Maya - Anticipation

The last set task we had to do for 'Another Dimension, Study Task 2' was entitled 'Anticipation'. It involved creating a motion path and making our object move across it.

This was an extremely simple task and I think it could come in useful in the future if I wanted to use Maya to make this move. I would perhaps focus more on the construction of the motion path, making it cleaner and more smooth so that the object in the future will run more nicely on it. 

All we did was create an object, draw a motion path, select the two simultaneously and attach them together.

E4 11) More Experimenting

Since I had a little bit of time left, I went ahead and decided to look at changing the colours of my animation, just to see if I could make it look better or not. 

                               

          

          

I think the one I would lean towards most would definitely be the more Purple one but I would like to get some feedback first before I submit my final animation.

E4 10) Making Adjustments Part 3

The last thing that I adjusted to my animation was experimenting with an intro. My teacher pointed out that I had a good one or two seconds in the beginning of the animation where nothing was happening there is just music, so I thought about what I could do to fill this time slot. I couldn't just get rid of because then my animation would be 8 seconds long, when the required amount was 10, so I came up with an idea.

Since the E4 brief required the logo to be shown not just at the end of the animation, I thought I would involve a transition that includes it! I went into Photoshop and make a .png file, so an image with a clear background (even though it looks white on here) and created an image where there is around 100 E4 logos back to back.

I then imported that into After Effects and created a pink solid that was the same colour and hid the .png file so that it could not be seen. Then using all the skills and techniques that I had learnt from previously making my animal shapes explode, I decided to use the same technique but make the E4 logo explode. I altered the physics so that it shatters towards the camera and not just downwards. This actually turned out really nice but i'm not sure if it goes with my animation since the majority of it is handmade and I am undecided it I will keep it in the final animation or not.

E4 9) Making Adjustments Part 2

Another major thing that I changed was the plasticine ball bouncing from BEHIND the cacti instead of in front of it. Again I didn't really think anything of this since I had animated the setting and the plasticine separately, and them combined them which caused me extra time, but when I did change it, I realised it made a massive difference (to me anyway). 

To do this, I went into PAINT MODE. I wasn't going to do this, I was actually going to edit the animation frame by frame, but I saw a tutorial online illustrating how you can switch modes and I thought this was a genius idea and thought of how much time it would save me to experiment with something else. I then chose the eye dropper tool to pick the exact colour of the cactus and went in with my brush.

This really didn't take me long at all, in fact it was really fascinating seeing how much it made my animation look almost 3D. I made my animation with paper layers, and I think changing this aspect only emphasises that. 

HOWEVER... Painting over the cacti was fine, but my animation doesn't stay in the same camera angle, it zooms in at the end, and I noticed that when my animation zoomed in, the brush strokes that I had painted didn't zoom with it, they became more apparent! This was such a hassle for me, because I really liked the outcome and didn't want to get rid of the paint, but I also didn't want to have to get rid of the zooming in either.

After a while of pondering what to do, I saw that if I went into my layer settings there was a time line for each individual brush stroke! Therefore I was able to shorten the length of it, just until the camera zooms out, and the brush strokes would disappear. This was an absolute life saver for me and I am very happy that I discovered it.

E4 8) Making Adjustments 1

After talking a lot with my teacher, he gave me a lot of advice on things to change in my E4 ident. Things I didn't see when animating it, but I am glad he has told me about them. First was that my animation looked crooked/off centre. I honestly did not see this until he pointed it out, therefore I think in the end, that is why you need to get feedback from other people as they see different things.

This was simple enough for me to fix, as I used the 'corner pin' option in After Effects itself. I tried this a few times, sometimes going too much to the left, but in the end I think I got it as symmetrical as I possibly could. Looking back I can't believe how I didn't notice it in the first place. 

BEFORE alteration

AFTER alteration

He also mentioned that there was a lot of 'open space' around my animation, which I can also see. I didn't mind this aspect however I didn't mind my animation being crooked either, so I thought it was best to zoom it in a little bit, still leaving some space around the edges because I personally really liked the pink around it. This now gives more focus on the cacti and the plasticine, which in hindsight, turned out to be more effective.

I am glad I got the advice he gave to me and didn't hold back. I pushed myself in the beginning of this ident, but obviously not as much as I could have and I think this has taught me a lot.

Discovery Channel 15) Making Adjustments Part 4

Since I now had all my settings edited and changed to my satisfaction, it was time to rethink about the transitions. I was quite excited about this bit, seen as how it is the bit that brings my whole animation together, as well as the sound. Luckily enough I was already happy with the sound that I had previously picked before my adjustments, so it was more a matter of doing the transitions. 

I started with the transition that I had thought of previously. This was to just have the settings drop one by one to reveal the next scene and although I liked this, I felt like it still moved a bit too slow for my animation and was not really that 'slick' looking. In fact, I felt like it only made my ident look boring. Therefore I started to look at other options.

I thought about dropping each of my individual layers to the bottom of the screen one by one but at different times, and I quite liked this idea but was concerned about the delivery of it. I liked how it came out, just not the sky layer/component, so I came up with another idea to have that layer transition in a different way to the others. As shown above, I decided to have it in this test, to spiral out to reveal the next scene, and though I liked this I thought I would do some more tests but just having an effective transition on the sky layer, and the others, all dropping off the screen. 

And then I came across this transition. I'm not really too sure how you would describe this delivery, but to me if it as if the layer splits in half and then reveals the night setting, though in a more stylistic manner. I really liked this transition, a lot more than the spiral one, so I decided to try it out with the other two setting and liked that just as much! I did have to change the sun layer to slide upwards off the screen as opposed to falling down, because to me it didn't seem right to do it the other way.

Discovery Channel 14) Making Adjustments Part 3

For my beach setting, I decided not to edit the lighting just yet, because this was the setting I had to adjust most as there were lots of little bits that needed to be fixed. I started off with the dolphin that appears slightly first, and kept altering the animation so that it rotated naturally, as opposed to just moving horizontally across the screen and back under the water again.

I also decided to create some water droplet layers in Photoshop and add them as components into my After Effects file, so that they could act as the 'splash' for when the dolphins jump back into the water again. This was a very tedious process for me because I didn't want the droplets to be big, in fact very small, so it was hard to manoeuvre them as I could barely see them, so this took quite a while. I changed the colours of them to match the aesthetic of the sequence.

Without lighting adjustments.

With lighting adjustments.

It was then time to adjust the lighting which I think in this particular sequence, looks the most dramatic in terms of change. Though I am very pleased with the outcome. I feel like the animation hasn't lost the essence of the beach, but it looks a lot more darker and serious and supposed to light and fluffy.

I then lastly need to edit the last dolphin which I was advised hangs for too long in the air and moves around a bit too much. I solved this by deleting this layer and starting again. Instead of the dolphin hanging in the air, in fact it as soon as it reaches mid air, this is when the Discovery Channel logo appears, which I also had to lower towards the safety zones. The dolphin instead jumps back into the sea promoting another splash and the screen gently goes black, like so:

Discovery Channel 13) Making Changes Part 2

Next for my adjustments, was to apply the same lighting effects to my desert setting and think about the transition.

It took me a few times to remember how I got the lighting the way I did in the safari at night setting, a disadvantage of working in separate compositions, however I am still glad I chose to do it this way. After I had made alterations, I decided to on this setting, to add MORE depth to the ground layers because I felt like they could look even more 3D than they had previously. I was able to cast shadows on these particular layers and therefore I feel like they look a lot better than the simple Photoshop drop shadow effect.

Without lighting adjustments

With lighting Adjustments

I also love how there is a 'point of light' in the centre of the adjusted animation, which focuses on the two birds, as opposed to previously. This is a benefit of the point lighting option as opposed to being so harsh and direct.

At this point then since I had edited both the first and second setting, it was time to thing about their transition. This was a total spontaneous decision for me because I had quite liked the way the animation looked beforehand, bit to make it that little but more interesting, I thought I was see what transitions I could achieve. I started with a simple drop down transition from the first setting to the second, which I quite liked but thought it was a bit boring, so I had an idea to take each individual layer from the safari setting and make it drop until eventually revealing the second setting, and once that animation is over, do the same to reveal the last setting. Before I did this though, I had to go and edit the beach location and then go into editing transitions! 

Discovery Channel 12) Making Changes Part 1

After coming to terms with my ident in fact needing quite a bit of work, I decided to get to making adjustments according the the factors that I went over with my teacher. I thought it would be best to do this sequence by sequence, i.e a setting at a time. This was purely because i have three separate projects for the each individual locations. I am glad I did this because it made the process of editing much less complex that I could have made it.

First up, I decided to edit the safari desert setting. I thought I would start off with LIGHTING. Though I had tried to make an emphasis with the drop shadows and inner shadows, my teacher felt like it needed a bit more, and so I went ahead and added a separate 'light' layer, which I could edit then in more detail. As soon as I added the layer, half of the screen went BLACK, so I though I would see what I could change with the settings and went for the 'Point' option, which makes the animation look extremely more in depth, but without being too contrasting. I did go in and change several other options within the sub-setting however there were so many that there is not one which I thought individually stood out. 

I then decided to see what I else I could do VISUALLY to make my animation look that bit more 'slick'. I then went ahead and added a glow to the moon, to make it actually look like a real moon. My main focus of my Discovery Channel Ident was to capture the attention of the viewer, and now looking it at it, the moon definitely stands out a lot more than it did previously.

Without light adjustments.

With light adjustments.

I think this by changing a lot of the lighting aspects of the animation, does make it that bit more enticing as opposed to now when I look at the previous one, looking a bit 'flat'.

Now was to edit a few more subjective bits, however I thought that they were necessary. I went ahead and changed the butterfly on the left, so that it flies in front of the moon, as opposed to before when it was behind it. I also made the giraffe move a little but more in time with the second ground layer, just so that it isn't move in such a straight line!

Discovery Channel 11) Demographic Further Look

After some more feedback with my teacher, he made a comment about my Discovery Channel ident perhaps not being the right 'aesthetic' for the channel/branding. Though I may not think that it is on par with how my E4 ident matches it's branding, I don't think this means that it is so unnecessarily far off. I caught this script of their website:

The key words being 'distinctive', 'BOLD' and 'trying new things. I think perhaps my ident could come under 'trying new things', but not necessarily. The reasons for my ident to be the way it is, is for many reasons which I think are valid. For one, when you ask someone what they watch on the Discovery Channel, their common response will be 'Animal Planet', hence why I was drawn towards animals for this brief. In addition to that, the Discovery Channel is supposedly 'family-orientated' therefore I wanted to make something that would peak interest of anyone of any age, as well as reflect the lively bold content which is offers to produce. I did quite a bit of research on setting and colour. I didn't subject myself to just the TV side of the Discovery Channel, as to find out more about their branding and their corporate identity. As corporate identity was a factor that I was interested in. I visited their website, their social media accounts, and also their online channel, anything that was linked to them officially. And what I found was vibrant and exciting material, that I thought could be enhanced via colour. 

It was also important for me to make this ident digitally because of the statistics I found out about its viewers. A QUARTER of them are internet friendly users on a regular basis. Therefore I thought it would be nice to go for digital so emphasise my consideration of the target market.