Thursday, 2 February 2012

Character Loop Video/Evaluation

I was told to go out and take a photograph of a wall around the college, this photograph would later become the background for my character loop. As my animation consists of a moving rocket, I decided to go and look around for something it could fly over or under. After wondering for a while I soon came across a low balcony, I took a photograph of it thinking that the rocket could on to it or even off it. I was pleased with this photo, but I new I could do better. I then walked over to the gym. The gym itself, has a curved roof. I took a photo' of it thinking the rocket could use the curved shape of the roof as a ramp. This was an "ok" shot but I still preferred the previous one. As I was walking back to class I passed the music block, the wall I was walking passed had a small circular window in the middle of it. I suddenly had an epiphany and thought that my rocket to do a "loop the loop" around the window. I took a photo of it and headed back to class.
The Character loop was previously put into photoshop. So I imported the photograph into Photoshop and place the layer underneath all of the other layers containing frames. I then needed to get rid of the white background on each of the frames so that the new background (the photograph) could be seen. This task was difficult at first, it was hard to get rid of all the white on every frame. When I cycled through the frames to check them, there was always specks of white that I had missed when using the Photoshop eraser tool. It took me some time, but I soon managed to get rid of all the white.
The final stage was to place all the separate layers onto Photoshop's animation timeline. Once I had placed all the layers onto the timeline, I was able to play back the whole animation to see how it looked. I was pleased with the outcome, the whole animation was smooth and there were no anomalies or noticeable faults in the animation during playback.
The very last thing I did was to export it as a "Quicktime" movie file. This process was simple, I went up to "file", "Export" and then "Render". I chose a place to save the file on the desktop. Once the file had been converted and was on the desktop, it was ready to upload to vimeo.
Looking at the video now, I am very pleased. The animation runs smoothly, and I am happy with the colours I have chosen for the rocket's body. One problem I have noticed is that the rocket's wheels do not move in a completely circular motion, this problem has arisen because I did not draw out the paper frames as neatly as I could have done, I should have taken more care over the drawing stages so that certain aspects of my animation would have run smoother. Although I am pleased with my character loop, it looks a bit boring when the rocket is moving in a straight line all the time. When it comes to turning into a "BLU" style animation, I am seriously considering making it fly. By doing this, the finished video will hold the audiences attention for longer and keep them interested.

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