Production - Composition

Production - Composition

Composition began several days behind due to a delay in animation, however from the beginning I aimed to only a small amount of composition done in After Effects as much of it was done in ToonBoom at this point. However I did decide to bring in the project files, rendering them out as separate image sequences and added several effects on to both the characters and the background. One of the consistent effects I used most frequently, was the Matte and Highlight effect to give the characters a more rounded appearance.

Another consistent effect I employed was the use of the shadows, using the fill effect and messing around with the opacity to get a desired shadow. I was able to also play around with positioning by  making the layer a 3D shape and tweaking the shape on three different planes.

Production - Easter Holidays

Production - Easter

Over the course of the two weeks for the Easter Holidays, my productivity was boosted to a level I had seen only in the second and third week of production. From the Monday onward, I broke the animation into two separated parts, the first week would be dedicated to the second part of my film where I hoped to get at least 30-seconds of animation done while the later week would see me trying to finish the start and any other difficult scenes. The first week produced over 40-seconds of animation, reaching my set quota by Wednesday and the additional animation was finished bt the Saturday. Production slowed into the next week as I began to crash from working long hours throughout the previous week and thought I could achieve the same level of production into the second week. By Thursday evening of that week, I had little over 20-seconds done, no where near what I thought I would be. Pacing myself through the Friday and onto the weekend, I managed to meet the quota for that week, however I was frustrated that I would have to then extend my animation time and eat into the time I had set aside for composition. I surprisingly faced very little problems in the way of technical difficulties, only suffering through a rather annoying Toonboom crash that wiped nearly 40 minutes of work after the auto-save seemed to glitch out. My main problem was the motivation to finish my workload for the day as I often found myself doing other stuff other than the project.

(Toonboom; A finalized lip-sync that I colour tested.)

Production - Week 4

Production Week 4

This week was short on production as the class had an impending trip from the Thursday through to the weekend. However I did try to get as much work done as I could in the few day at the start of the week. To try and make up for the days I knew I would be losing, I stuck to simpler scenes in the animation that I knew I could get done in under an hour. However, I underestimated the amount of animation needed in some scenes and soon found myself bogged down in the more complex ones. I managed about 8 seconds of animation this week, far less then I had originally hoped for. However, I realized for the time I had, that amount of work was not bad, though I could have managed my time better for a more effective outcome. When I returned on the Saturday night, I was hoping to do some work the following day, however I barely managed to put three scenes together on Sunday. I plan to catch up on the work that is needed to be done over the Easter break.

Letterhead - Cocnept and Final Design

Letterhead - Professional Practice

Concept

Final

The letterhead changed design as my logo did. The original version was loud and did not seem to flow well in terms of layout. The updated version was designed to be simpler and easier to read, and to also not obstruct the letter itself.

Final Business Card

Finalised Design - Business Card

Front

The finalised front was tweeked a little bit in terms of colour, but overall remains the same. The background was toned to a paler teal shade while the character was given the red outline in order to contrast between the two.

Back

As with the front, the back of the business card stayed relatively the same in terms of the layout. However the back was changed to a light shade of the red/coral to allow the text to blend more.

Final Logo Design

Finalised Design - Logo

The final logo design was inspired by japanese ink drawings, in that the text is a quick handwritten sigitaure written in ink. The character outline came from the business card and was given a darker outline to stand out more.

Additional Logo - Letterhead

The text based logo was designed for the letterhead as the original logo lost much of it's detail when it was shrunk down to fit to the letter. Instead of the character outline, the initials replace the drawing and the services offered are taken from the business card and placed at the bottom.

Production Week 3

Production Week 3

This week was spent getting as much of the line work as I could as I would be away next weekend for the Dingle Animation Festival. It proved to be my most productive week so far as I managed to meet my 20-second quota for this week and also get some of the work I was behind on from the previous week. I quickly set into a routine at the beginning of the week in terms of the workload, pacing myself in order to get the 4-seconds of animation needed for the day and whatever time was left over in the day was used to tackle the work from the previous weeks. I also took making sure that the files from the animation were organised properly and titled like we were shown some weeks ago to keep better track of them. On top of that I have also began adding the scenes that are near completed to the lock-in animatic so as I can see how the animation is playing out.