PRINT TO PIXEL: 2011

Putting music to my animation

This is my first attempt at placing music onto my animation, i wanted see what it would be like with just playing the song straight through.
I do think it works to some degree, however in some parts i feel that the music doesnt quite fit right with whats going on in the scene, its too quiet when it should be all dramatic for example . However further along in the song there are sequences in the song i feel will be perfect to go with my animation so i think i will try that next.

This is it, i love the way the music really fits in well with the video. The music goes in time with so many things such as the appearance of the text, when the gun is being fired and finally at the end when music slows down, its very fitting for the end of the story. Overall i'm really happy with this section of the song in my animation and i think will be used in my final piece

Video with effects and meaning

This video now has a couple of extra effects put onto it, especially near the end. At the montage scene there is white out, this is meant to represent when the bullet hits. Furthermore with the toothpick animation as the toothpick falls the scene goes darker, this is to signify the death of one of the characters.

now the video all sorted i now need to focus on the music side

adding the animation pieces

This video shows all the clips together all edited and in the right place. I really like the mixture of animation and live action, they work well together. I've added a slight aged look to the live action bit, just to give it a feel of rough, gritty and dirty and furthermore to help keep the contrast between the old film look and the bright shiny animation bits.

Next i feel i need to add some more effects to some of the scenes, just to help tell the story better

Next Step

Now i'm going to take all the animated piece i have done and integrate them into the live action shots, so it should play out like my storyboard showed.

toothpick animation

This is quite a simplistic shot, all i want is a toothpick falling down the screen, This is something i can easily create in after effects

I'll be using a realistic toothpick, as i think the mixture of realism against the bold, cartoon like background will help make it stand out more.

Simple use of key points and timeline to make the toothpick move down the composition

To make it look more realistic i add a rotation to it as it was falling

Finally to make it stand out, i added a shadow to the image, as it keeps define the shape against the bright red background.

Outcome:

Its simple, but i like it, its clear and you get whats happening.

montage clip

So this is the more complex animated pieces with multiple things goin on at the same time

To start with i need ed to create a widscreen look, which meant adding panels. Like many times before i did this using key frames and a time line

Next i need to include these newly animated characters, however i want them to be panels them self and to slide across the screen to reveal themselves

Toachieve this effect i put a mask a bit of the, them moving the timeline, i moved the mask layer more along so more of the picture is revealed. The result means the are gradually revealed on screen in a comic book fashion

In full view you can now see each of the characters and their animated parts

Finally i need to include the animation of the bullet traveling across the screen

When all put together this is what it looks like

animating characters

For the next scene in the storyboard it include images of the characters however it make it more interesting i want to animate them in some face, like have one of their feature moving.

For the gunslinger the most prominent thing i could animate is his toothpick, i could have swirling around in his mouth. To do this i separated the two pictures, so i have a picture of the gunslinger and a picture of the toothpick.

So i then opened up these images in after effects, i then placed where i wanted the toothpick to started, i then kept moving the timeline, then moving the toothpick to another position which created another key frame. After doing it a number of time i had an animated toothpick

i then made it into a quicktime movie

Animating Bullseye Kid

For the bullseye kid, i wanted to move his hair as its the most prominent thing in his design, furthermore it will give the impression of a gust of wind blowing by.

These are the two images, with the hair subtly changes. i will repeat the images so it gives it a back and forth motion.

This is what the result looks like

even though its simple just the slightest bit of moment helps bring the image to life

Bullet panels

In this scene i wanted a bullet to be travel through different panels on the screen, But crucially just going throught the panels and not the back background.

From what i learnt so far i thought the best way to do this was to create the bullet going through one panel on after effects

So to start with i create a simple image of a bullet

Then in after effects i create a red composition and using the timeline and keyframe created a simple straight path for the bullet to follow.

I then converted this into a quicktime movie

So now that i had one panel done, it was a simple case of reinserting this quicktime movie into after effects, copying 2 more times, downsizing the images so the all fit on the composition equally and neatly.

Next came in the important task of judging when to start each panels animation to make it look like one continuous bullet moving through each panel. I tried to make sure the bullet size stayed the same size when going through the transition of each panel as that would help with the illusion

Outcome:

Gun animation part 2

because i liked the result of my previous animation bit, i wanted to do similar thing, so i've added a scene where it shows the gun from front on. Again i'm going to be using the panels.

what i learnt from the last design was to have alot of excess of red, that way i could move it up and down for the differnt level, which mean i wouldnt have to create 3 seperate animation like i did with the last one. All i'd have to do is move the animation down the page a bit

animated together:

I will now add this to after effect 3 time so i can panel much like the previous animation piece

Remember to use the mask tool i able to place all the panels with out any problems, you can see why i needed the long strip as i need to move the image at the top for one panle and near the bottom on another so i need to make sure the red filled the whole panel.

Again like the previous animated piece i staggered the starting times of each panel so they go off one by one.

Final Piece sequence

manipulating animation in after effects

I placed all 3 animations into after effects however i came across a problem straigh away. When i put all 3 layers on, at least one of them get hidden by the other so i need a tool to try and crop the each animation sequence.

As you can see i could get all 3 panel to be view on the screenn

I eventually overcame the problem using a new tool to me called the mask tool, essentially it allows you to crop a piece of animation so you can tell it which parts you want to be seen.

The yellow box indicates where i've cutout the animation, it now allows all three panels to be seen.

Now i could show all 3 of animation panels in the same screen

I like this, however i want a delay on each animation so one gun goes off right after the other.

to do this i inserted the first image of the animation at the beginning and made it run slightly longer as i went down the panels, this meant the top panel's animation started first then middle then bottom, to make sure each panel didn't turn to black i added the last frame on the end to run to end.

Im really happy with the finally result really bring it to life