Assignment 2 - Animation the Post Human DONE and DONE

The life i didn't have while working on this assignment!

Well the animation is complete...however it didn't turn out exactly like i planed. Originally the concept was to develope a 1 to 2 min advertisment for the 'Crack Wash Squad'. However it sort of didn't really turn out that why.

About a week before it was due i had animated and rendered outabout 70% of my scenes but realised that many of them wouldn't really work in a advertisment but fortunately i realised that they would fit perfectly into a short story, news report, or a documentary. So in my great wisdom 7 days before it was due i changed the approach to the documentary with a intention of developing a voice over and sound effects. I have to admit it worked out pretty well considering i had to restrusture the entire animation. Also i have to re-animate and render out new scenes that would further develope and complete the documentary, not to mention it turned out to be about 3:30 in length. So as you would have figured i went nuts on it or, in a nut shell "i had no life".

So basically i started with re-ordering and redrawing my scene sketchs and also my storyboard. As i discovered about a week before my project was due, which i really should have figured before hand, you really can't do a good 3D animation short without a detailed storyboard consisting of ever scene you want to create in 3D. It just takes way to long to model, rig, texture, animate, and render out a new scene if you find that one is missing. So naturally i need to do that...luckly only once!!!

After i finished all the additional scenes and rendered them out i imported them all into Final Cut Pro and started slicing the dicing them all together according to my storyboard. After a few modifications on the story board in the editing process i finally had a rough cut put together with about 4 days to go. Not bad considering i changed the idea only 7 days before it was due! Although i hadn't done the opening sequence or the closing credit, let alone the special effects (not that here are many anyway)

So i quickly got on to that. Using Adobe After Effects i produced a quick opening sequence and the closing credit and lastly putting together the scene that required a small amount of masking and overlaying. Thankfully didn't take long at all so i moved onto the voice over and the sound effects pretty quickly.

The next step was to develope the script and sound effects. You would probably think that one would write the script before the process of the animation would actually take place because its a significant part of the short develope process. But the funny thing is i find that i can often wing things like that. In other words i just have a basic story plot and then (while watching the rough cut) randomly create a voice over. However i did eventually write a script after having to do multiple recording sessions. And yes if you've seen the animation i did do the voice over myself, besides i was winging it, i had to! and the time constrait.

After the voice over was complete i imported it into Final Cut Pro with the rough cut and started the slicing the dicing process all over again. So i cut out the mistakes and bad moments or unnessecary lines and then attached it to the video component of the animation. However this is the part that took me quite some time. Editing the voice over to play in sink with the animation took a lot of editing effort. Eventually i got a result i was happy with but still didn't think it was finished. So i went through the process of a number of rough cut versions.

After i a full day solid in front of the computer i was feeling a little wired and not so great, not to mention mum said i was a bit crankey...which i was inclinded to agree with her...and not to mention a full 10 hours with 1 or 2 short breaks in between will do that to you! Yeah! i know you shouldn't sit in front of a computer screen to all hours or for all hours but i really didn't have much of a choise if i wanted to get it done.

The next task was to create the sound effects for the animation. Again i used Final Cut pro to slice and dice them together. Luckilly i didn't have to record any additional sounds as i found a good site that provited royality free sound effects and had a pretty good library as well. So i addapted and modled those sounds from other machines, applicences in the house (scanners, microwave, etc), to fit the walking motions and movements of the characters. Took some time but i think i did ok.

Finally it was DONE! but not over. I still had to complete the presentation DVD and the documentation booklet plus CD (which turned out to be a DVD because i had so much crap to show my documentation) Took me about a day to complete all that and yes i was finally 99.95% done. Animation, documentation, sounds, presentation, etc all done!

As a last remark on my work. I'm still not happy with some of the animation scenes used and would love to go back and rework them so when i present them in my folio or show reel i'll be happy with the end product.

btw...i'll upload the animation in a couple of days when i get organised but for now...I AN'T DOING ANYTHING! besides sleep...and golf.

enjoy...and comments welcome