AubriAnimation

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A selection of screenshots illustrating the change in colour scheme from outside to inside, the desaturated colours capture the tone of the animation exactly the way that I wanted it to.

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Plot alterations

As animating the entire book would be an impossible task in the time frame given I have decided to merge scenes together and cut down on the descriptive exploration scenes.

My animation starts at the chapter in the book where Dyer and Danforth take flight over the mountains in order to discover what lies beyond them. Originally I had planned to animate the scene featuring the giant blind penguins but ended up replacing them by jumping straight to the shoggoth encounter. By doing this I have managed to fit the key scenes into my animation in an achievable time scale  Ending the animation on the shoggoth creature encounter allowed me to wrap up the scene and leave the characters fate open ended to the viewer. (unless they have prior knowledge of the book and know what happens).

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Final Animation

Sound: Using my own recorded sounds as well as ones downloaded from freesound.org I have tried to create a feeling of isolation and unease in my animation, the sound of howling winds and echoing drips of water are used to reinforce the idea that the structure is deserted. This use of sound coupled with the imagery of the arctic sled should communicate to the viewer that something is not right. With the buildup to the corpse reveal shot I wanted the ambient sound to get progressively more intense without using the cliche of ending on a full volume shrieking sound, instead I have opted to cut to silence, by doing this the cracking of the floor in the next scene is intensified. 

Visuals: Im very happy with how the animation turned out visually, as it kept the same aesthetic that I had in my head whilst visualising the scenes. On reflection the only thing that bothers me slightly is that (as i worked on each scene of the animation chronologically ) the quality of the animating and the imagery increases as the video plays. I might plan on using this kind of visual imagery and animation next year, learning more techniques over the summer.

*Some sounds need tweaking as they seem to be cutting in and out for no reason, ill re post when complete

*Sound now fixed

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Imported my animation into Adobe Premiere to add the sound files. The sound effects I've used are a mixture of my own recorded sounds for footsteps and snow mixed with various sounds downloaded from freesound.org. In order to make certain sounds more realistic I've layered similar noises on top of each other, each sound with a little more bass in order to add some depth.

The basic controls of Premiere are very easy to get to grips with, so far i know how to use the pen tool to fade sound in and out; cutting down the length of sounds is just a matter of dragging the ends of the files inwards. In the future I'll look into the more interesting features of the program but for now i know all I need to in order to make some convincing sounds for my animation.

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Paper Cinema musician Christopher Reed visited Illustration today to help with everyone's sound design for their animations. Me and a couple of friends from the course took out a vocoder for the day to record sound effects. We started with a couple of footstep recordings on different surfaces; to simulate the sound of snow I piled gravel into a mound and pressed down on it, giving it a great crunching noise.

For indoor footsteps we found a large empty room and recorded stamping, the echo gave it the perfect sound for the abandoned building  in my animation.

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By importing a flashlights beam and adding layer effects to it on photoshop i think ive created a rather convincing flashlight effect, another pro of using this method is that any white in the image is immediately amplified, making the creatures eyes appear to glow in the dark. 

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a recent animation test made using various effects. With the falling animation i wanted to get the notion of nausea across, conveying that the character had received concussion from his fall. The first person perspective really adds to the sense of danger by putting the viewer in the characters place, forcing them to see the events as he sees them.

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using the depth of field tool to switch focus between characters has given the animation a more cinematic feel;being quite a noticeable effect i'll try to use it sparingly during the rest of my animation.

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this test was used to figure out a way to seamlessly join the title with the intro animation, i may try variations of this scene to see what method works best. 

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For this reveal scene i layered two images to create a cover for the corpse, using the pin tool to time the movement to match that of the hands. I decided to lay off the depth of field tool as I wanted both characters to be in focus, asking around to other students they also decided this was the better idea.

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Here are a few screenshots just to show what processes and techniques I use when animating in after effects. The first shot is of my full composition, compiled of various pre-comps that have been animated beforehand; from this screen i can jump into any one of my pre-comps and change timings and broken animations etc.

The second screen is a snapshot of how i compose each scene, after converting my photoshop layers into 3D I place each component to create a 3D environment, by doing this it is easier to direct camera movements later as the environment has been fully realised, this also helps with certain camera features such as depth of field.

The last shot is from a pre-comp in which i have used the puppet pin tool to simulate canvas being dragged. To do this i placed pins in key areas of movement and added others to anchor the image and stop it from moving, then using the puppet starch tool i covered areas in order to ensure they would stay stationary during the animation.

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A collection of scenes in rough order from my final animation, most need tweaking and changes to camera angles but so far so good. 

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another photoshop screenshot for the animation, i plan to use the puppet tool to make the moments appear more natural in the final animation.

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Heres a screenshot of an animation composition before i import it into after effects. Each section is created on a separate layer so that i can create depth in the final composition. I wanted to give the buildings a alien look so i decided to have them all tilted and added various circuit board like windows.

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First final character for at the mountains of madness, i decided to use a simple colour pallet in order to not over complicate the animation for myself . The exterior shots will feature lots of browns and blues to contrast the green hues of the interior shots. I created this image in separate layers, foreground, middle and background. This will make it easier to set up a scene in after effects and keep each layer in proportion. As the scarf is a separate layer i plan on utilising the puppet pin tool to simulate wind blowing against the scarf .

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Heres a scan of my linework before adding in colours using photoshop, by multiplying the ink layer I am able to colour underneath it without affecting the original image. By using this technique i am able to make alterations to the colour design at a later point if i feel they need changing.

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Feedback from my critique today, didn't end up going too badly, the tutors seemed to like where it was going. A key point was to keep the pacing of the animated storyboard in the final animation. I definitely plan on doing this as the pace is what builds the tension and creates atmosphere best. I kind of wish there were more suggestions from the tutors and other students on ways i could improve the animation but oh well.