Final Thoughts... Evaluation

So I have finally reached the end of my project, its been a pretty full on 8 weeks and I think I can safely say that I have put 100 percent into it. Overall I am really very happy with my final piece I think that its suits the song incredibly well and I have been pretty successful in creating a well illustrated and animated piece.

Time Management
Time wise I would have loved to have a couple more weeks to polish some little niggles that bother me but considering the nature and time fame of my project I think that my outcome is pretty well made.  I have really enjoyed making this project and until the last week I haven't really been stressed or pressurised. I took the project at my own pace, took a great deal of enjoyment from using my hands and many physical elements to make my project.

Illustrating and Making
Though I did enjoy drawing out my characters using Illustrator (as I normally do) I took a great deal of pleasure in getting to delve into the collage aspect to my designs. I forgot how much I enjoyed using papers and physical elements to create and its for this reason that I loved making my backgrounds. I think I got more and more ambitious with each of my backgrounds (the cave is my favourite) and my animation has certainly benefited from the use of the handmade. Throughout many of my previous projects I have spoken about making things look handmade - and although I do draw by hand and I maintain that you can generate handmade things using the digital - previous results haven't been as satisfying. I think this project has finally enabled me to synthesise the perfect balance between the handmade and the digital which in turn has meant that I am a lot happier with my outcome. From a visual perspective using physical and real time elements integrates a fantastic sense of texture that I would never have been able to achieve using purely digital means. From my artistic perspective actually drawing things out and making scenes and backgrounds has given me more creative control. I like to think its allowed me to put a little bit of myself into the project as well!

Printing the characters was a practical choice to combine the digital and the hand. It meant that if I needed to I could reprint various aspects and swap in new ones I could do so with a simple reprint. Throughout the illustration process I had to think in terms of limbs since it was imperative to how they would move. Separating them out onto print sheets meant that I could keep all the animals together and simultaneously conserve card. Im very glad that optimal print settings on my home printer  produced a good quality print since it saved time and meant that I could add bits if I needed to. Cutting them out was actually a pretty relaxing process if fiddly and I am glad that I acquired new sharper and smaller scissors before I cut them out which helped me get more precise lines.

The Motion

I can't understate the importance of good technological tools, my own little studio was integral to capturing my characters and backgrounds alike. It meant that I had full control over my lighting and that I could work at any time of the day. As well as this it also helped to ensure and maintain a professional quality which was important not only because I wanted everything to look as good as possible but also because due to the nature of stop motion any change in lighting, any change in colour - any lapse in anything would affect a large batch of photographs that would be hard to rectify.

The cable release meant that I could stay near to my characters ( since my set-up was situated on the ground) without having to continuously get up to touch the camera which also helped to eliminate camera shake.

The blue screen was the handiest element that I utilised and it cut a lot of my stop motion time in half because I was able to stop motion my characters on the spot, one at a time. This meant that I could devote my focus to one animal at a time and not have to worry about any background movement. I divided my key movements into 2 categories per animal walking and sitting which provided very clear sequences that were more than enough when taken into After Effects.

After Effects
Using the Keylit 1.2 effect to get rid of the blue screen was pretty much the most complicated thing I did in AE. Other than that and possibly the overall timing of my piece (which was fiddly but not hard) everything else was actually pretty straight forward and I only really needed the basic transform tools. Adding in the music notes was the most time consuming part since I had to do two versions (black and white) and was incredibly monotonous. Despite this it was fun to see it all come together and piecing it into one was very satisfying. Its amazing how much of a difference adding music to the piece made, timing the segments to the song finally showed me that it was all going to work. Granted it was pretty late in the day to have this realisation but it was hard for me to see how it was all going to work until I put the music in so pheww!

Target Audience and Purpose
I am confident that my finished piece will appeal to my target audience (the band) since I think I have been successful in my attempts to narrate the song. I am pretty happy that it displays my design skills so its purpose as a polished portfolio piece has also arguably been achieved.

Distribution
I have uploaded my video to Youtube and intend to now send it to the band, I also intend to place it on my website and use it as a key piece to advertise myself.

All in all I am happy with what I have made and am content that I have made something that narrates the song, shows of my visual skill and also works as a portfolio piece that displays a varied style to that of my normal creations. Overall I feel like I have achieved what I have set out to do and fully answered my brief.

Final Animation

This is my final animation with all of my tweaks. I am very happy with it, I think it works really well and really shows off all my artwork (which was my main intention). I am glad I made my project using stop motion because if I hadn't I never would have made my backgrounds physically. Personally aside from maybe the fox and the badger the backgrounds were the parts that I most enjoyed making. I think the collage and the colour pencil mediums really helped to integrate some texture into my work something that I have always found a bit lacking when using purely digital means. 

Stop Motion wise I am pretty happy, in general I think the motion works and definitely concurs with the handmade backgrounds if I had had a bit more time I would have spent more than a week stop motioning my characters. I could have then utilised a higher frame rate which would have helped to smoothen out some of my movements. Having said this I think that with the time I have had I have been pretty successful all in all. 

Overall Time Managment

It is now the 28th of May and I have completed my animation (I just need to do the previously mentioned tweaks) - so far I have mostly kept on track and I have more than enough time to round of some of my sketchbook, blog and tweaks.

Managing my time was such a key element throughout this project- from its inception I knew that I had a lot of work to do - using the stop motion element requires a lot of time to make work. Thanks to my handmade choice - and my desire to actually make things in real time I had to make sure I had enough time to make things and draw things (which takes just as much time as the digital does except in this case I also had to then print, cut and photograph). Stop motioning and repositioning the figures was also pretty time consuming for obvious reasons but I managed to save myself from additional hassle but using a blue screen. Blue screening was the best thing I did for the project since it meant I could combine layers and stop motion the characters on their own allowing me to focus on one at a time.

Having said this I have never been one to make charts or use Exel to keep track of my time. Instead I took it by a week by week basis - I had a rough list and vague time plan to adhere to but I added and subtracted bits from this list on a week by week basis. I generally kept to this plan and at most I was only ever running a couple of days behind which I rectified in the end anyway since it seems that now I have a couple of days to tie up all my loose ends.

Render 1 Tweaks to be made

This is my first render of my project- it took about 2 hours to render so I am hoping to only render it out once more max. Im hoping that this render will display any tweaks that need to be made - since its always difficult to tell when you watch it through via ram preview at 25 percent.





Changes that I have noticed that need to be changed:

The hand at the start needs to enter and exit the frame faster- this is easily changed by altering the positioning.

The first time the girl walks alone across screen needs to either take up less time (which is going to be tricky since everything from that point has a specific timing point to the song). To rectify this I could include another scene (again tricky since I have run out of scene ideas). Or make it so the girl moves a bit slower across the screen so theres more to look at and it ends with the girl moving out or frame rather than sitting on the music notes.

Keep an eye on the swans feet as sometimes (mostly in the desert scene) they don't walk on the ground.

Fix the twilight scene, as the ground doesn't move right away - simple change to make just move a keyframe.

Fix the last moose close-up it seems like its took close and appears out of focus- again easily changed.

Add in music notes to the swan and moose close-ups since they would be in frame.

Fix the grass in the very end scene which pops into existence rather than appearing all along.

Add in a little credit to both the band and myself at the end.

Timing To Music

Now that I have all my components and compositions (34 scenes in total) it was time to put them all together to my song. Due to the stop motioned nature of my characters I couldn't time their movements to the beat (and nor would I want to since it would be incredibly complicated to do so) but I could time some of the events and the scene changes to the music.

Composition List

Timing Break Down

Hand Has To Click Button When Beat Kicks In

The first and easiest scene to time was the opening, the hand had to click the button as the beat kicked in (adjusting the position of the hand and then the position of the composition ensured that it sat in correlation to the correct part of the music).

 Fox Has To Open Eye With The Strum

I adjusted the eyes of the fox so that they opened with a particularly strong strum.

 New Line- New Scene

I made sure that all the different scene changes started with a new line of the song.

  Swan Has To Open Eye With The Strum

Again the eye opened along with a heavy strum.

 New Line New Scene

 Bats Open Eyes To Beat

Since I stop motioned the bats to open their eyes it was happy coincidence that the bats opened their eyes to the beat.

 New Line New Scene

I did try and keep the new line new scene timing option of my animation but there were points where I allowed the scene to change despite the new line (generally the scenes depicting a close up and a singular animal walking) I felt that this was justified because I tried to limit this to scenes involving the animals on their own.

 Visual Narrative - Something Far Away

Managed to link this moon scene to the lyric "something far away" since I felt that it aptly helped to cement the songs narrative.

 Fade Out Point

Quick Reshoot- and The End Sequence

Initially I thought that my moonlit sequence was going to be the end of my animation (I altered it slightly from my previous moonlit background so that the moon became a key background element) but somehow I felt that it needed something else to lead it full circle, something that would make it a bit more well rounded. From the very beginning I wanted to have the girl character open her eyes and have it so the animals had vanished (as though she didn't realise she had been followed) but I wasn't sure if that would really work considering all the previous events - instead I opted to experiment with the idea that the girl imagined the whole scenario in her head (as though the events in the animation were her imaginings brought about by the lyrics). In order to do this I had to have a quick reshoot so that I could get images of the girl with her eyes open blinking awake. I opted to lower my tripod so I could include a nice sharp close-up of her blinking awake before having a zoomed our shot of her walking away. Setting wise I opted to bring it back to the park background since it would help to cement the circle of the journey. 

Lead-Up To the End

Since I wanted to add in an additional scene I wanted the very end to be devoid of music to achieve this I have opted to fade out the music from the very end of the moonlit walk scene.

 Fade Music Out From This Point

Final End Scene

After Effects Putting It Together Part 6- Nights Sky

Now that all my animal and their separate location scenes have been put together I want to establish the lead-up scenes. I want to fully display all of my characters as they follow one another and the girl along their pathways, I would also like the sky to change to create the impression that time is passing so I can get to a point where the moon and stars can be used. Because of the sheer amount of characters I opted to make this segment last for 20 seconds. Changing the sky was easy too I key framed the tint so it would change at darken at the required time until eventually I was able to fade it to the original dark blue background colour.

Twilight Section - 20 Second Strip

Tinting (via keyframes)

 Final Colour

 Close-Up Bats

I broke up the long stretch of walking with a moon spin and a bat close -up - its a scene I made up after a little bit of consideration whilst staring at my assets. I thought it would be a nice touch to allow the bats their own time to shine since they didn't really interact with the music notes in their last close-up. I'm very happy with the moon which contrasts really well with the blue background, and I am hoping that this close-up will narrate some of the lyrics and that I can time it correctly for it to convey the additional meaning.

                                     

Moon Colour Correction

Since the next long stretch of movement depicts the nights sky I also opted to punctuate it with some close-ups of my animals. Thankfully on the wider angles I have chosen to have the stars simply pop into existence so I only had to place a few behind certain animals and match the base tone to the tint of the longer scene (as it darkens from blue to black).

 Animal Close- Ups

 Walking Shot