Final animation

APPLE AND THE PAIRS DACING ON THE STAIRS.

enjoy it!

After Effects Development Towards Final.

Here I have posted a few screen shots of me working in after effects and the various layers i was dealing with. I was a long process and a lot of hard work went into developing just a 30 second design but as a whole a very enjoyable assignment.

The laughing scene set out in after effects. Upset apple. Here u can start to see the development of my animated story and how will eventually turn out.

Mocking the apple scene.

The scene where the apple starts to find the courage to jump the stairs and the pears are worried that he might come up the stairs.

Background Setting

THE FAINAL BACKGROUND

I roughly drew the setting for which the animated charters to play on. The reason for this was that the rougher I drew it the better it looked when I used the cut-out effect on Photoshop. It is rather simple but I didn't want anything too complex as it would take the attention a way from the characters and the actually story of my animation. Also it would have looked too busy. So in The words of 'Abraham Games less is more'

The skectched background. Two steps required - tried with out a sky and realised it would look much better with one in.

                                     



Short Pear Animation

Just like my character the apple i have create a short animation in after effects showing the different facial expressions and movements in which the pear shall be doing in my animation 'apple and the pears dancing on the stairs'. Take a look at the short video clip below to see how the pear will change through out my animation.

The sequence below is the different shots before uploaded on to after effects. Yet again i have used the cut-out look on each design.

Character development - Pear

Development into my animated pear. Just like the apple I realised that I only need one fully final designed pear and I can manipulate different expressions on to it via Photoshop. This will work for both of my pears as I can change the position and expressions for each individual pear.

The final sketched pear. A lot of shading used and think flow lines to show the curves in the fruit. Also if I add a filter on Photoshop it will come out stronger. I have played around with the design on Photoshop and Cut-out is the design approach I want to take. The reason why I added more shading is that it was picking the texture up properly on my earlier pear below.

Various sets of eyes in the order I want the animation to run and the movements in which the pears shall move and look at one another through laughing etc. The pears emotions are going to run from laughing and joking to confused/slight worried as the apple is thinking about jumping the stairs and the pears didn't think he could make it up. Then to shock as the apple trips over then back to laughter and happy as the apple has failed and splattered.

Brief sketches of how I want the mouth's to look relating to the eyes. This gave me a better idea of how to create the final facial features for the pears.

The final facial features to be added digitally on to the base layer pears.

short apple animation

After doing the primary drawings of my characters I edited each set movement where the face changes and the eyes move in different direction. I added the cut out effect to them all and put it into after effects as a jpeg sequence and made a short animation of how the face will change on each individual shot. Take a look and see what I mean.

Below is the scene selection I edited in Photoshop there is only 12 shots. In my animation some will be repeated and moved around.

Character development - Apple

After deciding on my characters of apple and pears I started to develop the characteristics of them. As I want the apple to be sad and depressed that he can't get up the stairs I need sad faces but then it goes to being happy and smug. So I have started to develop the stages in which the apple will go through sad-crying-angry-thinking-happy-smug-shocked.

Above is the primary drawing of my first entail thoughts of how I want the apple to look. I want the facial features to show the true emotions. I studied my own face in the mirror to capture the right movements and how to make it look like a rather cheeky design.

This is the outline which I'm going to be using for the final outline of the apple. I figured out that I can design one apple and the different sets of facial features and just edit each face on the base layer apple on Photoshop. This saved me a lot of time instead of drawing 360 different drawings and showing the movement also by using after effects I can move the characters about and it will flow and look realistic into an actual moving image.

This is my final apple which im going to put the features onto using a C.A.D

These are the different sets of eyes and expressions made by the eye brows which will be layered on to my apple. Each set match up to different parts of the music and hopefully shall all fit really well together.

Above is an example how I want the crying apple to look with the withering mouth and the apple bubbles up.

Different mouth expressions happy-smug-shocked-crying.

The final scene for the apple. As in my story board the apple trips and falls when the trombone kicks in and he falls off the steps and splatters all over the floor. This was the best way i could show this. Even though have taken a lot of care in shading the apples in i reckon i will use a filter on Photoshop which will give me a rougher look, maybe cut-out effect so it looks like its been digitally re-mastered.

Inspiration for characters

Just a little secondary research into character building. There has been a lot of various animated fruits in the past put these ones i picked out to research I thought best fitted my chosen words, as there very quirky and very different. As I have mentioned before i want my story to be fun and enjoyable and not too serious. I want people to watch and not have to think too hard about any subliminal messages behind the context of the story.

Through researching various video's I knew how to make my animation seem fun and light hearted. The clip above really cracks me up, its a normal orange which when it moves probably uses stop motion and is a real image and not animated then once that has been done animated human faces have been edited onto of it in which I believe after effects or Istop motion. The title of the clip speaks for what it really is but I really like how it’s quirky witty and entertaining to watch.

The video above is from the same makers, I just love how the story is told. The eggs are all laughing and joking not realising what there actually used for and once one egg is taken out of the packet and cracked to make a fried egg they all get scared. This has quite a few similarities to my animation as the pears will be laughing and bantering to one another and then they don’t realise that the apple finds the courage to jump the stairs and eventually fall and splatters and then it will revert back to laughter and mocking.

One other animation I looked at to help me develop my own idea further was this short series. I came across it through a random search on a database and the reason for choosing it was the actually characters. As fruit is just fruit and can is seen as nothing much more, I really wanted to capture the feel that my apple and pears are actually people and have there own little personalities. Through watching this video I could grasp a better understanding of how I could create this idea. In the clip above the bananas have great essences on there personality and it makes you look at it like an actually person not just a banana with eyes and a mouth on it. Also in relation to this style of capturing the elements of personality this is how Pixar and Disney have become so well known and award winning companies because they understand what it means to the views to see the characters as friends/enemies/ people and start to understand different characters personalities.

Final Idea for anaimation - development

After realising that my first idea was too basic and predicable I went back to the drawing board and started to create a new idea which expressed my music more and related to the 3 words I choose. I want my animation to be bouncy to fit with the beat of the music and I want an element of surprise and a feel that the animation is a breath of fresh are something different and thinking outside the box.

Therefore I came up with this idea:

my music will start around 10 seconds in when the men in the music are chatting and laughing. With out too much thought of the characters at the start the animation will flow as a gang of characters will be stood on top of a set of stairs looking very happy and laughing to one another over the fact that another solo character at the bottom of the stairs is upset as he cant seem to manage to climb up the stairs, as the music progressively builds up there is more laughter so this is the idea that the gang at the top are bullying and mocking the character at the bottom of the stairs but after a while the character at the bottom has had enough and finds the courage to master the stairs and this happens when the music cuts from laughter to the actually start of the track. There is a 5 note musical flick from an instrument and this is where the characters at the bottom of the stairs find the courage to jump the up. This annoys the gang and the bullied character is now the happy smug one who is bouncing around to the beat but once the track gets more progressively loader and more instruments (the part where the deep trombone comes in) the charter which was getting mocked loses his balance and trips down the stairs and splatters at the bottom. 

This is the brief idea I drew up in my sketch book. I looked into characters and I really like the idea of fruit because it relates to my three words mainly the quirky side of things as bullied fruit and having a laugh with fruit is a rather abstract thought and thinking of the idea actually make me laugh. I imagine it being something Pixar mite of come with.

If you enlarge the image you can see the thought process I went through to choose my characters. I finally decided that I wanted fruit as my characters. There will be two Pairs which will be the two at the top of the stairs which they will be picking on and laughing at the third character the apple. The concept of these characters is based on a rime, apple and pairs on the stairs. Also the other reason I choose these characters is that I want a bouncing feel to the animation which links up to the beat of the music and an apple is rather round and would best if was bouncing along to the beat, just like a ball. The pairs are also picked because it's a lot bigger than an apple and looks different, so a more aggressive look is passed off from a pear than an apple.

I started to look into how my background setting might look like for my charters to act on. I thought about it being in a park. I want it to be a clear difference between the heights of the two levels in which the apple and pears will be situated on. so the pears are looking down upon the lonely apple.

Story Board - draft 1

 Early draft of my storyboard. The 12 shots on the board aren't individual shots as it would only take up 1 second of footage. This is the brief idea if how i want my story to flow. The which i was given is Nortec Collective and its rather bouncy and happy, there is a trombone which comes in near the start of the music and it is over looped with a slight hip hop beat. My entail thoughts of making this animation was to make my film quite humours and a little bit cheeky. So i have created this story of a hippo finding love. The reason for the hippo is that it imitates the trombone as an instrument, the sound is very big deep and has a chubby feel to it and an animal which could imitates this would big rather large and chubby just like an hippo or elephant but I choose hippo as though it would create a funnier character. The basic story line is that it's set in Africa near an oasis which the animals go done to get water and revitalize them self's. A young male hippo comes onto the scene around 25 seconds into the music and he see's a strapping young female hippo and when the music starts to drop to the beat the male bounces over to the oasis where the female is feeling happy cheerful. He eventually catches the eye of the female hippo and they both are faltered by one another and fall in love. The cheeky side to the story is the young hippo at the end of the scene, the camera will be a close up on his face and he raises his eye brows in a seductive way to show the audience that he might get lucky, also this leaves the audience in suspense of what could happen plus can be interpreted in various ways, in all a 'cheeky chappy'.

After careful consideration and group talks i have decided that this idea won't be taken through to the final development stages. The reason for this is that I want a animation which is going to really stand out and be quirky and funny plus an element of abstract thinking and this idea is rather simple and slightly predictable. I want a design which will have an element of surprise. Also because this idea is heavily based on character development and key facial features of the hippo's it will become too complex within the drawings to complete in the time period given and not undermining my own drawing stills but I haven't quite got the skills under the pencil and paper to pull off exceedingly well drawn characters which imitate what the ideas in my head look like.

 Early development into my first idea of the hippo which finds love in South Africa. Basic drawings of how i would want the characters to look.

More work in the sketch book, looking at movement of the hippo and the scene setting.

After Effects - Movie promo

This is my exported movie I did in 'After Effects' workshop. I manipulated the timing of my clip and reversed time and slowed parts down. Very rough and basic but was just experimenting with the program.

                        

Workshop - Aftereffects

I suppose this style of work can be related to flipbook animation as it is all raw primary drawings and methods, no digital aided design has been masked over it just her raw talent and a camera to capture it all. In this workshop we were shown by one of our tutors how to master the skills to create a moving imagery movie in the computer aided design 'After Effects' This was a great workshop as many of us have never used this program before and it was a great opportunity to learn how to use it. We went through the basics starting with simple images and getting them to move across the page and finally went onto image sequences and making a short movie clip. I'm going to create my animation on this program as it gives at of freedom to do what ever I wanted in the program but obviously with out the tuition I wouldn't be able to do so. 

I have done sceen shots from the computer to show the steps in which i took to learn and get my haed around the program.

We started in Photoshop with an image and used different methods of selecting parts of  images.

We then took the selected parts of the images and processed them into After Effects.

Various steps in which we took to develop the images to start moving. We set the frame rate at 12 frames per second

After playing around with images edited from Photoshop we imported a jpeg sequence labelled 1,2.3 etc. Once imported it gave us a short composition in the project page and then dragged into the composition area. This automatically played all the images one by one in a sequence at a fast rate so that it was seen as a moving image. This short movie we started to create was set at 12 frames per second again.

After importing the sequence we played around with the timing and key frames so that we could change the sequence to either speed up, slow down, reverse etc. After doing this we exported the composition into a movie format. I choose a Quick Time file.