504 - Editing and Final Film

And here is the final film (sound quality is better through headphones):

Once I had composited all the scenes, I exported them into Premiere to put everything together. I used Ducky's animatic as guide for the timings as the shots had to fit with the music and be on the beat, not allowing for any change. In addition to this, I added the transitions between a few scenes and made sure everything fit together. Finally, I added the beginning and end logo (created and animated by Olivia) and also created the credits.

From this point the visuals of the film were done, however Ducky wanted to tweak some of the timings and then do the sound editing and music, so I consolidated the file and sent it to her.

Overall, the editing for me was very straightforward and I just put everything together according to the animatic. This is the first animation I've done that had to be strictly to the beat, and I've learnt that most of the editing for this type of film has to be done in pre-production as you don't really have wiggle room to change things up in post too much.

One thing that I did have control over was the length to hold the flashcards. There was a fair bit of info on the cards so it had to be held for a while, but I didn't want it to seem too long. I ended up holding each one for 6-7 seconds, which I think is a little too short to read the flashcards slowly, but any longer and it would have been boring and also would have pushed the film over the time limit further.

I think the long flashcards are the main reason why the film is over 90 seconds, however I don't think we could really cut it down to that time without the film seeming rushed, and I'd prefer it to be a little bit over the time but well paced than to be too quick (this is mainly for the beginning and end shots, as the scenes with music can't really be changed).

I was also worried about how this film isn't a stereotypical documentary with a narration and lots of information, but I think that because it is created from research it is still classified as one, as well as the fact that we were aiming for a more poetic/observational documentary than an expository one, which I feel the film does achieve. I also think the flashcards do fit in with the film really well, and helps introduce the lighter tone to it.

Overall, despite burn out (again), I'm really proud we got this film finished and although it is not completely polished, I think the level of production quality is okay for my current skillset.

504 - Compositing

Here are my favourite scenes that I composited (Ducky and Olivia did the character animation, I did everything else):

Flashcards/Intro Scenes:

Victoria's Riflebird:

King Bird:

Greater Bird:

Abstract/End Section (Olivia's shape animation, Ducky's character animation):

Here are some of the things I did in compositing for the bulk of the scenes:

• Colour corrected the bird to match with the environment
• Colour corrected the BG, adjusting saturation levels
• Compositing texture overlay on bird
• Animating each layer's sway movement for depth
• Blur any FG elements if there are any
• For 2 scenes I added a slight blur on the branch to bring focus to the bird
• Add camera movements depending on the scene
• If the scene is a closeup, blur the BG and resize it
• Reposition bird and BG comp for the final composition
• Add camera sway to final scene
• For riflebird scenes - created the iridescent effect using the same process as the iridescent test

I found this part really enjoyable and fairly straightforward as I had done most of the planning for it with the layouts. This was mostly about making sure there was consistency for everything, and just tweaking elements to make the scene look good. 

Occasionally I ran into a problem with the character animation either not lining up or not being the right size, but with those I resized the actual animation and repositioned them so that they fit ok. One area where there was a problem was with the king bird's colouring. That was coloured with a gap where the branch was covering the wing, however it wasn't done perfectly so you could see the edges. In future it would be better for me to ask the animators to colour the whole bird, and if there is an area that needs hiding I can mask it in post.

I'm really happy with how these scenes turned out - I definitely think a little bit of motion makes a scene feel so much more alive - and I learnt a lot about process and workflow. I feel like I'm getting a lot more comfortable with After Effects and problem solving with it.

For the Abstract scene, I played around with different effects but ended up just settling with a glow and increasing the saturation. I also added a ghost image to it by duplicating the animation, moving it to play a frame behind the original and lowering the opacity. I liked this effect as it made the animation feel more otherworldly and softer. Finally for this scene, I composited the bird animation and then transitioned between them with a quick fade.

There was minimal compositing with this scene, however I think it still makes it seem more polished.

The final scenes are the intro/flashcard scenes. These were definitely the biggest and most headache inducing scenes to composite and animate. 

The opening scene wasn't too difficult, but I originally tried using 3D layers and a camera for it to automatically create the parallax zoom in effect, however I couldn't get this to work - it's something to learn later. Instead, I faked the parallax by keyframing each forest layer. I also keyframed the mist to move downwards to make it seem more dynamic too. I think this turned out really good, although I'm not sure if it looks New Guinea enough, as the colours are less bright and more bluey. I think I went overboard on the atmospheric perspective on the painting stage.

The king bird intro and flashcard was the first one I composited:

• The camera movement and main animation part of it wasn't too complicated, it was just like any other scene but with a more in depth camera movement. Again, I faked the parallax by just moving the FG layer down quicker than the others.
• When it came to the flashcard, it was hard to do mainly because I needed to use the main scene however if I zoomed into that then it would be too blurry for the flashcard, so I had to use a different asset and cut between the two This ended up being very finnicky and I spent a lot of time manually working around problems and tweaking it till I got it to look right. In addition, the main scene file was much much larger than 1920x1080 because of the camera movement, therefore it was cumbersome to get the zoom right.
• Because of the cut between the original scene and the new bird asset, I had to work between compositions and it just became very confusing and time consuming, however I'm pretty happy with the end result
• For the actual flashcard movement, I used these 2 videos as my main inspiration and reference:

And the beginning of this video:

• I really liked the black bars coming in, and doing this would create that strip effect for which I could use the BG from the scene but blurred
• I also noticed that the flashcards looked interesting because there was always a bit of movement. With the borderlands intros, all of the text and assets were moving. The main movement was a slow increase in size, but there was also rotation and some moved across the screen slightly
• Finally, I also noticed that what made the movements effective was contrast. They shouldn't move in the same direction, they should react and bounce off each other to make it visually appealing
• I tried to incoporate all these things in my flashcards, and I think it turned out pretty successful. I think they're very snappy and visually engaging, and the slow movement works really well
• I do think that the info text should have been all caps, as currently it looks a bit out of place and not contrasty enough, however I don't think it is too bad.
• I found the rifle bird scene the hardest as I just couldn't get that zoom right, I think it looks a bit off and I'm not sure whether that's becuase of the direction of the squash of the animation before popping up, or if it's because the positioning of the zoom is misalligned. Either way it's very quick so not too noticeable.
• The greater flashcard was definitely the easiest, as the zoom was actually part of the animation and I didn't have to manually do it (except for the BG). In the future, I think planning for these zooms more extensively would have benefitted me, and would also make them a lot cleaner.

Overall, I'm really happy with these. I think the intro and flashcards of the King bird and Greater bird are my favourite scenes from the film. I found this kind of motion graphics really enjoyable but I recognise that I'm a complete beginner with it, so I may learn more and try and get better at it - especially about animating text properly too.

504 - Backgrounds

Here are most of the backgrounds for the film:

• My main issue I had with painting these backgrounds was matching them up to the same style as the vertical slice. In the vertical slice I had a looseness and sketchiness to both the drawing and paint, that I feel I haven't been able to recreate in these. I ended up painting these backgrounds a lot later than the vertical slice so I couldn't remember my exact process. 
• I feel that these BG's are a bit too paint-by-colour and could have been a lot more energetic. I think I ended up getting bogged down by thinking about it technically rather than treating each BG as a painting in itself and being more free and creative with them
• I also found it hard to match the colours exactly as well. In my vertical slice, I ended up making it too washed out, so I painted over it with blending mode layers to give it that saturation. With these, I went straight for the more saturated look, which made them look flatter
• Despite this, I also ended up adding adjustment layers to increase the saturation of certain parts. One aspect I find really hard about digital painting is choosing the right colours, brightness and saturation. I always find I end up having to add blending mode layers to tweak these, which makes the paintings look more digital. In future, if I want to create a very loose painterly look, I'll need to practice my colours a lot more
• As each BG is split into layers for depth, I painted them from back to front so that I could fix my mistake from the vertical slice of having some layers be too transparent. I found that I actually prefer it more transparent as it had a softer feel. I think I achieved that with the further back layers, but as they get closer to the FG I think they're too clean and bold
• My last problem was that I had a lot of trouble painting the trees and branches in the BG's, they needed to be less saturated and contrasting than the main branch that the bird sits on, but due to that they ended up looking a bit muddy. The redder branches worked better I think.

• I ended up painting the FG elements very simply, as I knew that they would be blurred for a depth of field effect, therefore I didn't need to waste time with details
• Additionally, I painted the layers further back much more loosely and simply to create that manual blur/softness I had in the vertical slice, and I think this was successful

Overall, I think that despite the BG's not being as loose and watercoloury as I would like, I still think they work pretty well. I definitely found it a challenge painting something so seemingly chaotic, whilst still thinking about lighting and composition, but that ended up making it quite fun and I learnt how amazing the colour variation option for brushes is on photoshop.

I also learnt that I really enjoy paintings more loosely than with previous style BG's, and especially with using a soft brush and lots of layers. I may try and build on this style in the future.

504 - Layouts

Here are the final layouts for all the scenes in the film:

Here are some of the things I was thinking about with the layouts:

• Making sure that the BG's work when composited (with the camera movements). There were quite a few scenes that had zooms or pans, therefore the BG needed to be large enough to accomodate that without being pixelated, therefore all of these are larger than the standard 1920x1080 format. I used red boxes to show the different camera movements
• Similarly, as discovered from the vertical slice there needed to be some extra space round the edges of each BG to allow for camera sway to be added in post
• Another element I had to think about before actually drawing them, was to see how many of the scenes could use the same BG. Some of them were closeup's of a previous scene (for which I would just use the same BG elements but redraw the main branch to ensure high quality), but for some there would be multiple different scenes on the same BG, but not necessarily in the same place, therefore I would have to create a BG that can accomodate all of them. This happened with the layout with 3 different coloured camera boxes, but also the last layout suits several of the scenes too
• In addition to this, there were several scenes that are extreme close-ups, and these don't need a layout as I would use a respective BG but blur it
• For the actual drawings, I needed to make sure that they were layered so that I could create simulated depth in post, and that each drawing was complete even behind layers nearer to the FG.
• Finally, when exporting these layouts for my group to use to animate on, I only exported the main branch that the bird would be interacting with (to make it easier visually and avoid clutter), and I made sure to include the dimensions of each layout so that they would use the right size.

I think overall they turned out good but I found it quite headache inducing making sure the layouts would be technically correct. I used references for all of them, and tried to create the feel of their respective habitats with the foliage in the BG, but also have it fairly stylised.

I found it challenging drawing the foliage as it needed to feel full but not be too cluttered and messy of a composition, and as I created more layers the images would get very busy. Layout is definitely not my strong suit, but it's something I need to get better at and this was good practice, and it gave me a lot of freedom due to the chaos of each scene.

Another area I found quite hard was trying to recreate the looseness of the vertical slice scene. I found I was being too stiff with the drawings and struggled to achieve that energy and sketchiness I had, however I don't think these layouts differ too much.

I think in the future to help me with the camera movements and to make sure the layouts are technically correct, I should do tests using rough layouts and actually recreating the final comp with them. 

Doing these also made me realise how much I need to improve my composition skills as well as my general drawing skills.

504 - Vertical Slice

I wanted us to have a vertical slice done before production started, to make sure that the style fits and is clear, and also to give us a peak at what the final film would look like. 

I first created the BG for it, using the watercolour test as inspiration and using references:

I'm really happy with how this BG turned out and how I achieved my aims for it. Instead of drawing the BG traditionally and scanning it in, I used procreate instead. This allows me the freedom of digital layers (so that I can separate BG, MG and FG) whilst I can use more realistic pencil brushes to create that sketchy look you get from traditional. 

I then took it into photoshop to paint it using a watercolour brush for most of the BG, and a pastelly brush for the tree branch. I wanted it to look rough and sketchy whilst still seeming complete and I think I achieved that. 

I also ended up making it more saturated than I originally had it, as it was more visually appealing. Finally, instead of having blurred elements like I originally planned, I created that same feeling by having elements in the BG be more washed out almost, having the colours blend into each other more so the shapes are less distinguishable. This works better as it looks more organic, and also allows me to distinguish between depth of field blurs and artistic choices.

I found this workflow for the BG to be much smoother than tradigital, and it still looks somewhat traditional too. Also, I made sure to separate the work into layers for compositing, so that I can create some motion and make it feel more like a full scene.

Olivia then animated and flat coloured a scene from the film, which I took and composited it to create the final vertial slice:

(Olivia's character animation)

I'm really happy with how this looks, and I definitely thinks it fits with our film's contents. The BG meshes very well with the animation, and despite it's saturation and messiness it doesn't overpower the bird. I think using the texture overlay on the bird helped bring the scene together.

For compositing for this scene, I animated the BG movement using the wiggle function, and colour corrected the bird and added the texture overlay. I also added a saturation increase in the background of the BG, but I think that's very subtle.

Despite the success of it, there are areas I need to work on for the future scenes:

• The character animation didn't exactly line up to the BG, so I need to make sure that my layouts are final before uploading them, and that they are very clear, and also make sure that the animators use the full layout so I can just drop the animation in and it'll be automatically lined up
• The BG was exactly 1920x1080, therefore I had to enlarge it to add the wiggle. I should take this into consideration for the actual scenes and make them a bit larger than they need to be in order to composite them.
• The BG although split into layers was semi transparent, therefore I couldn't move each layer around that much. I don't think that's much of a problem for these kind of scenes as the movement is very minimal, however it reduces the flexibility I have, and also for scenes with camera movements it may pose a problem. I should make sure that the BG is painted and makes sense layer by layer rather than paint it collectively

I definitely think that having an idea of what movement there will be in the final shot is very important when it comes to compositing, so it works out well that I'm doing both that and layouts. I find that I really enjoy bringing a scene together and adding finishing touches to make it polished. 

504 - Iridescent Test

One of the 3 birds (the Victoria's Riflebird) we've selected for the film has bright blue, iridescent feathers on its neck and chest. I want to somehow make this seem iridescent for the film, so I did a little after effects test:

I didn't really know how to approach this, except that it would be some sort of effect added on to the flat coloured animation. 

Mat showed me that I could edit the material properties of a layer to make it more metal, and I combined this with a stationary After Effects spotlight to give the illusion of iridescence (as the shape moves closer to the light, the spotlight's bright blue light becomes more appararent making it seem to flash brightly). 

For this test, I just animated a shape moving irratically to simulate the bird's movements, and also created a texture overlay to add as well as some roughness to get more of an idea of what the final outcome would look like. I think this ended up being really successful, and the use of the texture definitely helps with making it not too digital looking. 

Here is the texture animation:

I really enjoy little After Effects tests like this, and each one helps me understand a part of the software a bit more in depth. Using lights isn't something I've incoporated into an actual project yet, so this is great practice, and I can see myself adding these types of effects in future projects to make 2D animation feel more polished.

504 - More Style Tests

I tried doing some more traditional inspired tests for the BG's, as I liked the roughness of the previous ones but thought they were a bit too digital.

Firstly, I coloured the branch traditionally using pastels to get more physical texture and that traditional feel. I scanned that in and combined it with a blurred and textured photograph:

The next test I did was scanning a pencil version in and then colouring it in digitally, using a pseudo watercolour brush to recreate the feel of a traditional watercolour painting:

These are both quick tests therefore will look more polished if they were to be full BG's. I found that the pastel version doesn't really work - the scan of it makes it seem too realistic and photo like rather than the soft traditional look I was aiming for.

The digital watercolour version on the other hand was much more successful, and I really like the direction that's going in. I think the colours of the branch especially need changing, and obviously need to neaten up the image as a whole, but I think that this style fits the idea of the film in my mind.

I want to create a vertical slice for the film, and I think I'll use this style for the BG for it to see if it does actually work or not.  

504 - Final giffgaff Advert

Here is the final 20 second TV spot for the giffgaff brief:

• I think overall it is successful. It definitely adheres to the brief, in terms of both content and style
• One worry was that each different style would make the end result look incohesive, however I think because of the matching elements it ended up working together
• The different style text preceding the next scenes also aided in maintaining that flow, and also gave more appeal to the text than just using the standard font
• The pacing is good
• It's very snappy and packs a lot of information in while not being too rushed

• I think we could have spent more time on the sound, creating our own sound effects to make the audio feel more complete in addition to the narration and music
• I'm not entirely sure that the transition from the intro scenes to the main advert is received as being an advert within an advert. I think we could have maybe tackled that in a different way
• I think the text at the end and then the following logo and end card could be tweaked a bit. I think it doesn't fit as well as the rest of the text in the advert.

• This project has ended up teaching me a lot. Firstly I've learnt more about After Effects as a motion graphics tool (as opposed to the compositing I've used it for before).
• I've also learnt about how challenging it can be working to a strict brief. The main challenges I felt were sticking to that 20 second time limit (we still went a half second over time) as well as making sure that the advert felt giffgaff but also had our styles incoporated in it. In addition, keeping track of the guidelines giffgaff set was a lot too, but overall it was great practice
• I also learnt a lot about teamwork, as because our respective scenes were so stylistically different we had to confer with eachother a lot, and also use some of the same elements 

• Everything I've learnt in this project can be used in the future. For the technical side of things I now know more about after effects and how to achieve different outcomes and workflows. For the soft skills, I've gained more experience working in a team and to a brief with guidelines.
• I definitely enjoyed this more than I thought I would, but I'm still not sure how suited I am towards fast paced short-form animations that are needed for advertisements. I find that I tend to lean towards slower, more ambient kind of scenes.

 

504 - giffgaf Alien Scene

The alien scene was really fun to create. Firstly, Ducky animated the blink of the aliens, using my style frame as reference:

(Ducky's Work)

I then brought that into After Effects and animated the eye movements, general movement of the aliens, the BG stars, the phone, the giffgaff doodles and finally added halftone texture and a cutout style. Here's the final scene:

I'm really happy with how this turned out overall. I found it quite challenging as although on paper it is quite simple, I had a lot of technical difficulties and had to do a lot of problem solving to get it to look clean and how I pictured it. Due to this, I ended up learning a lot about after effects that I can use for future projects. I learned more about particle generation for the space BG, how to incoporate textures into your work and also the workflow between Animate and After Effects. Doing this also helped me explore subtle motion more, and allowed me to use the CC Bend it too more extensively.

Creating the cutout style was also quite challenging as originally I didn't know how to do it and tried a few different workarounds until I found out how to just add a border, for which I then roughed it up to make it look more like paper. 

Overall this scene allowed me to explore After Effects in more detail and try new things out, and I think it flows very well, and the half-tone texture and cutout style help it mesh with the other scenes despite the difference in medium.

Here are the main tutorial's I used to help me with this scene:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xU4NIWsuf20

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9uxAmqt5aQ&list=WL&index=119

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kuLMBZXFUZ8

504 - giffgaff Advert Scene

Here are the final scenes for the advert within an advert section:

To finish this scene, I animated the blue doodle lines and gave a bit of motion to the landfill image. In addition I had to change the landfill image as the previous one wasn't royalty free. I obtained this image from:

https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/3015164 

I think these subtle elements really polish up this scene, and the doodles further link it to giffgaff's recognisable style. 

Originally I had planned on giving the landill a side to side wiggle when the phone lands, to make it seem more like a character. I found this didn't really fit, and instead replaced the motion with a slight zoom in instead. This was more subtle and thus acted as better secondary action. Additionally, I had planned to add some green stink lines to the landfill, but again it didn't work and I left them out entirely. The main reason they didn't work was because the green seemed too out of place with the scene, and it also upset the balance of the composition. 

I hadn't mentioned this in the last giffgaff post, however I ended up changing the text from the animatic to this as previously it was way too long for the short time frame. Shortening it to this allows it to be visually less rushed, but also the audience will still get the full information, however it will mostly be from narration. The text shown highlights the important and most impactful bits for the audience.