Reflecting on aims this year and editing on the Food for Thought Project

Unfortunately I didn't get chance to blog about my big part in the post production part of the recent Food for Thought module. This was due to me editing the animation till the very last minute so I only had time for a very minimal blog post that I made a few minutes before I had to frantically burn the disc and run to hand in my submission.

I just wanted to talk about the techniques that I used in both programs I had used with the edits, in After Effects and Premiere. My over all aim of the year was to try and learn and use as many different techniques in different areas of production during Level 5 before I completely decide what I want to focus on next year. This year I was able to focus on purely the movement in animation thanks to the Character and Narrative module, Responsive was extremely difficult but it did allow me to create pieces of work for Portfolio and Food Module allowed me to focus on storyboards and allowed me to learn new skills with editing animation.

I thoroughly enjoyed storyboarding for the Food Module, it was so much fun and it allowed me to be creative with not only the shots but the humor as well. I felt that it was my job to bring the script alive with add visual humour to help the gags that had been added to the narrative.

I had already learnt some skills with editing in college before I came to university however thanks to Level 4 I was able to extend this knowledge with the use of After Effects. I used After Effects to edit the animation with the use of the moving backgrounds and the other small animating parts that I could achieve and help take the workload from Rebecca. Animating the backgrounds mainly consisted of using the position key frames, in which I used the anchor point to position the image so that it would not effect the position animation. This was difficult at times as sometimes the key frames would confuse themselves and swap values with the next key frame, this was frustrating but at least I knew the cause of the problem which could be easily solved. I also used the offset effect on the background in the first scene with the walk cycle. This made the background forever loop, giving the illusion of the character walking forwards even though he was in the same place. This worked really well as I was able to make each layer of the background move at slightly slower or faster speeds to further enhance the illusion.

After Effects Editing

After Effects Animation

I also animated a hand that I drew for the icing scene, creating a motion path so that it would follow the animation of the icing that Rebecca had made. To do this I made a mask on the layer using the pen tool to follow the main shape of the icing before cutting the mask path and pasting it into the position key frame of the hand layer. This worked well however some of the key frames had moved slightly up or down, so I had to go back into the key frame to move it back to work with the icing. This took awhile to fix but I did learn a few little tricks to make the process faster along the way which I can apply next time I use a motion path in After Effects.

I also used After effects to import image sequences of the final coloured animation that I had imported from Photoshop to ensure that the quality was still there as sometimes rendering the animation straight to video made the quality pixelated. I rendered them in PNG files so that I was able to acquire transparent backgrounds making it easier to drop onto the backgrounds that I had animated already.

I didn't really learn anything new from Premiere however it was an essential key to editing the animation. It allowed me to add the finished pieces of animation that I had edited and added to on After Effects and match it up with the final recordings of the voice acting. I was able to slow down the speed of some of the animations as I found that the majority of the animations were incredibly fast and it took me while to slow down that animation to ensure that the animations would work well with both the pace and the sound.

Premiere

Overall I found animating on After Effects cut the amount of time it would have taken me on Photoshop, and I learnt a few new techniques and tips along the way. I was quite proud of my animation of  Johnny changing outfits at the exact point he crosses over the background line. With the added use of Premiere I was able to sync the animation to the audio easily, using key frames to fade out the animation and the audio. However I was gutted that we couldn't finish the entire animation and I felt that it was slightly down to me not being able to colour and edit everything together. I was disappointed but I did find that all the workload hit me at once and I couldn't handle how much I was suddenly given. Having said that I gave it my best shot to the point that I was still editing up to 30 minutes before the final deadline. I refused to give up, I was adamant that I would finish as much as possible to the best quality that I could do.