Vine Evaluation

Evaluation

For my 2D animation project I have identified various strengths and weaknesses throughout my planning process. I felt that my general planning process went quite well as I managed to state the specific details I needed to do throughout the process of my production. This included specific techniques which I wanted to use e.g. rotoscoping as well as applications I was going to use to make my production e.g. Adobe Flash CC. However, I found that from my original plan I had a few flaws as I realized there was some sections which I originally wanted to include, but in the end didn’t include in my final production. Also, I didn’t consider how I was going to edit my final production all together with the soundtrack and rotoscoped image and video.

My finished product was something which I more or less what I wanted to achieve, although as I previously stated, there was scenes which I didn’t end up including in my final production as it disrupted the fluidity of my vine. Specifically, this was the second scene that I originally wanted to include of a punching scene and sound effect to add an aspect of comedy as this was considered a popular theme from my primary research. However, I was pleased with the outcome of my rotoscoping designs as it clearly represented diversity to which I intended, e.g. the final scene with the Esher students from all different ethnic backgrounds. I also felt that the panning shot I filmed of the canteen went considerably well as there was a wide range of students, and made it seem as a though it was a well-populated place to be at Esher College.

If I were to complete this task again, I would decide to change minimal aspects of my vine. For example, one of the members of my focus group suggested I include some positive words in the vine, to increase the positive atmosphere that I want to promote for Esher College. I would most probably, alter my soundtrack so that I was somewhat longer, as well as alter the lyrics that were used in my soundtrack. I originally sang, “when I am with you, there’s no place I’d rather be” however I would decide to alter it so it was more specific towards Esher College by singing “When I’m at Esher, there’s no place I’d rather be” which conveys that Esher College is the place to be. I would also like to attempt to include the comedy that I wanted to include but in the way that didn’t disrupt the fluidity of my actual vine. Also, another person said that maybe it would be a good idea to show diversity in other aspects of the college e.g. the subjects, whilst another said that I could add more detail to my rotoscope, which I think they’re referring to my video which only involves outlining the characters of the panning shot.

From the feedback I got from my focus group, I found that all the people I questioned enjoyed the use of rotoscoping as my 2D animation technique in my vine, as I used that technique for my entire vine. One person in particular found that they loved the ending with the Esher students which as well as promoting the Esher College brand image, it also uses different colours to represent diversity as well as using the key Esher College colours which I found were key in my analysis of the Esher College prospectus and website. These colours were mainly yellow and black. The good use of bright colours and lighting was found to promote Esher in a positive way as well as the representation of community.

On the other hand, I would also like to refer to current and past practice of work such as other promotional vines that may or not may not use 2D animation techniques. For example, I decided to investigate specific vines which incorporated rotoscoping, and looked at what they did with the animation to complete the 6 second vine. I looked at vines which incorporated music and people. I found that, the flow of the vines were very smooth, and also had a good narrative so you could understand what the vine was trying to convey. In one particular vine, I found it created an impactful performance with an alteration with colour before disclosing the title of the piece. This was what I originally intended to do before I disclosed the college’s name and brand image.

However, I found that in comparison to my vine, the vines itself were very detailed especially in facial features and clothing (referring to the characters of the vine) which I personally included but only for the last scene. I felt that my vine itself was more colourful; though all the vines I looked at as well as my own were all very realistic. Also, I found that although my vine was detailed and represented the college in a positive manner, the narrative wasn’t as clear as the vines that I looked at. Nonetheless, I think the music used for my vine as well as the others were all suitable to their purpose and the scenes in the vines went well with the music.

Promotional College Vine

Esher College Vine

Rotoscope

Esher College Vine - Production Diary

Production Diary

Esher College Student Rotoscope

·    Take previously created character drawing, and open it in Adobe Flash CC

·      Fill the character drawings with colour so they block colours
·      After, I took an image from Google and got a hand image, so I could complete my third shot. I rotoscoped the image so that it overlapped the character image so it looked like the characters were being held.
·      Then I inserted a background from the internet and used that as a basis for my background design – follows the main colours that represents Esher College
·      I drew two stars around the image and filled them in with colours.
·      After, I imported the Esher College logo and edited it in Photoshop to remove the white background. It was then placed into the image at the bottom of the image but within the star.
·      Finally, when this was completed, I exported the file as a video so that it could be edited into the final video in Adobe Premier Pro CC.

Vocal Cover

·      To create my vocal cover, I used the application Audacity
·      I downloaded a pre-made instrumental track of ‘Clean Bandit’s Rather Be’ from YouTube.
·      Then, I imported this instrumental into Audacity.
·      I selected the specific section of the instrumental that I wanted to use
·      After, I recorded over the instrumental with my voice, for the final section of this song which I selected
·      It was then exported as a final track as a ‘.wav’ and imported into Adobe Premier Pro later to be edited with my rotoscoping.

Canteen Rotoscope

·      I filmed the canteen with a panning shot – originally it was meant to be a 360 panning shot but I found it was difficult to film with people walking in between film and blocking the shot so it ended up being something similar to 180 panning shot.
·      Then, I edited my clip that I filmed using Final Cut Pro so I only kept the footage I needed which was cut from 14 seconds to 3 seconds.
·      I found I had to convert my footage from a ‘.mov’ to a ‘.flv’ file. To do this, I used the online application ‘Zamzar’ to convert it. It had to be converted so I could import it into Adobe Flash CC as it only accepted ‘.flv’ files.
·      After, I imported the converted file into Flash and began certain sections of my film.
·      I found that during the process, I had to redo my Rotoscope due to the incorrect sizing of my video. It didn’t seem to fit the whole scene when I tested the scene.
·      Also, I found I had problems with saving and technical difficulties, which made me, have to redo certain scenes again.
·      Finally, I exported the file as a video and imported it into Adobe Premier Pro CC to be edited together with the other files.

Garage Band – Sound effects and Music

·      Originally I was going to use Garage Band to combine my vocal cover with my sound effects to make it fill my 6-second vine.
·      However, I found that the scene was going to previously use wasn’t very relevant and made the flow of the videos very disjointed so this meant that I didn’t include the sound effect which I wasn’t going to originally use.
·      This also meant that I wouldn’t have to use Garage Band since created the vocal cover on audacity.

Punch Rotoscope

·      Primarily, I was going to use an animated punching scene with a sound effect to create comedy, however I found that it’s use was irrelevant and that it broke the flow of the vine.
·      My original plan was to include the punch scene as I found that people were most interested in comedy, however what I originally intended to do changed because of its unsuitability. 
·      So, I made the decision to remove the scene and extend my final scene so overall it was a 6-second vine.

Adobe Premier Pro – Final Edit

·      Although in my plan I didn’t plan on using this application, I remembered I needed to edit all my files together.
·      I imported my ‘Canteen Rotoscope,’ my ‘Esher College Student Rotoscope’ and my ‘Rather Be Vocal Cover’ into my new project.
·      After, I arranged my files so it started with my ‘Canteen Rotoscope’ then my ‘Esher College Student Rotoscope’ – however I extended the second scene so that it was a total of 6-second.
·      For my audio, I moved the audio so it ended at 6 seconds but as my audio was only about 4.5 seconds, I had no audio at the beginning.
·      For the ‘Canteen Rotoscope’ I used a ‘Wipe’ transition, then for the second scene, the ‘Esher Student College Rotoscope’ I ended it with a ‘Cross Dissolve’ transition.
·      Also, for my audio, I used an audio transition called ‘Constant Power’.
·      Finally, I watched my video the whole way through to check for any minor problems, and exported the file movie file.

Garage Band

Garage Band Sampling

I created two samples using the program Garage Band. I used samples provided from Garage band itself to create my two samples. These samples are called Loops which include either MIDI files or audio files. MIDI files were in green whilst audio files were in blue. MIDI files allowed us to edit the sample to our liking unlike the audio files.

For my first music sample I used 4 audio files: 'Classic Rock Steel 04', 'Modern Rock Drums 11', 'Modern Rock Guitar 07' and 'Rock Bass 09'. The first audio, was a 16 beat audio whilst the other audios were 8 beat audios. I copied the audios with 8 beats so there were two of each so they all resulted in 16 beats. I adjusted some of the volume for some of audios to my preference. 

For my second music sample I used 4 audio files: 'Southern Rock Piano 01', 'Natural Drum Kit 02', 'Picked Steel String 10', 'Orchestra Strings 04'. The first audio was a 16 beat audio, whilst the 'Natural Drum Kit 02' and 'Picked Steel String 10' audios were 8 beats each. The final audio was 16 beats as well however I cut it so it was only 4 beats as I only wanted the first section in particular. Overall my whole piece was about 32 beats when I repeated sections. I also slightly altered the piano part by changing a few of the notes or deleting some of the notes as well. I ended the piece by adding a fade out.

Animation Mood Board

Pitch Line

Reality’s rotoscope of diverse dreams.

Cut Out Animation

Angel Cut Out Animation

To begin my animation, I first had my image taken of my full body so that when I imported it into Adobe Photoshop CC, I could cut out the outline of my body, and then disassemble each part so I could use it to move each part individually in Adobe Flash CC. However it was a much more difficult process as I had cut out each part individually and make a new file to be pasted into the new file. This was a long process as I had to make sure to remove the background after I had pasted it into the new file, before I saved it as a 'PNG' file otherwise when I imported into Adobe Flash CC the background would remain around the image. This was one of the faults I had which limited my time with my animation, as I had to go through every body part again and remove the background before saving it as a 'PNG'. I cut out the body and the individual body parts I used the polygonal lasso tool. A tip which I found useful was that it was best to cut out certain sections at a time when cutting out the full body as it reduced the chances of making a mistake and having to redo the whole cutting process again. 

After I finished cutting out the body parts, I imported the pictures from the library in Adobe Flash CC. These were then located on the sidebar to which I had to create 6 layers for each of the individual body parts but also another layer for the background. However I decided on creating a total of 8 layers as I had two backgrounds, one for the sky background and one for my originally drawn wings for my animation. Then, I named each layer after a certain body part as well as the background layers to avoid confusion when I was in the process of creating my animation. After, I placed each of the images into the correct layers according to the labels, making sure the bottom layers were the two background layers, the first background being the very bottom for the sky background, and the second background second from the bottom for the wings. I resized the body parts and assembled them so they looked like the original full body image in the centre of the screen. 

I proceeded to add a motion tween to both of my two selected body parts which were the left and right arm. But to add a motion tween both of these parts had to be converted into a symbol first. After they had become symbols I then extended the frames to where I wanted the motion tween to stop, and moved the body parts. Then I extended the other layers to the same amount of frames, so the parts are stationary whilst the specific parts move. After I created a blank keyframe and removed the motion tween, so then I could replace the arms with another image over the top. I used the onion skin tool to allow me to see what I had done in previous frames of my animation. The overall motion tween caused my arms to create an arc effect related to the 12 Principles of Animation. 

For my final finishes, I inserted the sky background by retrieving an image from Google, and saving it before importing it Adobe Flash CC. Then I dragged the image to the background layer and resized it to my preferences. Whilst for the second background layer I drew a wing on one side of my top body, and copied the image and pasted the image so I could move it to the other side. Then I flipped the drawn wing so that it was symmetrical to the other wing.