Final Film is done

I have now completed my film for final project.

The Complete version can be viewed from this link below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzyXc2EYgXs

Further Editing and fixing.

Shot 1 original

 After looking through the final video I have spotted a small errors at Shot 16 (where the mushroom at the left front side disappears for a split second) so I have fixed them.

Also after hearing the advice from my tutor for the further development I have decided to add a shadow under the girl.

Shot 1 fixed

The image is from shot 1, top one is the original one. I have added a slight shadow under girl's feet to show more depth, also now the girl doesn't look like she is floating like a ghost.

Shot 18 Original

Also I have added the reflection of the girl on shot 18 to add more quality to it. 

Shot 18 Fixed

By doing this it shows that the girl is actually existing at this place. Reflection and shadow brings life onto the girl.

Process of Final editing...

As I have mentioned on the previous post I have finished editing my work with Alex Burn-Smith.

The process of final editing was not so easy, it required more time than I thought it would.

As soon as I have finished animating all of the scenes and shots I then rendered each shots in PNG image sequence to put into after effects. Some shots required multiple animations so I ended up with several rendered files.

Multiple files of rendered image sequence

We then put all the files into after effect to put all into one film.
Watching through the film multiple times and fixing the timing of each shots until I was happy with it.
Some shots needed to re-render because I have spotted several mistakes.
One of the shots I had to fix was the title scene. The original clip was way too short so I've decided to extend by 2 seconds to fit into the video Better.

The next step was animating the Butterfly on After effect. Since the timing of the Butterfly did not match with other animations we had to render the butterfly separately and add it afterwards.
This has probably took the longest to get the right speed and right movement. A lot of fixing and changing were required on this part.

Also adding bright glows onto Shot 13, 14 and 19 were done by the same principle, animating the glow and the girl separately and combine them with after effect. By doing this we were able to have 2 or 3 different timed animations in one shots.

I had to animate extra glows and glitters at this stage with Photoshop to make sure all the shots has everything they need.

When I was happy with all the animations we have watched the film over and over again to make sure I am 100% happy with the work. 



We have finished editing and rendering on 2nd May (Friday) and I have sent my work to my Audio producer so that he has about 2 weeks to work on the music.

My aim was to get everything done by the end of Easter holiday but the editing and fixing took longer than I thought.

Animation finished + Edited

So this is my final video without the Audio.(Audio is currently been processed by Karl Roberts)

Shot 16 process

The entire film is 2:41, edited by After effect by Alex Burn-Smith and myself.

The process of this animation was smooth, but it required a lot more animations than I thought.







For example, Shot 16 (Fairy pond scene) I had to have an animation of the pond glitter and pong glow, then a separate animations of the fairy sitting on the mushroom since the timing of each animations were different.

Shot 19 (When the glow hits her and closes her eyes) had 3 different animations put into one shot.
-Animation of girl
-Animation of glitter behind her
-Animation of the bright glow
This is also due to the different timings. I have rendered each animations with transparent background so that I can put all the animations together.

Shot 19 with transparent background

For the credit I have decided to keep it simple, I thought it would be interesting to show the process of colouring in my character in step by step.

Slight change on shots

I have decided to cut Shot 10 to simplify the story.

Shot 10 is the scene where a girl jumps over the stream to chase the Butterfly, I thought this scene was unnecessary and it won't affect the storyline either with or without this shot.

So I have decided to cut this scene to make the entire process simpler and easier.

List of Shots and scenes

This is the list of the shots and scenes for my Animation.

Title

Scene 1 - Girl meets Butterfly

Shot 1 - Girl Drawing flowers
Shot 2 - Close up of her Sketchbook
Shot 3 - Finishes sketching, walks off to the left
Shot 4 - Close up of her walking around, finds Butterfly
Shot 5 - Close up of Butterfly on the flower
Shot 6 - Close up of her, smiles
Shot 7 - Close up of Butterfly, fly to the right towards girl.
Shot 8 - Butterfly flies around her and she starts to chase.
Shot 9 - Run cycle with Butterfly
Shot 10 - Jumps over the stream, Continues to run
Shot 11 - Close up of Butterfly flying away
Shot 12 - Close up of her trying to chase
Shot 13 - Her hand touches the Butterfly, Butterfly glow
Shot 14 - Close up of her closes her eyes, bright light

Scene 2 - At the Fairy Pond

Shot 15 - Very close up of her eyes, zooms out and surprise
Shot 16 - Fairy pond scene with fairy and glitter
Shot 17 - Close up of Fairy
Shot 18 - Girl draws the fairy, soon after the fairy glows
Shot 19 - Close up of her, closes her eyes from bright light.

Shot 3 - Back to the normal world

Shot 20 - Close up of her eye opening
Shot 21 - Back into normal world
Shot 22 - Close up of her looking around, confused, looks up her sketchbook
Shot 23 - Close up of her sketchbook with fairy sketch
Shot 24 - Close up of her, loops up and smile
Shot 25 - Slowly zooms out, her full body, with butterfly behind her

Credit

Animating girl's Sketchbook

So, for the Shot 19 I have decided to change slightly and add an animation on her sketchbook.

This scene still needs to be edited with Aftereffect (Bright light effect) but I thought it might show how strong the light is (with wind)

Animating books was my first time, and I feel that it has added more life into this scene.

Another shots done

Another shot is done with background!

and this is the screen shot of the magical pond scene with glitter effect, (somehow doesn't let me upload the GIF version)

Mushroom is done by Emma Maltby and colours of the BG is by Alison.

Progress...

I have worked out that some of the shots needs to be edited with After effects to combine two different animations, for example, a shot with a girl chasing a butterfly would be better to animate separately because of the timing differences.

To do this, I have animated a girl and a butterfly separately with a transparent background, I will then put this two animations in aftereffect with the background so that the two animations will play in the same shot, but with a different timing. I will also do the same thing for the moving background (the scene where a girl is running)

For the overall progress... I feel that it's going in a slow pace, but definitely progressing. I will still need to animate a few more small shots, and one big shots to complete the animation. My plan is to finish animating and editing everything by the end of Easter vacation so that I will have plenty of time to pass my work to my audio production team. 

Animating progress...

Butterfly Test

Quick test on Butterfly colour. After the background has been coloured in my tutor gave me an advice to possibly change the butterfly colour as it camouflages to the background.

The top left corner is the original colour, I then coloured in the butterfly's wings in different colours to see which one would stand out more... I think yellow or Pink stands out the best.

I think I'll go for yellow butterfly instead of blue, Yellow stands out really well with the background and I think the bright colour would catch the audiences eyes.
















I have also lighten the butterfly's body colour so that it won't also camouflage with trees.

More animating

 Working on Animating...

I have decided to get rid of her hair pins as it was causing so much hassle. She looks so simple now but I feel that it's much better to animate now.

 New scenes that I've worked on this week, this scene is when she returned from the fairy pond and not knowing where she is. Still on process.

And... walk cycle is what I am struggling right now.

Pond scene finally. Getting on with animating fairy's wings first. Then probably animate the girl separately.

Added the walking movement (up and down) now I am ready to animate her arms and hair!








For scene 1, I now have a coloured background by Amelia George so I have combined my animation into the BG. Looking good so far, I will still need to colour the flowers in and waiting for the tree stump to be coloured in too.

I have started running cycle on one of the scene too, where she is chasing the butterfly. I had Hilary to help me with this since I've struggled with getting this right. So far, I have managed to get the proportion and key frames right. I will need to add more inbetweens to make it smooth.

All the Background is done!

All the background is done and outlined now, so we are ready to colour them in and put the Animation together.

Slight change on the plan, Amelia is going to colour the main background and Alison is going to colour in the fairy pond scene. 2 people working on the background instead of 1 so it should be a quick process.

For my tasks, I have been animating the scenes and colouring the characters in.
I have also had a chat with my tutor and I will be using the butterfly animation that I have used in the pre-production. I will then combine the 2 animations into After effect.

For the editing work Alex is going to help me with After effects.

So far, not too bad. I hope it will continue like this...

Very slow process

This term has been pretty hard so far because I've just not been feeling very well. But I've been doing my best to keep up with my work.

These are the GIF version of some of the scenes that I have been working on right now.

Biggest mistake, but solved

I am glad that I have realised my mistake of the pixel aspect ratio, my work was all set as square pixel, not HDV. So I got my second year and Alex to help me to re-do my background... (thank you!!!!)

These are the finished re-sized ones, still working on other ones

but I should be able to get them done fairly soon.

Second term - Production

 Title scene - more slower fade in and cloud movements are slower too.

This will be the second scene, girl sketching the flowers. I think her hand needs to be more flexible (like fingers stretching while drawing)

It has been a while... Here's the title Scene

It has been a while since I am going to post my work on here.

Again I have been pretty ill for most of the Christmas so unfortunately I could not make much of a progress.

 

However, I have realised something quite important that I have forgotten for the last term... which is the very first Title Scene.

 

I wanted to keep my title scene fairly simple, but also pretty so my original Idea was just to have an image showing up for a few seconds like this :



But then I have realised this is way too boring, I wanted to add some movements so the next one is the developed one with animated Title with Clouds, darker sky colour.

 

I am much happier with this results, I think I will need to slow down the clouds but apart from that I will go for this for my final work.