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Final Animation 

I think noteworthy things here, are the credits. I wanted to have another painted illustration in there to tie it in with the rest of the animation, but I just didn’t have time. Instead, I used a background from one of my rotoscope sequences that I didn’t end up using. This was painted from Taika’s movie ‘boy’.  After using a scrolling ‘movie’ kind of animation for my credits, I thought there was too much space for such little information, and making my fonts larger made the credits look awkward. Instead, I brought the credits in and did something closer to a tv credit.  Overall, I think I’ve learnt more than I had previously known about after-effects. However, it is software that you have to be constantly using to keep your skills. There are sections that I think look good in my animation, but with better planning, the overall animation would’ve been more cohesive. Especially with regards to transitions. I tried to mix mediums in this animation, but doing things by hand takes a team of people and experience. I’ve learnt bits about what makes this work and what doesn’t. The remote animation for instance, looks too jarring against the smoothness of the text on the tv. Either playing this up for comedic reasons or limiting the framerate of the overall composition would make those analogue and digital work better together. 

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TV Transition

This was also a difficult sequence that took me too long to finish. I think the transition between this is great, and dedicating the oscar to the indigenous kids of the world, is unimaginative. I’ve used prophet here, as I didn’t have enough time to do any thorough research into appropriate fonts.

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Animating Final Sequence of the Animation.  Another difficult sequence for me to animate was this last section of the speech. Taika uses a lot of words with strong imagery behind them, but the speed makes it difficult to transition between sentences and words.  Another issue I had was with the rotobrush during my rotoscoped sequences. I wanted to mask out the edges but because I had already used a rotobrush mask, I couldn’t get masks to work. Thinking on it now, it would’ve been easier to do when exporting out of photoshop.  I had also, initially planned to have the dancing rotoscope pause, and transition to being an image in part of a book, like Taika had done in Boy, but time constraints meant I had to keep everything simple.  The last few sentences of the speech are animated too slowly. I think an alternative way of revealing the text would have worked better with the timing.  There are also issues with composition and fonts here. In particular, “We are the Original Story-tellers”. I wanted to separate ‘original’ from the rest of the sentence, but using the colour red probably isn’t the best colour. I think the font here could’ve been more appropriate (maybe animating stroke) but again, this was a time/ planning issue. 

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Animating difficult transitions and sequences

 My process between animating the tv transition and finishing the animation has been a linear process. There were times when I had to stop and reassess what I was doing, but the most difficult part has been animating transitions. I think there’s a disconnect between how I wanted to animate these transitions and my actual skill. I think part of this is the skill gap between what I want to do, and what I can do. I think attending class this semester is a big part of it, as well as my perfectionist tendencies. This sequence in particular, I wanted to animate some strokes, but I’m not very familiar with script fonts, so I picked GT America because I thought it paired well with the stuttery animation. I originally intended for this sequence, and the rest of my animation to involve more images or graphics, but due to time constraints, I left them out. I think we’ve also been taught to avoid using copyrighted images in our work, so I took out the sequence with the teleprompter. 

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Finally animated tv transition before the final segment of speech. 

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For ‘I lost you. Hours ago’ section. One thing I’ve thought about, is how photoshop can sometimes be a good starting point for generating quick animation sequences. Generally, I think after-effects is easier, but for things involving digital drawing, I can see the value in using photoshop. 

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Light switch rotoscope

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for the section, "who want to do art". I think this was by far the biggest time-sink of this whole project. I think something like this would’ve worked better if I had planned the other parts of the animation better. 

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More rotoscoping 

When I heard the speech, I knew I wanted to involve some rotoscoping during the section where Taika dedicates the speech to indigenous kids. This was for the word dance. Again, my time was better served thinking about compositions and transitions elsewhere. 

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Another iteration. Very similar to the previous post, just updated the composition for ‘hours ago’. 

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Another challenge has been thinking about the type and its relation to the motion. How to illustrate a word through movement. I often had ideas of how I’d animate that first sequence, but it wouldn’t match up with the speed that Taika delivers his speech. 

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Mixing Mediums 

Another thought I had at this stage, was to do something involving paper cutouts and transitioning from the initial shot to a wide-angle looking out to the audience. Unfortunately, a lot of these ideas didn’t work out when I tried mixing these different aesthetics together, the animation was harder to follow.

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More camera movement 

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Looking at how I’d initially planned for the camera to pan and transition to the next sequence. 

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Finished rotoscope section 

my goal with this section of the animation was not to trace directly but to draw with a loose hand. 

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Animation Process 

I think one of the major mistakes I’ve made while working on this project, is underestimating how long it’d take me to do rotoscope sections. This time could’ve been better spent thinking about text animation and composition.