Animation Update

I've been neglecting my blog a lot recently so I've decided to write a huge update on the animation I have done so far. Since my last major update a few weeks back, my film has changed quite a lot in the aesthetic and  overall feel of the film and the animation.

The file set up process was becoming tedious and very confusing so I had to rethink my character file organisation. This set me back a few days with the animation. 

At the start I was going to create two Master files, one for each character. This would include every asset from their eyes (blinks) to their arm (and hand shapes) as well as costume variations (e.g. Betty has three stages of dirty uniform) and mouth shapes. I had to abandon this idea simply because of the amount of assets (each had a minimum of 200 separate layers) that needed to be rigged together including necessary masks. This was too much to handle, not only for me, but After Effects. Although this approach would have been much simpler than what I am doing now, it wasn't feasible. So, I had to rethink the master character files and split them up into smaller files with only assets that were needed for that particular character file.

I went back to the storyboard and the production sheet I made earlier in the year and broke down each shot and noted which assets were needed for each character. This took some time and tweaking, but I eventually came up with the following:

Shot 2

Shot 8

Shot 9

Shot 10

WIP 1

WIP 2

Shot 13

Betty daydreams of what she can buy with a huge tip from William 

Shot 13 WIP 1

The scale of the props need to be adjusted because they're too big to see what Betty's face is doing.

Shot 13 WIP 2 

As you can see from the render, the props now move around Betty's head whilst pointing towards the camera throughout the animation. 

Shot 15

Shot 23

Shot 25

Shot 26

Shot 27

Shot 29

Shot 50

Production Progress Sheet

I have made progress with all shots except for scene 1, 5 and some of 6 and 7.