In week 9 of Creative Collaboration, we reviewed our work over the last week and worked on working out angles for some of our shots in the animation. Recently I had updated the production bible with 3D rendering work done by Stephan as part of the visual development of the project. Together him and I looked at some grass textures that I had done yesterday for his work, and he suggested doing a new one using the settings of 1080/1080.
I created new textures using the magic wand tool and he suggested using alpha channels. This was essentially black and white which I remembered from the After Effects workshop on green screening and tracking. We made the piece black and white using the channels and layers in Photoshop and saved this along with the coloured version to a pen drive.
Stephan then used this in his 3D background of the park. I was rather impressed with the way the background looked though not textured yet it was looking like something we were hoping to produce. However in rendering a shot Stephan seemed to have concerns about the failed areas which were black. I personally thought they looked like a blacked out cityscape much like you would see in comic books.
As a group we looked over a plan of our making of video which would be using motion graphic animation in some areas. In this plan we would discuss our respective areas of the project. I could see that perhaps the intro to this video could be animated. For example I could see in my head how images of us would be introduced in comic book like panels. Such as in long shot angled panels for example.
In the discussions we looked at the animation principles and I felt that Stephan was rather pushing us on knowing our animation principles. I knew a few but I was getting a sense that he was questioning our abilities from first year. However at the same time I felt I had a lot to think about in terms of this and other modules.
Otherwise I watched Stephan work on his 3D previs for the opening of our animation which would be a wide shot panel. The wide shot was typically used for establishing the setting of the film/animation as I remembered from Script to screen.
I thought the test looked rather promising and I had to show some respect for Stephan's abilities in 3D backgrounds and construction. I personally couldn't build something like this even if I desired to.
One area I think we were struggling in was deciding on the angles in our scenes such as the dog backyard scene. Kieran would be animating the dog and we showed him a reference footage of a dog getting up from the ground as we assumed it would start from a sitting position. However we thought Kieran didn't seem to see what angles we wanted to use so I tried a rough sketch of what angle we should approach. It was actually inspired by what I saw from the AVATAR ride from Disney land and how the animals could leap out and try to grab the audience.
I tried to approach something similar in my small mock up. Kieran soon had the idea and he produced what seemed to be something we could work from in terms of deciding our angles.
I was beginning to think our work was straying away from the whole perspective roller coaster idea given our potential use of angles. However sometimes in animation we must adapt to new ideas. One element that needed adapting was Kieran's work on the spider web as the animated grass wouldn't work with the park background. So Stephan suggested I did the web and grass while Kieran worked on the spider. This made more sense to me as I knew which colours to use and how to do it in our desired 3D like style.
Looking back on today I would think that we were beginning to establish our desired camera angles for the animation. Our plan would be for Stephan to work on more backgrounds and the camera path whilst myself and Kieran worked on 2D animating the bee and the supporting cast. In hindsight I did think perhaps we should've remembered the animation principles as they would be of use in deciding the performance of our Bee and other characters.
In conclusion the backgrounds were coming together, we were considering the angles of certain scenes and better delegating which part of the animation should be done by which team member.
In future I shall be sure and remember the animation principles as they are a constant use in character performance and animation.
I created new textures using the magic wand tool and he suggested using alpha channels. This was essentially black and white which I remembered from the After Effects workshop on green screening and tracking. We made the piece black and white using the channels and layers in Photoshop and saved this along with the coloured version to a pen drive.
Stephan then used this in his 3D background of the park. I was rather impressed with the way the background looked though not textured yet it was looking like something we were hoping to produce. However in rendering a shot Stephan seemed to have concerns about the failed areas which were black. I personally thought they looked like a blacked out cityscape much like you would see in comic books.
As a group we looked over a plan of our making of video which would be using motion graphic animation in some areas. In this plan we would discuss our respective areas of the project. I could see that perhaps the intro to this video could be animated. For example I could see in my head how images of us would be introduced in comic book like panels. Such as in long shot angled panels for example.
In the discussions we looked at the animation principles and I felt that Stephan was rather pushing us on knowing our animation principles. I knew a few but I was getting a sense that he was questioning our abilities from first year. However at the same time I felt I had a lot to think about in terms of this and other modules.
Otherwise I watched Stephan work on his 3D previs for the opening of our animation which would be a wide shot panel. The wide shot was typically used for establishing the setting of the film/animation as I remembered from Script to screen.
I thought the test looked rather promising and I had to show some respect for Stephan's abilities in 3D backgrounds and construction. I personally couldn't build something like this even if I desired to.
One area I think we were struggling in was deciding on the angles in our scenes such as the dog backyard scene. Kieran would be animating the dog and we showed him a reference footage of a dog getting up from the ground as we assumed it would start from a sitting position. However we thought Kieran didn't seem to see what angles we wanted to use so I tried a rough sketch of what angle we should approach. It was actually inspired by what I saw from the AVATAR ride from Disney land and how the animals could leap out and try to grab the audience.
I tried to approach something similar in my small mock up. Kieran soon had the idea and he produced what seemed to be something we could work from in terms of deciding our angles.
I was beginning to think our work was straying away from the whole perspective roller coaster idea given our potential use of angles. However sometimes in animation we must adapt to new ideas. One element that needed adapting was Kieran's work on the spider web as the animated grass wouldn't work with the park background. So Stephan suggested I did the web and grass while Kieran worked on the spider. This made more sense to me as I knew which colours to use and how to do it in our desired 3D like style.
Looking back on today I would think that we were beginning to establish our desired camera angles for the animation. Our plan would be for Stephan to work on more backgrounds and the camera path whilst myself and Kieran worked on 2D animating the bee and the supporting cast. In hindsight I did think perhaps we should've remembered the animation principles as they would be of use in deciding the performance of our Bee and other characters.
In conclusion the backgrounds were coming together, we were considering the angles of certain scenes and better delegating which part of the animation should be done by which team member.
In future I shall be sure and remember the animation principles as they are a constant use in character performance and animation.
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