#posteranimation

Poster Animation: 

*Spongebob narrator’s voice: “2000 years later”

This is my final Poster Animation, The Lone Horse. 

The intro was made in Cinema 4D, a 3D software, this was one of the few pieces of my animation that hadn't been lost with the rest of my data. In the rush to get my animation done for the assessment, I didn't have time to recreate keys parts of the animation that were going to be included. The run cycle of the horse is really well done and is distorted from the original poster as that was out of proportion and looked very strange when animated (you can revisit the original walk cycle of the horse with out the change in proportions on my blog. The link to view it is here). That version of the animation had extra scenes that showed camera pans from the poster to a computer screen and an opening shot onto the poster, this gave a lot of indication to the audience of location and narrative.

I don't like the final product for this project, I couldn't show the horse jumping onto the computer screen and running into the desert and show the transition between those scenes, because the shots and footage from that was lost permanently (despite our best efforts at recovery). Had I had more time and the equipment, I would have reshot the video files I intended to use, but it just wasn't possible within the time before assessment. 

I encountered a lot of issues with this project. When starting, I had the plan to animation the horse to run on a looped cycle of it galloping, so I could edit it into the scenery I had drawn of the desert, with each layer moving at a separate speed creating the illusion of depth. The horse would come to life after a camera pan onto the poster on a desk (laid out to look like an artist's work space), it would buck upwards, knocking the cowboy off before running out of shot. The camera would then pan from the desk to the computer above, where it would stop and the horse would jump onto the screen and into the desert area. Afterward I planned to either have everything around the horse dissolve back into the poster, or to have in run back in, as if in reverse.

To begin making this, I spliced the image of the horse into body parts to animate separately in Flash. This would have probably be easiest done with the bone tool featured in Flash CS6, however I only have access to Flash CC, which does not have that useful tool. So I began experimenting and researching online for tutorials and guides for this purpose.

Eventually, I discovered I could turn the main body of the horse into a symbol, then go into editing of that symbol and add the body part attached to it as another symbol, and again to add the last body parts. This would form a hierarchy, each with their own sets of timelines:

Main body

1. Front left thigh

   - Front left calf

2. Front right thigh

   - Front right calf

3. Neck

   - Head

4. Back left thigh

   - Back left calf

5. Back right thigh

   - Back right calf

6. Tail

Although this method seemed simple and like the perfect solution, animating it became a pain as I didn't (and still don't) understand how the multiple layers of time lines within time lines work together. It got too complex very quickly and I felt in over my head. I would like to learn to understand this, however it would need to be with a simpler object first and I would probably need guidance.

The alternate option I had was mastering After Effects, however at this point I had just days until hand-in and it wasn't a reliable solution, nor would I get it done in time. Others in the group had used After Effects without being taught, but they'd used it before. After seeing Ros in the tutorial on the last day of term, we talked about how long it would take me to finish and I was sure if I came in to the library over my holiday I could get it done.