Extended Practice: 30/03/17 Crit Feedback

Today was another crit for our Extended Projects and after my last one, I was very nervous to show my work. I didn't get the best feedback last time but it just meant I had to try harder which I feel like I have done. I was able to show the first 30 second Drink Driving animation as well as the animatic for my Texting and Driving animatic with some clips dropped into it.

This is what I presented for the Drink Driving animation and my feedback went as follows: 

• Hold back on the lens flares a little bit. In some scenes they work and in other it is too much, perhaps reevaluate which sequences need them and tone them down for others? I agree with this in hindsight, so I will adjust accordingly. Something I am happy with when working with After Effects is having all the compositions and files saved in separate folders which means I can always go back in and change them.
• The car crash sound at the end needs to be even more severe. At the moment it sounds still like just glass breaking, but to have more of an impact it needs to be perhaps glass and metal crunching sounds. This way it will be more realistic.
• In the scene where the car is driving forward from the side, there could be more weaving in and out to illustrate that he is still drunk driving.
• Opportunity to have more blurry scenes, especially in the driver's POV shots. Perhaps, the scene could start blurry and then come into view? The same goes for the lorry sign scene.
• Change the lorry sign to an English one if targeting British audiences.

The feedback for the texting and driving animatic:

• When the car stops at the traffic lights, the car might need to pause/stop even longer and his distraction may even be emphasised by a car beeping him from behind? I didn't think of this but it is a very clever idea!
• Change the car style so that it is different from the other animations.
• Who is it aimed at? New drivers? Maybe contact some companies for realistic statistics? 
• Get in touch with ROSPA perhaps?

Overall I have received some really good constructive criticism which I will be happy to apply with the work I have done so far. I am on schedule with work so far but I am worried that if I keep tweaking I will not finish my third animation.

Extended Practice: Weekly Progress 26/03/17

So far, I feel like I am keeping up to date with my work. I am spending most of my time whilst not at uni, animating and creating components for my next scenes, so although I am constantly working, it is a slow process. I do think I am nearing the end of my Drinking and Driving animation, and after talking with Mike, I feel like I could make some more changes and improve the narrative a bit more. Again, I am not as on time as I had thought for this project, but I think I was a but over ambitious thinking that I could get a whole animation done in two weeks. Therefore, I am being lenient, and taking my time so that I am not rushing. I know where I have to be this time next month, so as long as I get there, I don't mind if my schedule says I am a week behind.

This week's to do list

Extended Practice: Adding Some Sound

Here is my animation with some added sound, it is not the final cut by any means but it is to give an idea of how my animation will feel with some audio.

I definitely feel like the sound heightens the quality of the animation a lot, and helps you understand the narrative better. There isn't any dialogue in the adverts because I feel like this could be too forceful and make the animation feel too serious, where people wouldn't be able to focus on the content, only the narrative. But I am happy with just ambient and foley sounds, because it sort of makes you feel like you are in the animation too.

I used the Youtube Audio Library for this animation, as well as the app 'Audacity' to help tweak the pitch of some sounds. When the music switches from regular loud music, to a more muffled, low bass feeling as the scene cuts, (but still the same track), this is because I wanted there to be a switch. Music doesn't always sound the same if you change places, and since the scene changes environments, the music had to as well. I used Audacity to change the reverb, the pitch and the bass and I think it sounds perfectly. It sounds as if the music is still playing inside, but the character is outside walking away from it.

I also used a lot of foley sounds in this animation, but I still think there could be more added. I will see what my peers have to say in the crit next Thursday!

Extended Practice: Progress Tutorial with Mike

Today I showed Mike where I am up to with Extended Practice so far. He gave me some good advice which I can apply further to my work, as well as motivation to continue with what I am doing so far!

Some of the things he mentioned in particular so far were that:

- Some scenes need to be 'desaturated'. Since applying lights to scenes in After Effects, some of the elements are overly bright, therefore I need to tone them down so that they aren't so intense.

- Think about the setting of 'night time'. Not everything needs to be brightly lit. Should I have one light to illuminate the scene? I should go outside and do some primary research on this.

- Don't go overboard with the drunk/shaky scenes. Keep it simple and straight to the point. 

- Do some tweaks, don't change much. Everything is going okay so far.

Extended Practice: Animating Scenes 8 & 9

The next scene I wanted to animate was the one where the camera cuts to the lorry driving right after the audience has been shown the sign! I was so happy with how the car driving in the centre of the screen looked, that I used the same composition for the lorry. I of course had to animate the components separately, but I used that one as a reference since I felt like I had actually succeeded with that scene. For this one, I made the back bit of the truck another .png component so that I could give it some weight and bounce

I of course then added some lights to the truck as this part makes the whole scene come together and look more realistic! 

Now came for animating the hardest part, the crash scene! I knew I wanted it from the eyes of the lorry driver, but I didn't know just how to go about it. The one I showed in the crit did not go down very well (people were very confused), so I knew I had to change it. I began with seeing if I could make the drunk driver drive towards the lorry at some speed and I did actually end up liking it! I however felt like I needed to include some part of the lorry driver in there, for example his hands, to illustrate his attempt at trying to swerve otherwise the scene would be too straight forward.

In a separate composition, I animated the drunk driver trying to control the car but obviously failing. I did this by illustrating him turn the wheel very very quickly as he cannot react quick enough. When I rendered this scene, I drew around the glass window with the pen tool in After Effects which allowed me to then parent it to the car and it's motion path.

This is what it looked like (without the lorry driver interior) and some headlights. I knew that I wanted the headlights to end the whole animated advert (become so bright that the whole screen goes white) and then finish it there, so I was glad this looked good. I felt like this would be perfect to end on, without showing the after effects of the crash, just hinting it to the audience with the sound and obvious collision.

Therefore the last thing for me to do with this animation, was to add the dashboard of the lorry as well as animate his hands. I had to think about this quite a lot, as when I animated the hands swerving to the left only, it didn't look as if he was avoiding a crash, it just looked like he was turning left. Therefore I had to animate two turns and bring both of the hands up almost in a panic and this looked a lot better. I was also able to move the previous renderer scene to the right very quickly to emphasise the swerve and the lorry driver's reaction which makes the crash more effective and real. Overall I am pleased with the scene.

I have been keeping organised so far with crossing off and making notes on my storyboard so that I don't forget anything and if I have any new ideas to perhaps test out then I will jot them down. This has been working well for me thus far.

And this is what I have so far. This is what I will be showing in the next crit, but I might make a few amendments before then, depending on my time schedule. So far I am up to date, but if I receive negative feedback once again, then I might be put behind once more.

Extended Practice: Animating Scenes 6 & 7

After passing by the lorry sign, the character is supposed to show that he cannot see the sign properly, which essentially foreshadows the foreboding crash. For this scene, I reused the composition from previously where the camera is as if it is sitting on the bonnet, but redid the animating on the inside of the car. I re-rigged his upper body and found that animating him taking off his sunglasses was quite a fun and light task. I also reshaped his eyes so that it appears as though he is squinting and struggling to see properly, which is a side effect of drinking! 

I tried to make the camera shake once again and though I do love the result of this, I am worried that it may appear too much when put together with the rest of the scenes. This will be something I test out once I put all of the clips back in the animatic...

Nevertheless back in the storyboard, the camera cuts to a close up of the sign to show the audience what the driver was trying to look at. I didn't want the cut scene to be too boring and static, therefore I animated a light flash across it which appears as though more cars are driving by (perhaps lorries?) which will be emphasised with some sound in post production.

Extended Practice: Animating Scenes 4 & 5

Once the drunk driver is in the car, I wanted to show his face as he sets off driving, in other words his reaction to how he struggles to drive normally. This was alright enough to do, but I still needed to be consistent with showcasing his drunk driving. As you can see in the video above, the car itself, doesn't move as I wanted the camera to be as if it is on the bonnet looking in, but overall it makes the scene too stiff and as if something is 'off'. 

To counteract this, I imported the previous rendered .mov into After Effects in a separate comp and added another camera into the scene, keying the position at different intervals so that it looks less structured and more like an amateur recording the scene. I really like this effect which I have seen being done before in films, but I am not sure if it will be too much when all the scenes are put together. Another thing I will be asking feedback on! 

I then redid this scene with the applied textures that I had redesigned as I had truly felt proud of how this scene looked and didn't want to redo it all completely. I did reanimate the character in the windscreen in a separate composition and then rendered it and use a path to draw around the window which worked great for me beforehand. Now it matches the rest of the animated advert.

In my storyboard the next scene for me was the one where the car is simply driving along the road. I had done tests of this but again, was unhappy with it and wished to change it. I began with a completely new scene, and tried to focus on how land would look when being passed by in a car instead of completely blurring it out like I did last time. I played around with moving the car and not the background (like above), or just moving the background and not the car... but a combination in the end seemed to work best.

In the test above, I tried to let the car 'bounce' for a more realistic looking drive and did it back and forth but as you can see it does not look good at all and needed great improvements.

I therefore decided to try animating the car with the 'bounce' but not back and forth, almost stationary so that it appears as though the car is moving at the same pace as the camera. I instead moved the background but at different speeds just like in real life where the land closest to you, appears to move a lot faster than say, the mountains further back! I also made the wheels spin quite quickly to give the illusion of a lot of speed! 

Then with some added head and rear lights and the placement of the 'lorries are near' sign, I think the scene looks complete. This is my favourite scene that I have made so far, it just looks so put together and well thought about which I love! I am looking forward to seeing what people think of it and if they could give me advice on how to improve it even more.

Extended Practice: Animating Scene 3

After animating the scene where the main character is walking along the street to his car, I decided to have a shot at animating him getting into his car. I knew this would be tricky, but I was prepared, and I knew I would do a much better job than last time which looked a little something like this:

As you can see here, although the walk cycle is good and I wouldn't mind using it, the character's body almost collapses into itself to fit into the car. Hence why I did not want to use this, because it really looks awful and you can tell that he is squished.

Therefore in order to create a better animation, I ended up rigging the legs first like in my previous walk cycle, and animating them before the rest of the body, as I knew that this worked for me. I also made sure that the character was proportionate to the car size, so that I didn't have to 'squish' him again to make him fit. I used a reference video of myself to get the right movements.

This is the animation with the car more refined, with better lighting and shadows. I used the lamp from the other scene with it's glow and fog emitting it to make the composition look detailed as I don't like too much negative space. I also made sure to make the scene appear darker to ensure that the audience knows it is night time. I am happy with the outcome.

To follow on from the driver getting into the car, I wanted him to reverse out which would show that the animation is thought out and everything follows on from each other. I had done this scene before and showed it in the crit, however, I redesigned it a little bit with more detail and focussed lighting.

Here are the scenes so far and in order:

Extended Practice: Animating Scene 2

The next scene following a POV shot of the drunk driver, was him walking along the city, to reiterate his mental state. I began with redoing a walk cycle for my new character, and doing it in DUIK as this was advised to me during the feedback of my crit. I found that animating the legs first, to be way more fulfilling than rigging the whole body first, and for the first time ever, I was happy with the walk. I did think it was a bit bouncy, but it was much easier to control and edit this way, but rigging the legs first.

 To make the walk better, I added pupper pins to the feet as well, and animated them so that there was more of a 'slap' when the foot hits the ground and curve when he bends it to take the next step. I really like this walk cycle, so I began to experiment with a drunk walk which I knew would be quite tricky.

With this walk, I made sure the strides were slower and wider. I wanted him to lean back at times as if off balance as if someone drunk would be. But I didn't want him to be falling over the place too much as people who usually are caught drink driving are people who have not drank tons and tons, but have drank enough yet still think they can drive. If I animated him as if he was extremely intoxicated then it would come across as silly, as he obviously wouldn't be able to even operate a car, let alone drive one. 

I also added a bottle of beer in his arm as suggested in the crit, but also to reiterate to the audience that he has been and still is drinking.

I then added a background to see how the walk would look against a backdrop, along with a camera following the character and a bit of blurriness and I am happy with the progress. It much better than my previous attempts, so I was happy to develop the scene further.

I decided to create a completely new backdrop for this scene which was very fun to make. I think that there is a lot more depth to this scene in comparison to what I presented so I hope that my peers are much happier with it. I also made sure that the colours of the character and the building contrasted each other so that the audience could see exactly where the character is and what he is doing! 

And this is the walk with the new background. I like this a lot but I feel like there could be some blurriness and camera panning to emphasise the drunken feel even more. But even as it is, I would be happy to show to the class.

This is the walk cycle with some blurriness and camera panning. I will again, ask my peers and teachers what they think of the two and make amendments.

Extended Practice: Weekly Progress 12/03/17

This week has been a big turn in events for me, progress wise. I had put all of my tests together, presented them to the class and found that the aesthetic of my animation needed to be altered as well as some ideas. 

Obviously, adding textures was the main thing I changed, as well as changing the character, and re-animating some scenes. Looking at my timetable, I found that I should be mid way through animation one right now, but I don't think I am quite there yet. Despite my schedule implying that I am behind, I am not too stressed as I have quite a bit of time and I am willing to work even longer hours to create better work. 

After this week, I feel motivated from the feedback in the crit, so I think next week I just need to work harder and I will get back on track.

Weekly to do list

Extended Practice: Re-animating

After redesigning most of my designs so that they appeared more 3D with texture, lighting and shadows, it was time for me to reanimate them and think about what I had done previously. I did like some of the scenes set up so I didn't want to change them completely, but I knew that I had to think over a few of them.

I began in order of the storyboard, because this made the most sense to me, and made me feel like I would be able to see where the next scene would begin and be left off so that everything would feel cohesive!

This was the 'before' of my introductory scene and was one of my favourites. However, because I had redone the others to appear more exciting, it meant that I had to change this one too. 

I still kept the concept the same, with the beams from the city sweeping over the skyline, as well as a light pan forward. But this time, I added light layers and subtle glows and shadows to the scene to bring it to life. It looks warm and inviting, and very different to anything I have seen advertised on the television so I am pleased with the result.

The next scene to alter was this one! Though it is very simple, I again liked the design however if I had extended upon it further as I had planned, I would have animated the character walking out of the night club. I did try this but it didn't look right aesthetic wise, and the colours of the character and the building blended in too much. Therefore I decided to choose a different route for this scene, and go straight into introducing the character.

My plan was to do a 'POV' of the character walking through the city which in post production would be blurred and with the sound effects would be able to tell the audience that he is drunk. However when I created the .vpe file and made a perspective in Photoshop to import into After Effects, it ended up looking terrible and far from my vision.

With my textures, it appeared blurry and even though the actual animation was fine, the quality decreased too much for me to consider developing it further.

I therefore decided to animate it straight on like above and I really like how it turned out! You can tell that it is a street and the quality is still great unlike before. I made some .png files of some lamp posts that I had made and added glows to them but with fog on the outside so that the audience can see that it is night and a bit misty outside. With the subtle zoom, it could be taken as a POV shot, but I wanted to enhance this further by actually showing the back of the character's body.

Like so! I also animated him walking which makes the concept even more realistic and I am pleased with how it is starting to come together. I was concerned however at how he doesn't appear drunk, so I again editing the scene further to test this out but I will need feedback to see which one is better.

I made the background a 3D layer and parented all my other components to it (except for the rigged character) and then rotated it along with adding a radial blur. This does give the impression that the character is drunk, but I am not sure if it looks as good as before so I will ask Mike and Annabeth next time I see them.

Extended Practice: Changing the Character Design

After the last crit, I was recommended to add more detail to my existing character design. Looking back, I am not very happy with him at all. He is very plain and although great for rigging in After Effects, not very interesting or good at matching and blending in with my environments. Therefore I decided to completely revamp him (far right image).

I am much more pleased with this result. I added textures to his clothes just like my new scenery, and I elongated his legs which makes him nicer to rig and animate getting in and out of the cars. I also changed the colour of his torso to yellow, as this looks a lot more bolder in comparison with the purple, grey and dark blue backgrounds that I have planned for him. In comparison to my previous design, where he just gets lost. 

Before beginning to animate, I had planned many more characters, but everyone in the crit said that it might be nice to have a reoccurring character, who can tie the series together. I think that I will stick with this because it might add humour to the series, but it will also make it much more recognisable. Perhaps later on in the process I might feel like other characters are needed, in which I will create more.

Extended Pratice: Playing with Textures & Lights

After presenting my animatic and testing so far, the general consensus was that I needed more depth and dimension to my animation. I thought the best way for me to do this, was to play with textures, shadows and lighting so that my animation wouldn't look too flat. Generally graphic design looking motion graphics is flat and there are no shadows really, just contrasting colours, but I want to see if I can push the boundaries a little bit and create a more unique and interesting animation. This way I can create something new and innovative.

And here are some of the scenes! I actually really prefer them to the contrasting flat 2D aesthetic that I made beforehand. I think this will set my animations apart from others on the market and will make people pay attention to them. 

I ended up adding textures and shadows, as well as adding lighting layers in After Effects to create the look I envisioned. I perhaps would not have done this if I had no previous feedback, but it has pushed me to do a better job and improve the overall look of the animations. I am also looking forward to applying this aesthetic to the other two adverts, where there are different setting and time of day, so more colour options for me to experiment with! 

Extended Practice: Show and Tell Feedback

Today we got to show how much animation we had done so far or just a viewing of our animatic. I decided to present the work of one of my animations so far just to see if there was any feedback on what I could change and if it was going well.

Sadly, I didn't get much of a positive response at all. In comparison to everyone else's work, mine is only short at 30 seconds (though there will be three of them) and nobody really liked what I had done so far. This was a little disheartening, but it just meant that I had to try harder at my project. Some of the feedback is as follows:

• Everything needs to look more 3D, it is too flat and doesn't look realistic.
• Character needs to be redesigned as it is too simple. Perhaps spend more time on him and then use him in all three? Would be good for a campaign/branding idea.
• Animation needs to be more obviously 'drunk'. Can barely tell. Maybe record some sounds myself of slurring/falling around?
• More depth and light shadows. 
• Crash sound at the end needs to sound more severe. At the minute, it sounds like a glass bottle breaking.
• More 'wobbly' driving, feels too static at the minute.

Even though I was disheartened that my work wasn't that good so far, I am feeling motivated to get back in and try harder for the next crit. Hopefully I will have a better response then! 

Extended Practice: Animating More Scenes

Since I was pleased with how testing was going so far, meaning I would be able to put some of the best tests into my actual animation, I began with creating more elements and more scenes for me to experiment with in After Effects.

I next began to animate the truck scene where it comes forward into the camera. I wanted to make this scene more stable than the others because this is an example of a driver being in the right and not drink driving. So I needed it to be static in contrast to the other character.

I created the truck layer in Photoshop and made it into a 3D layer in After effects making it come forward into the lens. I liked the pacing of this, but thought it needed something more despite it being an only one or two second long scene.

Therefore I decided to give it some lights and loved the outcome. It makes the animation a lot more realistic and easier to understand! I think if I animate a character behind the wheel, it will look even better.

Since I had animated a car coming toward the camera, I decided to try and animate the drunk driver from the side as another contrasting angle. I made sure to not just animate the car going forward, but to also give it movement up and down to give the illusion that the surface of the road isn't so smooth. I blurred out the background so that it seems as though the car is going really fast, in combination with the wheels spinning extremely quickly. I quite like this scene, though I feel like it might need to be a bit more 'wobbly' to make the drunk driver appear even more drunk. I will ask this at the crit on Thursday! 

Extended Practice: Animating

Today I began animating another scene for the Drink Driving animation. For this scene, my aim was to have the car drive toward the audience as a new perspective, and also for them to see how bad the character's driving is from the alcohol! 

I began with practicing this move in After Effects first, to see if what I had in my mind, was actually possible. I created the car as a .png and made it a 3D layer, this was I could experiment with depth of field as well as zooming in and out. In this first test, I was able to get the car to come towards the camera, but I thought that it wasn't centred enough, and it seems to drive off the bottom of the screen, so this was something I altered.

I also wanted to have my main character driving behind the wheel, with his arms moving rapidly to show that he has not much control over the wheel or his reactions. I did this separately in a new composition, as I felt like I would have more control this way and avoid mistakes, as opposed to animating him when the car is zooming in and out. I didn't need to rig his body this time as it is only such a short scene (2 seconds maximum) and I only animated his hands and head! I added some eye movements in there also for extra detail.

However, because I animated him in a separate composition, I tried and tried to export the scene as an image sequence in .png format so that I didn't have to have a background, I could just copy and paste him into the other scene. However, I wasn't able to get the transparent background to work, so I imported the rendered animation anyway and created a 'mask' around the windscreen and this worked perfectly! 

I then added him to the moving car and I really like the effect! I think it is much more interesting than just sideways on, and it has made me feel like I really am progressing with composition planning. Since this went well, I will be exploring new angles and dynamics further on in this module, so that I am able to create a more exciting animation! 

Then, because the animation is about 'drink driving', I needed to portray this through the driver driving sporadicly. I decided to move the car side to side just like the movement of the steering wheel, but not too much or else it would look too forced. I like the flow of the car and the speed, as it is fast enough to tell that the driver is drunk, but not so fast that you can't see what is happening (for example the animation being all blurry).

Even though I really liked the animation beforehand, I still wanted something extra to make it stand out. From my artbook, I remembered that I had added some lights to the car, a very important part of driver safety, therefore to make the scene look less bare, I decided to incorporate some here as well as some moving clouds. However, now that I have bright lights, I need to remember to include them in ALL of the scenes, or else it won't look like I put much thought into the animation at all.

In the .gif above, I added the lights in Photoshop frame by frame, but as you can see it is rather choppy and they jump around a lot. I decided to try and have a go again in After Effects to see if I could get the lights to look more static and less jumpy.

And here is my final result! I really like the outcome of this scene. It is only 2 or 3 seconds long but it took me all day! I liked adding bits here and there to add on top of the animation, to make it stand out and look more detailed. I hope I can get the rest of the scenes to look as good too! In combination with sound, I think it will be even better!

Extended Practice: First Driving Scene

For my first driving scene, I wanted to create it from the perspective of the drunk driver, so I have decided to use the dashboard and front window as the audience's perspective as well. I made sure the interior of the car matched the outer appearance, colour and detail wise, so that the audience knows that he is inside of the car!

To create the illusion of the character actually driving, I made sure to make the layers 3D and animate the background! I had to play around with the timing so that it wasn't too fast and artificial looking, so it did take me a while to get to grips with getting it to feel right.

I used this video recording I took of my dad driving on the motorway to get a gist of the speed and general movement of the road so that I had something to refer back to. Looking back, I found this to be extremely useful! 

My first attempt looked fine, but it was too slow and just looked like the background was zooming in and not actually a road being driven on. However it gave me an insight into what to change, for example, perhaps adding bumps and motion to the path so that it looks as if the road isn't smooth just like in real life. I also felt like moving the wheel and animating hands would greatly improve the scene.

Therefore this is what I tried to do next. I didn't animate the speed first, I created some hands as .png layers as well as a wheel for the car and animated them in time with the background moving slightly as well. This was difficult in the beginning to understand which was to animate the background in correlation to the hands because they had to be rotated/placed in opposite directions, but I think I worked out how to illustrate the concept. 

This is the same scene but with the wheel rotated as well which greatly improves the feel of the scene moving as a POV shot of the driver. Now that I was happy with the way I understood how to animate the car moving forward, I needed to actually make the audience feel like the driver is drunk, as that is the whole point of the animation! Here, he just appears to be driving straight like normal, whereas there needs to be more bumps and swerves.

Like this! I am much more pleased with this outcome as it feels as though the driver is more sporadic and reckless! This was my aim for the scene, as it is a less obvious angle that straight on. I think I may change the background a little bit in the future, but as of now, I am happy with the path and the way it has turned out! This will be a great scene to cut to when placing it in my animatic.