#major development

[theresthesnitch]

Chapter 9

Shout out to @cesays and @theesteemedladydebourgh for helping me sort out this chapter.

July

It had been ten days since James had crawled through her window, and Lily was trying not to send another owl to him too soon. She wasn’t sure what too soon was, but she definitely didn’t want James to think that she was too eager to have him again.

She absolutely was, but who was she to turn down another amazing orgasm? Or ask for one, as the case may be.

Luckily, she didn’t have to figure out what the right time to send another owl to him was since his owl arrived on Wednesday afternoon. She accepted the letter from the bird, giving it a rind of bread as it waited for her to read the letter.

Friday?

One single word, and that was it. He didn’t even sign his name. Lily rolled her eyes. It’s a good thing she wasn’t in this for the romance, because this certainly wouldn’t cut it. Not that it mattered. She wouldn’t expect someone like James Potter to be able to figure out romance anyway, but he certainly didn’t need to in order to make her come—as he had well proved.

Lily pulled out a pen from the drawer by the sink, and wrote back on the same paper.

Yes, but not here.

She sent the owl back with her reply. Let him figure out where they could meet. She was busy considering what she would wear. A few hours later, James’s owl came back, and a third line was added to the short note.

The London Library, 7 pm. Back Stacks.

Lily raised an eyebrow at the note. That was certainly an interesting choice, and perhaps required a different outfit than she had planned.

Read more here on AO3.

Or read from the beginning here

Also! Ignite is going on a temporary hiatus. We'll return in January 2022 for Chapter 10.

[renherh]

In phase sixth, according to the Gantt chart, I need to finish all the animations, including the renders, to be completed by August 3. I finished it without incident, but it was four days later than expected.

Because I thought the compositing should be quick and I just needed to insert them, but because my storyline was a bit complicated and the number of sequence frames was higher than usual, the first half of the animation took me three days to composite. But this didn't affect my progress, later on, I left myself Contingency time, thus, the animation is now fully completed.

[renherh]

Self-learning: In the hand-drawn section, I learned more specifically about dog characters and practiced some poses related to walking, getting down, sitting, and playing. I then practiced the dog walking cycle animation, as I have rarely animated animal themes before, so I researched some information and observed the habits and characteristics of dogs.

In the storyboard section, I learned how to articulate the storyline more clearly, for example, by using more movement when the character is explaining something rather than just standing there talking. Then, when conveying information to the audience in the animation, I could not rely too much on words but could use supporting characters and objects that were connected to the characters to convey the storyline. Finally, about character action, an action can be divided into several stages rather than being shown in one shot, first, the action, the anticipation, and next the action take place, thus, I thought to use this method when I showed the part where the police arrest the driver.

I recreated the subplot and deleted some shots to more clearly convey the spatial coherence, as I had a lot of non-compliance with the 180 degree rule, which I corrected in post for my animation after the video tutorial. 180 degree rule means imagining a straight line connecting the two characters in a dialogue scene between them.

For the animation part, I learned some new skills about After Effects to present the animation better. Firstly, Function Fade, which is a function that allows a transition between two images so that the animation's ending is more natural, rather than switching quickly to the next image, which gives a very stiff feeling.

Then Camera Move, as my animation had a big scene where the driver had to deliver the dog, so I needed to move the frame around, I used the camera function in the software so it could adjust not only the camera movement but also the size of the shot.

About Sequence Layers, this function automatically arranges the frames of the animation sequence. This feature will save me a lot of time.

About new Composition, this is a feature that allows me to consolidate all the images into one in After Effects, as I have a lot of images to insert when animating, but sometimes when reviewing my work I need to go back and find the exact scene image and animation cycle, this feature helps to consolidate them into one, similar to a folder, and then on top of that I can use this "composite" to animate directly, for example by stretching the timeline to clip animation, and It can also find animated scenes quickly.

Finally, I learned a few things about 3D Max, such as building props for scenes and characters, including some object textures. As I am not sure if I will be working in 3D in the future, I wanted to learn some basics to develop my animation in the future.

[renherh]

About the creative decisions of my animation: first of all the plot of my animation is ultimately based on real news events, to strengthen and promote the power of animal protection so that more people do not consume it blindly. Then there are four main characters in my animation, the seller, the two thieves, and the lorry driver. I used grey tops and blue trousers for the seller's clothes and red for the belt. For the "thieves", I decided to make the first thief in brown clothes look like a homeless man with a long beard. The second thief was also drawn in a more rugged style, wearing a sports suit. The aim was to create contrast and set up the plot for the rest of the story.

The driver I initially set out to wear a blue suit and then a somewhat pot-bellied image of an older man, but the driver's clothes duplicated the color of the policeman's clothes and I eventually decided to use a red suit. For the scene, I used a more vintage style for the seller's bedroom, and then the colors were a combination of earthy yellow, red and brown. In the large scene where the driver is arrested, I drew this scene in a somewhat rustic style as the driver needs to be transported for several days and the route is generally remote, so I drew some bends and grass. The colors are in yellow tones.

The dogs’ style is Chibi, I have made their heads bigger than their bodies so that they can be more adorable. For the colors, I chose white, yellow, and grey, and because the background of my scene is dark, I used some bright colors to set off the dogs. The opening scene of the animation was designed to reflect the theme, with a dog and a box, then the dog lifts the box with its nose, and eventually, the name of the animation appears. For the animation sounds, I added a piece of music for the first half of the animation and then mixed in some sounds of furniture moving and a thief appearing. For the second half of the animation, I added some ambient sounds of the city, as I didn't think a voiceover with music would go well with this part of the delivery, so I just added some car sounds and computer mouse movement sounds.

For the news, my initial idea was to add some live news sounds and then edit them, but they were too noisy and I decided to record them myself and tune them with a tuner. Regarding the main character putting the dog in the box for delivery, my original idea for this part was that the seller touched the dog and puts it in the box. But to make it clearer to the audience that the seller is a bad guy, I decided that the seller picked up the dog and throw it into the box, and I added the sound of the dog expressing some distress in this part.

[renherh]

This fifth stage, according to the Gantt Chart plan I need to finish all the animations by August 3rd, this is the animation I have half composited, I haven't added the sound yet but it is ready to watch, this time the rendering took longer than I expected, probably because the previous plot was a bit complicated so the time was tight. There is still one important plot left in the story to finish.

For the reporter broadcast part, I initially wanted to get a friend of mine, but for now, I'm going to dub it myself and then use the sound modifier software to adjust it to finish it.

[renherh]

This fourth stage. My Gantt chart project was to have all the sequence frames hand drawn by August 1st and I finished it without a hitch. This part of the schedule was a little tight, as my animation sounds also needed to be completed within this time frame.

There were two important points for my story, the first being the 'thief stealing the dog' part and the other being the 'thief' stopping the car. So by the time I finished the first 'point', I was more than halfway through my schedule and I sped up the second part of the story so that it wouldn't affect my progress.

[renherh]

This is a picture I drew about dog news. This picture is my reference based on the live news that was released and I drew it.

The first picture is the scene of the truck delivering the box, which I saw from the video at the time and it impressed me so much that I drew the episode.

The second is a news image of my design. This image was to be placed on the news in the animation, so I thought there should be a poster-like image to show the beginning.

For this image, I combined a screenshot of the trade order with a screenshot of the dog being injured and bolded the font.

[renherh]

This is the beginning of my animation. For this part, I drew a dog and a gift box to match the theme. As the name of the animation is about a box, I put a gift box in the beginning, and then the dog lifts it with his nose to show rescue. I decided to use a yellow background as the colors in the later parts of the animation are also darker tones, like earthy yellows and brown.

The dog I decided to show in white, highlights the theme. For the font, I chose a handwriting-like style, as some of my animated scenes show some brush strokes, so I thought a handwritten font would be more appropriate.