As I have been animating and placing up to date animation into Premiere to edit the music to, I have noticed little things that could be improved, and I have made many improvements with the animation and tweaks to designs / layouts to improve the film in general.
Tweaks done:
I decided to get rid of the yawn animation in shot 2 and replace it with the party invitation concept I had thought of at the very beginning of the project last year. I decided against the yawn animation for two reasons, primarily, when speaking to my sound designer about the sound effects and what sounds needed to be recorded for the characters, we thought a yawn would actually damage the film (as it is a contagious thing, I couldn't risk audiences yawning at the start of my film, this may seem like a small thing, but it's the last thing any filmmaker wants, to have a bored audience about 20 seconds in!)
For shot 48 when Betty hits William over the head with the frying pan, I originally planned for her to use her right hand from the animatic (left on screen to the audience) but after setting up the IK rig for her custom arm layer that holds the frying pan, the limitations of the set up didn't allow this at all. So I decided to swap hands - simple!
For the first shot where we pan down and track into the diner with apartment buildings on either side of the diner, originally I placed buildings with windows on (yellow lights) but no people inside. This made the set up look odd, so I went back into the Illustrator files and created quick silhouettes for groups of people and repeated the shape for each window. It seemed strange for two huge apartment buildings to have all the lights on with no people in them!
For shot 11, I originally animated the dollar bills floating past William using just the rotation and position properties of each copy of the three dollar bill assets, but I decided to make the animation smoother by applying four puppet pins to each one and animated them along the path to add a paper like look to them floating down.
For the cut between scene 1 and 2 (shots 14 and 15), we see Betty with her coat on in 13 and then off and not to be seen in shot in 15, which is weird when she is still in the same spot in the diner. To fix this oddity, I added the same coat asset from shot 5 before she puts it on to the chair in front of her. A little addition, it makes the connection between the two shots unquestionable.
For shot 18, I originally had the camera pointing at the kitchen door just before Betty comes through the door. This was ok as the colour change from pink for the diner walls to blue for the kitchen walls was clear enough, as the kitchen porter window shows some of the pink wall in the background with the clock, but the shot after this, shot 19, when the camera cuts to a different view of the kitchen, the audience may feel a little confused as they're seeing a completely new part of the kitchen with the character moving, so it looks a little busy as the shot is quite short, just over a second long. To improve this, I made the shot a couple seconds longer and made the camera pan left to right from the kitchen window with the party taking place in the apartment building in the background to right with the kitchen door in view just before Betty comes into the kitchen.
For the cake and ice-cream neon signs seen throughout the film, I decided to add a glow effect to them in After Effects (not Illustrator as effects don't import into Ae well) to make them a little more interesting and add variety against the other assets which are mainly blocks of colour / gradients with some outlines.
Possible Tweaks:
Add shadows to the floors as separately animated assets with the characters' movements (especially Betty) for when their feet are in shot. This would add clarity to them as well as distinguish them from the backgrounds better. The shadows be created in Illustrator and have a feather effect on them (similar to how the tables and chairs groups in some shots have shadows) so there wouldn't be too obvious.
For shot 48 when the moth falls to the table, I had an idea to make the characters stare at it a little while, then it suddenly bursts into flames with some smoke coming off of it leading up to the ceiling. There would be a pause before adding insult to injury, when the water sprinklers would activate and ruin the diner's paint job, Betty's hair etc. I decided to leave this for two reasons; it isn't a necessary gag and it would take quite awhile to get the assets and animation looking good for such a long shot with so much going on. I had an idea to set up a script in Flash by creating a few rain drops to look like a sprinkler does and then import the repeated animation into After Effects as an image sequence. This is something I am wanting to try for my demo reel, so I may in fact return to this shot and extend it a little.
For shot 53 where we see the party at the diner in full swing, I thought about making the assets on the diner (satellite dish, vents and verandas) bounce and wobble along to the music, a nod towards Silly Symphonies in the sense that the environment interacts with the story as well as the characters. I decided not to do this, again, it is unnecessary but is something I may try out later for my demo reel.
For shot 14 when Betty stands up after being thrown to the floor, I thought about making her touch up her hair from how it is in shot 13 (messed up) to how it is usually (clean and rounded). This would be done with two keyframes on both layers from 100% opacity to 0% for the messed up hair layer and vice versa for the same frames for the clean hair. Or a simple blur animation in Photoshop would work too. Again, I decide against this as it isn't needed to tell the story.
I thought about increasing the amount of dirty plates, cutlery etc. to the shots with William during the montage to build up to the shot with all the dirty plates etc. seen in shot 45 but I thought the sudden increase appearance of all the dirty assets would emphasise the stress and business of the montage for Betty. This would also increase the effect of the events and gags of the shots after this one leading to the party where we see the pay off with William in the waitress uniform.
For shot 27 when Betty is interrupted by William's loud burp and we see the burp animation float towards Betty, I thought about extending the shot so we could see Betty wiggle her nose in disgust at the burp and then look down to see the empty plate and drink.
For the first shot, I also thought about adding snow flakes to further emphasise the time of the year and make it even clearer it takes place at New Years Eve. Because this shot has the most 3D space heavy layout, I would have to animate 2 for 3 different pre-comps with snow falling at different rates so I could composite them into the layout and animate an adjustment layer for each pre-comp so when the camera is panning and tracking, snowflakes really close and really far to and from the camera are blurred whist snow in the mid ground is sharp and clear.
Abandoned Tweaks:
When editing the music to the animation I kept updating on a daily basis, I struggled to transition from the first to the second track as they have very different tempos. I decided to leave it as a fade into one another until closer to the deadline, but I could;t figure this out so I will attempt it again for the Blu Ray submission for the degree show next week. I did have an idea to place a fade out from shot 17 and cut into 18, but after thinking about it more carefully, fades are use to show passing of a decent amount of time, not a few seconds, which is what actually happens in the film.
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