FINAL ANIMATION:

Evaluation:

Overall I am really pleased with my animation... I found it fairly difficult to adapt to using after effects however after a couple of hours practice I was soon familiar with the programme... My final animation stayed true to my original story boards apart from a few minor developments...

 

My only criticism of the animation would be the tribal faces towards the end... Overall I think they worked well however if I had had more time I would have liked to spend longer on syncing the mouth movements to the tribal voices in the music as I think it looks a little rushed compared to the rest of the animation... 

Overall, I have really enjoyed the print to pixel module and to say this is my first ever attempt at animation I really couldn't be happier with the final outcome I have produced...

FINAL DEVELOPMENTS:

After scanning in my tribal face, I used photoshop to cut it out so that I could animate it... 

By using pins on after effect I was able to animate the mouth... I did my best to sync the movements with the voices in the track however it was very difficult to achieve perfection... 

I rendered my animation thinking it was almost finished however after watching it back I soon realised the smoke was far too thick therefore making it difficult to see the tribal face coming through...

I deleted a few of the smoke layers as well as lowering the opacity on the remaining layers... I did this so that the smoke would appear less dense/thick therefore allowing the tribal face to slowly emerge through the slightly transparent smoke... 

The animation is almost finished!... I just want to add my name to the end and then it will be complete!...

Tribal face animations:

For the final section of my animation I planned to animate some sort of tribal face/faces coming out of the smoke produced by the fire...

Using the pen tool on after effects I drew up some simple shapes for the eyes & mouth... I tried to animate the mouth in sync with the tribal voices on the track...

This was good for my development process however in my opinion the face looks too lateral, and doesn't fit with the style in the rest of the animation...

following this attempt on after effects I decided I would draw the faces by hand using the same technique & style as the background & firewood resulting with the coherent style throughout the animation...

I drew up multiple variations so that I could choose the best suited one for my animation...

I chose to use this drawing because of it's rough abstract style, It looks intimidating with a strong tribal influence also unlike the others it is not too lateral. The next step is to scan it into after effects and begin animating... 

Firewood:

I wanted to hand draw the firewood so that it would suit the background... 

Once again I used ink on brown paper to create a similar effect...

After editing the scanned image into photoshop I was able to easily add it into my animation..

After Effects Development:

After successfully creating fire & smoke, I used brown paper, masking tape, charcoal and paint to draw up a mixed media forest scene to scan in and use as the background for my animation... By making it a 3D layer, I could add lights and camera effects to give the animation more depth...

Next I need to add the fire wood, as well as the tribal faces emerging from the smoke... Then I can sync the timings with the music and my animation will be complete!

How to create Smoke in Ater Effects:

(youtube after effects tutorials)

After watching this tutorial I was able to create my own smoke to add to the fire animation...

Smoke:

Smoke & Fire:

After Effects Animation:

After attempting to create fire with stop motion, I had a go at creating fire using After Effects...

I followed various tutorials on youtube to help me...

I think this fire looks allot more convincing than my stop motion attempt therefore I've decided I will be doing the majority of my animation using after effects... 

After Effects Workshop's:

character manipulation workshop:

Batman Workshop:

Spiderman workshop's:

Green screen workshop:

Fire animation using After effects:

(youtube tutorials)

Real Fire Research:

here are 2 videos looking at a Lighter & BBQ flames to study the fire and record it's movement, range of colours and it's general characteristics... Hopefully this will help to inspire me to create more realistic fire for my animation...

Stop motion fire development:

using a simple stop motion app on my phone, I attempted to animate fire using cut out pieces of paper... The concept is there however it looks very jumpy, and would need to be allot more fluid to look realistic... i'll try again using the stop motion equipment available at the university: hopefully this will result in a better outcome...

Next I moved into the studio to attempt stop motion at a higher quality using coloured card to create a short stop motion clip of a fire starting...

I took some pictures of the process:

 

This short 5 second clip took me about 2/3 hours to make... I found the process very slow and quite frustrating.
I can see this technique working well for other animations however fire needs to look fluid and smooth which this does not... I'm happy I attempted it however this development has almost certified my decision to use after effects for my animation...