Jack Brown 3rd Year Animation

Here is the opening credits to my film.  The original reason for hand animating every letter of the alphabet was for a summer internship for Burgess Studio.  The project over the summer was to animate song titles over a live performance video of James Blake.  It was a great experience will look good on my CV however as for now it has not been released and therefore I cannot put it on here. 

Overall when looking back on this story I am happy that I chose to take the approach that I did.  The experimentations I have done this past year with colour, editing and story writing has taken me through different challenges and effected my outlook on animation and film making as a whole.   

Through the creation of this film I have learn’t that if I am the only person working on it, I need to have a stripped back approach.  By this I mean working primarily on the animation and not trying to create a film that looks completely crisp and layered with backgrounds and background animation.  My strength I believe lies in the ability to animate characters and objects to tell a story.  This means that if I am not focused too much on complicated shots and more on simple ones I will have more time and focus to make those simple shots more powerful than any overly complicated ones. 

The editing I have explored is definitely something that will be useful in the future and the transition from Final Cut to the industry standard which is After Effects means I can now do a variety of different editing techniques in the program that I will most likely encounter in my professional life.  

I am happy with the overall film and the story it tells, I feel as though I have just managed to create a clear narrative with a relatively consistent style throughout.  The animation varies in quality and some colours are inconsistent however again due to the size of this project and the fact that I have done it by myself I had predicted such things may happen so I am not overly surprised or disappointed.  I am slightly disappointed however as I don't feel I have showcased the extent of my animation abilities at any point in the film, most likely due to getting too caught up in the story and the completion of the film.  

As I have spent so long on this I feel a sense of detachment to it now and I find it very hard to judge it’s quality.  Because of this I wouldn’t change anything about the film but instead change the approach before I started it.  I would like to think of a very loosely based story possibly inspired by a piece of music.  I would then think of ways to create visually striking movements with as little detail and unnecessary marks as possible.  I would strive to make every scene visually captivating and aesthetically pleasing and to not spend time animating anything that is merely informative.  I would also try and relax as much as possible and make the animation as loose as possible to make an organic, fluid film.  

All of the above I say I would change if I could go back however I doubt I would have the urge to change any of these things without having done this film first.  

To summarise I am happy with the film and I am glad to have it in my portfolio and to show to potential employers or master degrees such as Royal College of Art.  I have new found faith in my ability as a well rounded practitioner and independent film maker while also realising to play more to my own strengths and create things I want to reflect my style and my skills.  

And here is the separate footage of Leroy in his mouse form timidly accepting the food and then looking up at the man.  This is also an example of being able to take my time with the animation itself without worrying about having enough time to colour each of the frames after.  I am very happy with the movement of this mouse and while it is not complicated movement it is an insight to the smoothness of animation I can accomplish if I can spend more time on it. 

Here is a screen shot from the night railway scene. 

Here is a quick test (JPEG) to see what the windows would look like with a yellow glow behind them.  Along with a slight change in exposure and brightness this shot is beginning to look more ideal.  The pixelated line around the yellow is something I will correct when I come to the final edit for the film. 

To create this effect in a moving context is not an easy thing to do.  While trying to do it in after effects may be possible I have found that it comes out looking messy and there is too many overlaps in footage and colour.  I have researched instead how to export moving image into a JPEG sequence and then edit each JPEG in photoshop.  Doing this was actually not overly complicated and by selecting an Animation Timeline in Photoshop it allowed me to work on each frame in a video timeline instead of hundreds of separate tabs to flick back and forth. Although this technique was very time consuming it has proven to be successful. 

Here I have a screen shot demonstrating some of the editorial effects I am trying to achieve.  

The windows have been cropped in AE using the pen tool to create a custom mask around each window.  This is ideal as before, when using Final Cut I could only crop with hard lines not my own shapes.  

I have then repeated each window, looping the necessary parts over and over in its own composition to make sure they all stay up for the same time and close moments after each other.  I have done each window looping in a separate composition so that my work area in my main edit composition is not overly messy and easy to locate problems. 

The building (Brick Wall 2) has been very simply layered over the edge of ‘Cloud 2′ to create a dimly lit cold atmosphere. 

To paste Leroy over the top of this I have used the pen tool again to cut a circle around him, ensuring no part of him is accidentally cropped out.  I have then used the Keying Extract tool and selected white extract.  This has essentially removed all remaining white from the clip, leaving Leroy on a transparent background.  While technically this has all worked I still feel as though there is not enough depth in this scene which possibly a shadow behind Leroy could fix or my plan to put a yellow glow behind each window.  

To create this scene I need to learn how to use a variety of different edit tools and programs.  After Effects has not been taught to me in any great detail so I will use Lynda and Youtube tutorials to accomplish this.  I will also use photoshop in correlation with AE so that I can edit each frame individually. 

The following is a rough idea of what I need to learn/ do. 

- Layering the windows onto the brick wall.  

- Extracting the white from around Leroy and ensuring there is no  excess noise.

- Ensuring the windows close at the right time, as Leroy walks past. 

- Creating a mask path for Leroy’s walk cycle to follow and syncing it in time   with the speed of his steps.

And finally the backgrounds for the window scene, a choice of two different clouds and two different walls.  The walls are done by repeating a brick pattern done with soft coloured pencil, done in photoshop.  The clouds are also done with 3 different shades of black and grey.