Character Files - Layers

For both characters I illustrated all the assets they needed and set them up in several character files. Here is the Master files which contains all the assets. When set up in After Effects, any assets not required were not not deleted from the After Effects project, but hidden, just in case I needed them later.

William Master File Layers

105 layers in total

Betty Master File Layers

144 layers in total 

More Sketches - Improving the Storyboard A Little More

Montage sequence (rough improvement)

Instead of Betty carrying one tray with all the food, I thought it might add to the character's predicament by making her carry more than one tray. So on the last third of the montage when Betty carries two trays and an ice-cream glass, she could try to balance one on her head.I have kept with the original idea of when we see William eating, the camera gets closer and closer to his face making the actions of him eating more and more in your face.

Shot 24 - William ties his bib

This was initially a concept I was going to leave out of the film, but I feel that making William appear with a bib without showing him how he puts it on. Although acceptable to do this, I think the quirky character I have got going for him can shine a little more through secondary action of him putting his bib on. I also think showing the bib and him smiling to himself foreshadows the upcoming montage sequence where he asks for all the food Betty has.

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.

Shot 49 Development - The Party at Betty's Diner

The party people at Betty's during the last scene have to be detailed enough to show their character and emotion without adding to my workload too much as well as making the frame when the camera pans across the diner too busy. There will also be balloons, confetti, steamers and waving arms throughout the pan to show hoe excited the people are and to build up the reveal of William in his waitress outfit serving Betty's friends drinks.

Party People Silhouettes - Heads

Here are the developments I have made with the character heads:

Block shapes with no detail, male and female

I then added mouth shapes to make the characters who are facing front appear happy like the characters facing to the side

I then added eyebrows and eyes to the characters to make them feel more alive, yet some look a little freaky

I then reduced the impact of the eyes and eyebrows by reducing the size and overall garishness of them

Party People Silhouettes - Arms

Champagne Bottle - Sealed and Unsealed 

This will be animated in After Effects too, as the cork is separate from the bottle asset. I will parent these together and add motion blur so the transition between the bottle closed and open won't be obvious.

UPDATE

More Layout Set Up and Improvements

WilliamDoorLayout set up in 3D space

This is a test for shot 9 when we see William at the door posing 

Backgrounds for shots with Betty at her chair (shot 2 and 4)

Original layout - quite flat and confusing to look at

Improved layout, still a WIP - adding outlines and adding shadows and gradients add shape and dimension to the assets

KitchenPan layout

WIP - room with foreground assets that will have depth of field applied to them (oven and fridge)

Oven and Fridge removed - the layout will be set up in 3D space too

Door removed - diner interior in background

WilliamTable layout

Assets in their correct places

Added shadows to the wall and table 

Included a background of the street outside. This will be blurred a little too.

WilliamPOVDiner (from his table)

This background will be used for shots where we see William's POV of Betty standing next to him

BettyKitchenExterior

Kitchen plane background and diner wall in the foreground

Diner assets in the foreground with the kitchen still in the background and the diner wall in the mid ground

Adding lights on both sides of the diner wall

MothFlyingBG

This is a slightly warped version and an edit of the William table layout for shot 47. The camera will pan up towards the neon sign in the window.

'Black Dog' Water Ripple Effect

Here is the process I took to do the water ripple effect 

Original Flash file

Creating the ripple assets in Photoshop using the Flash file as reference - for placement and design

Importing the swan animation as an swf. file on its own into After Effects

Setting up the ripples file from Photoshop into After Effects

UPDATE

The week after Kelly asked me to produce the water effect she asked if I could have a go at another effect.

The effect is a kind of TV static effect which is used as a transition between two shots in the film to show the character's emotions through a visual queue besides the facial expression she has.

Subsidiary Project - FGM Awareness Project by Creatie Lens Media student Hannah Biernat

In February I took on some extra work to help a third year Creative Lens Media student at the University with her own animated film with the intention of raising awareness of FGM around the world. I helped Hannah by designing all the assets, including characters, props and layouts as well as illustrating them in Illustrator and Photoshop so she could animate them herself in After Effects. I also helped Hannah by teaching her the basics of After Effects and how to animate in the software. I also set up most of the layouts and character rigs in After Effects so she could animate them easier. I followed all the advice and ideas Hannah wanted for her film, and I gave her advice and pointers to help reduce the amount of work for herself, as she didn't understand how much worm would be needed to produce an animated short in the time she had left to complete it.

I enjoyed doing this work for Hannah as not only was is different to my own project, so I could escape it for a little while every week to take a break from it, and the opportunity to expand and improve my skills in Photoshop and Illustrator and designing characters and layouts, but Hannah was pleasant to work with and professional with her organisation and time management, something I am aiming to improve for myself.

I also had the challenge of producing a wide variety of characters which all had different ethnic minorities. This was a choice my Hannah as she wanted the film to get across the message of FGM being an issue people of all ages and origins can help with.

Here are the layouts I did in Photoshop:

All files had the assets on separate layers and named correctly so Hannah could set them up in 3D space if she wished to do so for a particular shot.

The castle file had the hills in the foreground on separate layers which gave Hannah the opportunity to apply multi planing to the establishing shot

The basketball court required to have 3 different layouts as the storyboard Hannah did showed characters on opposite sides of the court talking to one another.

The classroom layout is a panorama file so a camera pan can be applied

I set up the hospital layout above with a mask for one of the characters who is shown in the bed 

All layouts with clouds in the background were on separate layers so Hannah could animate them and add an extra element to her film

This is a shot where two sets of characters are talking to each other on the phone. All props were done in Illustrator.

I had fun doing the above layout, a POV shot of the Princess on the operation table, as I got to experiment with perspective and warped shapes to give the impression of her panicking and feeling worried

The characters in the above photo frame layout where PNGs taken from the posed characters in Illustrator

This is the background for when the Princess is on the operation table and the camera is looking down on her

Here are the characters I did in Illustrator:

I set up all the characters above in After Effects for Hannah using a much simpler menthol than the one I have employed for my film. Instead of puppet pins, I used the CC Bender tool to rig the arms and legs. Although this doesn't allow proper animation, after I listened to Hannah's explanation of the film and the style she wanted, since it is aimed at children primarily with adult audiences also in mind, I showed Hannah how to use this tool and she was ok with animating it. I showed her how to switch between the different types of bends (Bend, Marilyn, Sharp and Boxer) using hold keyframes. I used the CC Bender tool instead of the CC Bend It tool as it is easier to set up and causes less problems with animating layers using the tool. This is because the tool crops the layer automatically and I didn't want to make Hannah worried about things which could have been sorted from the beginning, this is why I chose CC Bender as it doesn't cause many problems if rigged and used properly.