Final Animation!

After all the development and experimentation I have done, I have settled on my final animation. I have made the final scene end abruptly to match the end beat of the piece of music, and fitted the scenes around the tempo of the track. I am really happy with how my first animation project has turned out, and look forward to developing my skills further.

Print to Pixel Animation from Grace Mayer on Vimeo.

To Zoom or not to Zoom?

After tying in the whole animation together, including the final added scenes, I wondered whether to incorporate a zoom at the beginning, since I decided to leave it out in the float scene. Here are both options:

 

Print to Pixel Animation from Grace Mayer on Vimeo.

I think I much prefer the animation with the zoom at the beginning, it gives it more detail and builds up the beginning nicely rather than just going straight into the first scene.

Final Scenes Alteration

Once I looked at my final scene (landmark) backgrounds, I thought they might not fit with the rest of the animation so well. With this in mind, I decided to take the collage background from the previous scenes and apply it to the images. This meant they would tie in better and the whole thing would be more consistent, rather than having a chunk of stop motion and a chunk of keyframed animation.

These are the final products:

 

My favourite out of the three is the Opera House, I'm really pleased with the way it's turned out, and think it will look great with the balloon over the top.

Cropping the Music Track

To make sure I find the correct section of my music track, I have used software called WavePad. I opened the track in the program and then listened to it to find exactly where my chosen section started and ended. Once I knew this, I highlighted the area and trimmed it down. Then I simply saved it ready to import into After Effects and onto my final animation.

This is the process I went through:

The track open in WavePad

Selecting the area of the track I want to trim.

Right clicking then selecting 'trim' to produce the final mp3.

Floating

Next I needed to photograph and animate the scene where my character floats away on the balloon, so I looked at how I could involve a zoomed in effect on the scene to make it more interesting.

 

I like this effect, however, I think the zoomed in section shows too much of my background, and also highlights some rougher areas in it, which could make the animation look a bit amateurish.

Landmark Backgrounds

I have taken a few of the images I found when researching landmarks, and have edited them and turned them into cartoon style backdrops for the final scenes of my animation:

I transferred these into After Effects to see how they looked when I added the balloon and animated the scenes using keyframes. This is a screen shot of the process:

 

I may edit these background images slightly between now and bringing my animation together.

Confusion

I have added to my first scene with the rabbit disappearing out of sight and have made the spectator rabbit look confused with a different facial expression and a question mark. I think the outcome looks smooth and I like how it ties in with the rhythm of the music.