Final Animation

During this project I've learnt a lot of new stuff. Firstly, I thought it will be a simple project. But while making it I had to overcome a lot of problems. I'm happy that they happened because now I know how to fix them and speed up my work. I have also improved my knowledge in software such us Maya, AfterEffects, Photoshop and  PremierePro. I like the team-working. It really helps in improving the work, developing ideas and helping other students if they have problems with their animation. Good communication is very important. I think our team had pretty good communication, especially at the beginning of the project. We have planned everything ahead in group meetings and we could get on with the work early on. I'm very happy with our team, although one team member didn't manage to bring his work. I've also learnt a lot from the research I made. Not only about animation but about Japanese culture. I wanted my part of animation to look Japanese that's why I made  such a thorough research. Lastly, before this project I've never used PremierePro before. And for my part of animation I didn't have to use it. It was a bit pity as we had good lecture about PremierePro and I didn't have chance to practice it. However, the team has chosen me to put all the parts together and I've done it using PremierePro. By doing this I've learnt a lot about the software. After all I really enjoyed this project.

Inspiration

Before I've done any animation I watched some animations with sound, where there's not many sound effects just music. One of those animations is `Bugs Bunny`. There is some dialogue and little sound effects. The most of it is the music. For example footsteps. They are made using instruments not the real footsteps. Music is changing pace according to the animation. However, it's bit different than my animation. For my animation I had the music first and animated it according to the music, while in `Bugs Bunny` they made the animation first and then made the music.

Making The Animation

Before I've started making the animation I knew it will be very hard to synchronise 2D and 3D. I've never done anything like it before. I've decided to make one bit at a time. I've started with the backgrounds.

                                          

Then I've done the animation of the first domino character on Maya. I had to know the number of the frame where he needs to stop or to start. After that I've imported rendered character into AfterEffects and added some key frames.

Here is the animation of the character and the result of putting it together with the environment.

As you can see this synchro doesn't look good. The character sometimes moves too slow or too fast. I had to reanimate my character again and then put it into the environment and change some positions.

Here is the result of my second attempt:

I'm quite happy with this result. It is much cleaner.

Then I've animated the other character on Maya. It's quite harder than the first one because it moves a little bit more. However, now I could animate the second character based on the first one as both of them are jumping and moving at the same time. When I've put the other character into the animation I was happy with the first result and there's no need to change it.

Here is how it looks:

Once the characters were sorted I've decided to make my animation more 3D by adding foregrounds and backgrounds. I was thinking about using the Z axis in AfterEffects, but there was no need for that. Rearranging the layers did the job. To make it work I've moved the items in the front quicker than the items on the back.

I left the hardest to the last. The entrance to the restaurant. All the environment is in 2D and I want the entrance to be in 3D. I've built the entrance on Maya and animated it. After that I imported it into AfterEffects to see how it looks. I found a lot of problems I will have to come over to make it look good.

Here is my first result of importing the entrance into AfterEffects without any tweaking:

For my second test with entrance I tried to move it and rotate it to match the background. I think it could be possible if I put a key frame every frame. However, I found out that the ground will be very difficult to match as it is in 2D and goes in straight line while the entrance is in 3D and is in straight line just for a moment in the middle.

To fix the ground problem I've decided to do and shade the ground in Maya. I knew that I'll never be able to exactly match the colours so I've used transparent ramp shader to hide the transfer between the colours as much as I can.

This idea didn't work at all. I would have to spend many hours tweaking vertices every frame to match 2D background and it still wouldn't be perfect.

I really struggled to figure out the solution for my problem. And then I got the idea that could work but would really change my animation. I've decided to make the environment in 3D from the point where my characters leave the boat. Surprisingly it didn't take as much time as I thought and the result is fine. The only problem was to make the characters go through the door, which means part of the wall will be behind them and the other part will be in front of them. I was thinking of reanimating them and resynchronising them again. But it would take too much time. I've decided to cut the wall and render it twice showing different part of the wall in each render. Then after importing them into AfterEffects I'll just rearrange the layers. And it really worked!

Here are the wall renders in alpha from Maya:

Environment

Here are all the drawings I drew based on the images from the research. Those drawings, however, aren't positioned exactly the same as they will be in the final aniamtion. They will be in different layers and the will move across the screen.

Research 2

In order to create believable environment I've looked at a lot of pictures with Japanese stuff. I don't want to leave anything unchecked and risk that something might look like something from completely different part of the world. I want the viewer to know that my part of the animation is happening in Japan just by looking at it for a few seconds.

Here are some imageses I've used to create backgrounds and other items:

Character Design

Here are my final character designs. I've made them on Maya, so they are 3D. The colour of the male character is black with white dots, just like we've decided during the group meeting. The female character is white with black dots. I've decided to use that colours based on the research about Japanese weddings, where brides are dressed white. I have also managed to rig the characters. So now I'll be able to move them more easily and believably much quicker than I would do if the characters were in 2D.

Here are few renders of my characters in different positions:

Animatics

I've done animatics to see the overall flow of my animation. I wanted to see how my idea of mostly moving backgrounds will look. Doing animatics also helped me to spot some problems I'll possibly meet while doing the final animation. I'm quite happy with moving the backgrounds rather than characters. However, I'm not happy that my characters are 2D. This is because sometimes they will need to turn around and while they are doing it, you can see that they are flat. I've tried to change the sizes of my characters into negative numbers. It looks better but the flick is still visible. So I think I'll do the characters in 3D and then import them into After Effects. One more problem I came across is the wall when the characters are entering the restaurant. It's not visible in the animatics, because I've cut it into three separate scenes. But in the final animation, where everything will be one long scene, this will become much bigger issue. The problem with the wall is the same as with the characters, it's 2D. And when it will move across the screen I will either loose the depth of my scene or show that the wall is in fact flat. So I think I will also do the wall in 3D.

Here are three scenes of animatics.