Future Improvement of the project

Improvements within the final project outcome

There are several elements which can definitely improve the outcome of final project:

• Painting quality - there are some paintings which lacked few detail parts and didn't look exceptional as I thought it would come out at the end of the painting. Despite the fact that the qualities of some paintings may have dropped due to lack of time since the amount of time I had to learn and provide animation from After Effects took some tolls and may have rushed some of the painting. 

• Inexperience with software - I have used Photoshop for a long period of time and understand the use of hotkeys and specific features but on the other hand, After Effects was a new, challenging software which I have not used a lot, definitely not as much as Photoshop. This required a lot of time to be spend on basic education of how to use After Effects and how to use this software efficiently to produce something which I would like at the end of the project. The time consumption of this software made me vulnerable in spending more time in the Photoshop to produce better quality of painting (if I knew how to use AE, then I could have produced painting with outstanding quality and maybe better animations, adding several effects and features to make it beautiful).

These were major problems I had during the process of creating the final animation but now I know what the problems were and there are still hope for me to produce similar line of work but better understanding of the work I'm doing and hopefully, produce better animation and paintings in the future.

Showcase materials

1. Animation

The Journey

2. Posters & Business card

 Poster

Business Card (Front & Back)

Printed Version

Final Animation!

Animation/Final Project has been finished!

Animation - The Journey

After sorting out the problems with glitches by playing the video again, see which parts had glitches (around 3 or 4 due to the file sizes being to big previously before merging them together to make it into a one big piece) then solve this problem one by one then re-merge them again. Tedious procedure but it has been cleared. One of the personal objective of mine was to depict a story from a moving concept painting (inspired by several artists but one of them was Simon Stalenhag).

Individual Animation (before merging all these videos into one animation) can be found in my vimeo page: https://vimeo.com/user39199142 to view each animations.

The background music is from:

Royalty Free Music - "Turn the Page" - Peaceful and Calm by Finley BurchIt was a royalty free music which I was able to use it without any problem and the theme and melody of this song perfectly matched with the genre of my animation, which was extra bonus feature! Sincere gratitude for this musician who was able to make my animation even better just by his piano music. 

Link: 
1 (Animation): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1RQKsCbQEA

2 (Background Music): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_a83IXmduM

3 (Vimeo page): https://vimeo.com/user39199142

Re-checking the glitches within the Animation

Glitches!

During the progress and summarizing up the the video, there were some glitches which happened unexpectedly. If I analyse this problem, it must have happened during rendering process in after effects when compiling all the videos in one animation. The other possibility is that when I haven't knew more efficient way to render the video, the size was rather huge and took ridiculous amount of time (with random glitches as well)

Glitches during the second animation,

No glitch (which this should happen)

These glitches do not look good at all especially when its going to be played during the exhibition and need to solve this problem as soon as possible.

Re-checking the poster

Little tweak to the poster design

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Few minor changes in the poster and putting up name and place of the exhibition (where its going to be held and for how long). The design of this poster is rather peculiar but it has its unique style. Personally, I like the design and especially the small light coming down from the sky.

Something I've forgot, business card?

Made the design for the poster but forgot about the business card. It was little bit ridiculous how I could have forgotten this part but the design of the business card seems to be rather simple. The use of introduction animation/concept seems to work out nicely for the use of both black colour/dark themed business card and harmonies well with each other.

Front cover design

Back Cover design

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From these two back cover designs, it was a matter of colour choice and it seems pure black background works much better compare to the grey-ish colour. In the end, it was these two which made it and

Working on Poster!

Poster for the showcase!

Thumbnail for the poster

Semi-finished version of the poster

Superviser Meeting no.10

Meeting with Supervisor - David Lyons

• Dissertation look-through
• Final Poster design
• Completed animation - background music has been found and will be implanted  (project)
• Will receive feedback and general review from David and after that, quick look-through of the writing will be necessary to check grammars etc.
• Binding will be done around 3 days before hand in and will be submitted.

Working an Animation no.7

Working on After Effects. Project Outro

Similar scenario is happening in outro section (just like the introduction) but this time, the smoke in the background will be dissolved by using Turbulent Displace and adjust them to make it go very unstable. Also, there will be another smoke effect to cover the 'The Journey' text and finalize the animation.

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Working an Animation no.6

Working on After Effects. Project Intro

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Introduction is the beginning of the animation which suggests the meaning of the contents inside. The mysterious smokey texture in the background (of course these smokes will be moving since the theme and the process of this entire animation progress has been in that way and I want to continue like this) and the use of smoke which conveys the word 'The Journey' helped out significantly to increase the appeal of the animation.

Working an Animation no.5

Working on After Effects. Project no.5

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Same procedures as any other projects, organising the layers, putting up the animation camera, checking the animation time and the movement of each layers by using animation camera and individual layer movement as well to make it feel like its moving then rechecking if there are any anomalies within these processes.

After checking everything is in the order, time for some rendering.

Working an Animation no.4

Working on After Effects. Project no.4

Same procedure as before, arranging layers in different positions to provide effectiveness of three dimensional perception.

In the bottom left camera section, you can see how the camera is going to move according to the position of the camera which I have already set on animation camera.

Each time zone and the movement of camera will effect other aspects of the painting.

Adding smoke effect (even though the amount of smoke usage is barely noticeable, it is still effective and improve the visual image of the animation.)

Checking the movement of the animation camera (this time, compare to no.2 and no.3, the camera will start from left side. It really depends on the situation of the character) and time to render it out.

Working an Animation no.3

Working on After Effects. Project no.3

First of all, these three videos (no.1, no.2, no.3) has already been made in March but there were several problems and without any characters. Going through this process was rather tedious but its a joyful moment when you spectate your own painting moving in which ever direction you wanted it to move + using different effects to make it significantly better than still image.

Moving each layers in different scales and positions - better perspective view for audiences.

Same process as before.

Erasing the river part in the middle section (using around 40% opacity rate eraser) to give the river stream effect later on.

Rendering time.

Working an Animation no.2

Working on After Effects. Project no.2

Same process as the no.1, getting the layers sorted out, timing of the animation etc

Each animation will move differently - similar line of camera movement will just bore audiences due to its repetition and due to the composition of the painting.

Similar process, taking time with decision making of which part goes where etc.

Each layer will be in different position and angle, to give more in-depth of three-dimensional feeling.

Different part of this animation is the movement of snow - since the surrounding is filled with cold climate and mountains with snow on top. Even this simple use of snow particle effect will certainly give out the visual narrative.

Time to render!

Working an Animation no.1

Working on After Effects. Project no.1

Setting out the scale and the size of the camera and the amount of time it will be recorded.

Each layer will be placed in different positions to provide more dynamic three -dimensional feeling.

Putting the motion in each layers along with the movement of the camera - thus giving more movement of the painting and at the end of the animation.

Erasing some specific parts - for example, putting the opacity down using rubber and erasing out some of the waterfall which later on I can animate waterfall underneath the painting then providing a false illusion of waterfall effect in painting.

When everything has been set (each layers will move differently) then ready to render it out.