Finished

After more than seven months of pre-production, animating and post-production I have finished off my final animation for my MA degree. Since, after the assessment was over and a few days off, I altered some bits of the animation from previous feedback needed to change that I didn’t had the time, tuning the sound at the start and adding credits I’ve finished off my animation.







Next stop showing it to the audiences, to see their opinions.

Bye.

Music and Sounds

For my score for my final animation, I got a composer from the Royal College of Music student called Sam Jones.

I didn’t start to think about the music until middle of February when I needed a composer for the project, when the animatic was almost finished, I needed a composer soon as possible.



So, with a contact via another composer got Sam for the project, as I was impress by his portfolio work from his website to take him on.

My initial thoughts about music should be with the music and intro overall should have a lord of the rings soundtrack vibe and possibly a Blackadder vibe to it.







And throughout the three months me and Sam via phoning each other and e-mailing figuring out how to do with the music, by the middle of March, he gave me a few samples if I like the few samples would it suit the animation, then by the middle of May, I got the first rough score, my feedback to Sam was I loved it from the first time I listen to it.

The only thing I need Sam to do is just shorten the score down to a few seconds, because the animation just got shorten by a few seconds from the previous file I gave him. And finally got the final score by the end of May ready for the assessment for the start of June.

Overall, I enjoyed working with Sam, I enjoyed him more than the previous composer I had from the first year, a much more response from the previous composer, you can e-mail him and get response in 10 minutes. Overall a creative person I worked with the score.



Meanwhile last week (30/5/14), I met up with Tom Lowe and I had a great sound design session on Friday. He helped me out with around 85% of the sound effects and the only thing that was missing was a water splash and sound effects for the squirrel which I have to get on my own via websites such as freesoundfx.com and freesounds.org and place those sound-effects into premiere. But, he did said that I didn’t needed loads of sounds effects due to how strong is the score.



Almost there.

Bye.

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.