After Effects vs CelAction2D

Four programs I have used throughout the final animation is Abode Photoshop, Premiere, After Effects and CelAction2D. And the last two particular After Effects and CelAction2D.



For the first minute of my four minute animation is completely in After Effects, and the rest mostly in CelAction2D.



So for this post its what my experience between After Effects vs CelAction2D



Pros for After Effects:

• Walk and run cycles – very easy to do compare to CelAction2D

• Fade ins and fades out – easier to do in After Effects

Cons for After Effects:

• lip syncing – will take a while to do, also the program doesn’t like playing sound.

• Rendering- unless its a video file and not importing Photoshop files it will take forever, it took 3 hours on my laptop to render 55 seconds worth but on a computer with 8GB worth of RAM, preferred 16GB of RAM on a new mac is much better and much faster, took 15 minutes to do. Worse time rendering on CelAction2D took an Hour for a 35 seconds worth on animation.

So with CelAction2D:



Pros for CelAction2D:

• lip syncing – you can do it much faster then After Effects, also the program can play sound, when the frames are highlighted.

• Building the body in assemble mode- when the character is sorted, is much faster to find in animator mode and it takes less time to animate with different body parts

Cons for CelAction2D:

• Walk and run cycles – very difficult to do compare to After Effects, however easier with body movements.

• finding the source file – the actor file may need to find once a while when the file uploads and goes red

Overall, it would be difficult to choice which is the better program. But, its down to preference, they do have pro and cons both programs. But, with two programs together it can make great animation as the background and the Romans was in After Effects and the foregrounds with the characters was in CelAction2D.



Bye.

Change of colour

From early on, I felt that the The Dave of Dagenham, The Ray of Romford characters would be dressed as Romans



But, throughout the months I felt this would be the wrong idea, due to it won’t suit their personality. Also, with other animations from this period such as Astérix characters.





So, therefore I change the clothing for the Essex characters, so I started to look at Joey Essex as for a reference.



However, I felt this looked to modern what I wanted to with the character.



So, therefore I change the character clothing colours to a much darker colour.



And gone much more to a non modern look with the image below to darker blue colours, as this would suit well to the script of that I am follow with.



Bye.

Actors

For my actors for the final project I got CSM actors Mike Corsale and George Johnston to do the voices. George Johnston did the narrator and the director. While, Mike Corsale did the main characters of Claudius, The Dave of Dagenham, The Ray of Romford voices.



Due to limited time with my actors because of their schedules I only had an hour and weeks after that they would be working in a different country altogether.

This would have been the improvement for the animation I would have liked to due to limited time with the actors. Also, not recorded the audio in the sound studio also hurt us due to couldn’t get into it due to how busy it was getting into one. When we did record it in the animation studio in the end, we had bad background noise due to I was talking to one of actors on how I would like to sound like.

Also, an American student who is in the first year is overheard in the background from the recordings, so I had to retouch a lot of it in Adobe Audition so you don’t here the person. Because it doesn’t sound bad in a QuickTime file as it more forgiving, but in Premiere it is noticeable. Also, the score and some effects did helped to hide it well. But, if I redo it again, I would have booked them in a sound studio to sound much better.

Overall, I would work with them again if the opportunity come across.

Bye

Essex Girls, Chickens, Donkeys, Progress, rough cut viewing and other stuff in this post that is not included

As you can guess, first post in a few months, as the image below shows on video 5 timeline (21/4/14) that I did almost 90 seconds worth on animation done.



And this image below shows on video 5 timeline (12/5/14) that I need to do almost 90 seconds worth on animation to do within the next three to four weeks I’ve got left.



And within three weeks between I have been animating the difficult scenes that needed to animated, which includes, the last scene,



the last but one scene,



and the Alfa scenes, which gives me 90 seconds left to animate to complete my final animation.



Also, I had my final rough cut viewing for the animation (8/5/14) with Pete Bishop. I think it went well. No major complaints, just minor changes with timing and laughing from my peers which is still a positive so its still funny.



Also, here below is some testing with some of the minor characters below, which includes Essex Girl, Chicken, Donkey with walk and run cycles from Essex girl and Donkey.







Bye.

Photoshop Hell! three weeks of work

First post for a while, and for the last three weeks I have been working hard on the final project.



The great thing is that the backgrounds are mainly sorted with a little help form my first year called Sasha, who has worked with backgrounds in Photoshop and coloured them in within two weeks which is great.



As for main characters they are sorted, with just the background characters and animals to draw. But, characters like Claudius,



…The Dave of Dagenham…



…The Ray of Romford…





and the Romans are drawn, scanned in, and glued in Photoshop, after weeks of doing this in Photoshop and basically being fed up with this in Photoshop, as you guess the title is called Photoshop Hell!

My big pursued from the last month is buying CelAction2D on my Toshiba laptop for £360 at a discount price which I’ve did.



After buying it, I’ve started to animate with it, which includes from the last eight days, 57 seconds worth of animation from the last week.



With seven weeks to go I’ve got 3 minutes worth of animating to do to even finish the animation, so basically that is 26.5 seconds a week worth of animating to do. More to come I hope.

Bye.

CelAction2D testing

After weeks of getting the animatic sorted out, I am now starting to start of my animation. Firstly, I have been testing in CelAction2D with simple character designs that will be in the animation. To start with a squirrel that we see at the start of the animation, I started to work on simple walk cycles, run cycles and experiment with shadow effects too on Monday (3/3/14).



Then I imported a rough version of Claudius on Tuesday (4/3/14), this time I worked on a simple walk cycle and an improve one from yesterday. Also, experiment with shadow effects, and simple expression with Claudius as-well.



Then finally on Friday (7/3/14), I done an much improve version of Claudius with any colour. However, I didn’t had anytime to animate him in CelAction2D.



More time in CelAction2D next week with more character development I am hoping to do.

Bye.

Free to Animate

After a few weeks of finishing off the animatic, and after weeks of feedback from professionals from the animation world I am ready to animate.

The feedback from the last few weeks have been positive, which include laughing, laughing and more laughing as positive feedback. Some of the negative feedback, I would not called negative but probably on how to improve it; is to make sure the Claudius character has a strong voice, make sure the characters colours are right such as make sure the Essex characters are bronze, and finally with the right voice actors it can reduce the animation time down 30 seconds less to animate. But, the best bit of feedback is my animation is like horrible histories meet Viz magazine, which was nice.



Finally, I have got my voice actors in place, and also I have found a composer in place for animation as-well giving me ideas what sounds I can use for the animation so far.

First thing tomorrow I am going start to animate my final year animation.

Bye.