#fmp3

Since I had some extra time left with my film, I decided to go back and add a little of extra animation to a couple of shots that bothered me. At some point in my film, all 3 characters run off screen, and to represent their speed, I put some dashes, but the effect didn't work as well as I though it would, and even when I showed it to others they though it looked like the character just magically vanished. So I decided to add an effect where when the characters run off, they leave a puff of smoke. It is a such a simple little bit of animation, but it really add the effect that the character ran off so quickly that they left dust trail (or something along those lines)

I decided to go back to one of the earliest shot in the film, where there is a panning shot, and I edited it a little bit so that the monuments in the background have a bit more of parallaxing effect so that they slightly move when the camera moves, so it creates a bit more depths. Its a slight change, but I think the little movement does create an effect of distance, it makes the world feel that little bit bigger. I had to push the sky quite far back to the monuments could be moved, but I didn’t want to move them to much, or not the sky doesn’t move enough. It shouldn’t move really that much, but it being completely still made it feel flat.

I decided to go back to my first short of my film, and play around with the original file on Photoshop to clean up a bit the back Monuments. Since I though that adding paralaxing would add more depth to the shot, I needed to clean up the images a bit, because or not to could probably see a bit through the gaps of the image which could ruin the illusion. I am wanting to add a little bit more then that though, I am considering adding a tumbleweed blowing by to make the shot feel more lively.

Here’s is a shot I though could really do with a blur. Since the main focus of the shot is suppose to be the trap door, I thought the the stuff in the foreground (the desk and Sherriff Ian McClint) were to distracting. I really wanted to create a shot for my film where I could zoom in and parallax past some item in the foreground, but the problem can sometimes be that there is to much focus on the items in the foreground. So the best solution is to add some blur, which I think compared to the original version of the shot looks much much better. I believe it almost gives of a camera effect where you can put more focus into the background by blurring everything around it, so I guess it has closer realistic feel to it.

I though now that I looking back through my film after being done with animating, I could add some extra effects pretty up a little my film. I though one of the best ones to use would be the blur effect/ By the looks of this video its a lot more simpler then I though it would be to do something like this. But by adding some blur to some shots could hopefully help emphasize where I want the audience to look without having whatever is in the foreground or background be to distracting.

This is another animation piece I did where I decided to add more shading to it to give it more depth. I originally just added some coloure and left it to move on to other pieces to coloure in, but I was never really satisfied with it, so with some extra time I looked back on it an added some shadows to the bottom of the gun. Even though i thought the shadows made it look much better, it still felt a bit “weak”, it felt like there was no weight to the gun, that it didn’t feel solid enough. So I made the lines of each frame much thicker, which I think fixes the issue for the most part. As well, the thicker lines give a more cartoony feel to it, and give off more the sensation that we are closer to the item.  Sadly I was going to make a video comparing the two versions I made, the video I had of the original animation sadly got corrupted some how, so all I have are screen shots.

This is a small example of one of the small changes I wouldn’t have been able to make unless I revisited my animations myself, because I would have forgotten about it. Its a very small change, but I believe adding a little extra shade to the door makes it blend in more with background. I don’t want it to blend to much because it is a key focus of the shot, but I wanted it to blend in format so that it felt natural to the scene, it didn’t feel like it was added on later on as part of the animation

I finished animating all of my shots for my film ahead of schedule, so I decided to tell mark that I no longer needed the volunteers from the other years to help me out because I have plenty of time to do all the colouring in myself. I could still the assistance because I never like colouring in, but I though this would be a great learning curve for me, as well if I had other people to do it for me I would have to directed them how I want it, so its much easier for me just to do myself at this point. Also this gives me the opportunity look back at my film and see if I can fix any issues. Mark has already shown me the best way to coloure in, so I should be fine, and I hope but the end of July or the beginning of August to be done.