Since I also needed the animals to follow music notes I had to apply some to the background scene as well. Again I did 10 seconds worth but it was easier because the notes could travel on a longer path and didnt have to match the movement of my character.

The park background consists of 4 different components- we have foreground grass- transformed to slide across and hide the feet - we have background yellow colour and pale grass similarly transformed across, we have the tree which also slides across to generate some sense of depth and we have some little leaves which help to fill in some of the blank space.

The Robin

I knew that the robin was going to work best in the park background so I also imported and got rid the blue screen. I found however that due to the very simple nature of the robins movement which consisted of about 4 wing positions that he flew a bit fast - I rectified this by left clicking on the sequence and selecting the time option and then enable time remapping which enabled me to draw out the movement a bit more so it was a bit less manic and a lot smoother.

I pretty much followed the same formula for the girls character and then placed them all together in their designated park background, slowing the fox down enough so the girls music notes conjoined with his.