Creation of my 2D Animation
The task we were given was to plan out and produce a 10 to 30 second animation with sound, using software such as Flash. In order to create my animation I had to research into the many different styles of animation that influenced how animation is created nowadays. It benefited me as it enabled me to use these skills I had learnt about during the production stages of my animation. Live-Action Footage Once I had planned everything out using sketches and storyboards, I had to create the film which would serve as the background for my animation. As I was playing one of the characters, I filmed some of the shots, while my friend James filmed the others. We ended up filming in three different locations; my friend’s house, Oxleys Woods and Severndroog Castle. I then took the footage and edited it together using iMovie. I added some effects so that the film would fit the atmosphere of the story more, including ‘Black and White’ and ‘Vignette’ - which adds a fading black outline around the edge of the screen. Once the live-action part was exported I then used another program to convert it from a .mov file to a .flv file. This was necessary as only a .flv file would be compatible with Adobe Flash. I opened up a new project in Flash, selecting the HTML5 Canvas. I made sure that the frame rate was set to 25 frames per second, as this is the standard frame rate for the UK. I then imported the film to my timeline on a separate layer.
Scene 1 For this scene I needed to animate Elizabeth reaching out her hand and peering from behind the log where she was buried. I used two separate layers; one for the outline of the character and one for the colour. I started by animating her hand, which was mostly trial and error in order to create something that looked realistic. I selected the paintbrush and resized it so that I could create fine lines. I then chose the first frame in the animation and inserted a key frame. I drew the fingertips where they would first be seen if they were to slide over the log from behind. Then I copied and pasted the contents of that key frame onto the next one along, and edited from there. As the illusion of motion would be created by small changes in a series of images, I erased one half of the fingertips, moved them down and added a tiny bit of nail. I then continued this process of copying and pasting frames, changing them a little bit each time, and ended up with a continuous series of images that flowed as an animation. After this I went back and added colour on a separate layer underneath the first. This bit was a lot less time consuming, as it did not need nearly the same amount of focus. Next I needed to animate Elizabeth’s body. As the background was comprised of live footage, I couldn't manipulate it at all. I had to animate her upper body coming from behind the log, which would have been simple had I used still images - since I would’ve been able to insert the log part of the image in front of her and used a motion tween to move her up. Instead I had to copy and paste the image of Elizabeth to a lot of different frames, move it up slightly each time, and then go back to every single frame and erase the part that would be hidden by the log.
Scene 2 For this scene I took a picture of a tree with a face from the internet and cropped it in Gimp so that it just had the image of the face. I inserted it onto a transparent background and then smudged out the edges so that it would blend with the bark of the tree once I put it in front of my live-footage background. I inserted the picture onto it’s own layer in the timeline and converted it to a ‘Movie Clip’ symbol so that I could add some filters. This included 'Colour’ - in which I decreased the saturation until the image was black and white, and ‘Blur’. But more importantly it enabled me to create a motion tween which allowed me to fade the image in (by key framing the Alpha option), so keeping with the hallucination theme. Another thing that was useful about the motion tween was that I could create a motion path for the image. Since the background was very shaky and the tree moved around, it would look odd if the tree face didn’t stay in one place. So I included a motion path that tried to follow the position of the tree.
Scene 3 The goat boy scene was quite a pain to create as the camera was very shaky and this meant that I had to readjust the position of the character in almost every frame. To simplify things I used a combination of motion tweens and frame by frame animation. For the times when the camera was panning up/down the castle and when the head falls off, I created a separate symbol version of the goat boy. This allowed me to create a path for him to follow which was much more efficient than having to click on every single frame and key frame it. For when the goat boy starts to point at Devlin I used frame by frame animation to draw the different positions of his hand.
Scene 4 I used key framing to animate the vine catching onto Devlin’s foot. It was complicated at first due to the way the camera moves down the steps, however I completed the shot in the end. As the vine wrapped around his foot I also had to be aware of Devlin’s coat masking it, and therefore had to erase some parts of the vine at some points where his coat was in front. As the foot broke the vine I had to make the vine stretch itself, as this is a more accurate portrayal of what would happen in real-life. So to do this I used the free transform tool to select the points in the lines I drew, which bought up a box I could use to manipulate the shape of the object.
Scene 5 For this scene I wanted to keep it simple as the subject was very far away in the shot. Therefore it wouldn’t be worth going into so much detail as the viewer just wouldn’t see it. I copied and pasted the upper body of Elizabeth from the first scene and added some extra layers to create the rest of the body. I converted it to a symbol so that I could add a motion tween and then added two key frames for the position of the object. One was at one side of the screen and the other was in the middle, as the character had to look like she was standing in one place as the background was panning.
Scene 6 Scene 6 was also created using key framing, however I did it in reverse as I thought it would make everything much easier. Rather than drawing and adding a little bit to each new frame, I created the finished drawing of the hands and then worked backwards, copying and pasting but then erasing small parts. By doing this I knew exactly where all of the hands would end up. After that point though I animated normally again as I could just follow the way Devlin moved to get the position of the hands right.