Week 8- Eleanor’s location gifs

Week 7- Updates on progress

Currently everyone is still working towards completing their own projects- we are almost close to piecing together the final animation-

Kristie and Eleanor- We have both completed our frames for the rotoscoped man walking- this was an extremly tedious and time consuming activity but we powered though and now we have 55 animated frames of our man walking. This took us more than 12 hours all together as each animated frame had to be completely redrawn.

Kristie has also produced some rotoscoped landmarks of things like a London bus, pryamids and the colosseum for Hamza to use in the final animation to help visualise the journey and make a connection with the auidence.

Eleanor is going to produce two more of these rotoscoped landmarks- the Eifel tower to symbolise Paris and a Giraffe to pop up in Nambia.

Tom- I have created the introduction animation using Adobe Flash CS6 (see below), to create this animation i learned a new technique in this software from a tutorial video on YouTube. I then exported it as an swf file and gave it to Hamza.

I am currently working on the background music for the video, for this I am using FL studio 11, I am new to this software so i am using tutorial videos on You Tube (again) to learn how to use the different tools, once i have done this I will create the music and send it to Hamza to place in the video.

Hamza –
After having received all the different assets from my team members.
I put them all into After Effects and animated them together. All the GIFs pop up in their respective countries while the feet are coming down.
The layers added up to be over 400!!
I had to make a few meetings with my tutor Danny Bacchus, because some of the skills that was required of me – I didnt even have at the time.
Especially had problems maintaining the transparency of the GIFs. So i had to export the pictures individually and then piece them together in AE.
Eventually it worked & i then created the intro from Paddy’s infographics – Which was very fun to do 🙂
All we have left now is to script the voiceover, record & then sync it!

Draft Rotoscoping Idea

Feedback from group :

• Make it longer and more smooth
• Keep with the colours
• Instead of doing every 4 frames, change it to every 2 frames so more frames are added to make it smoother
• Frames are now selected and Kristie is doing 1-27 and Eleanor is doing 28-55 then all the frames are put together and turning into a GIF to put onto the blog

Updated storyboards

 

These are the updated versions of the storyboards fitting with our new idea 

Storyboards- rough initial sketches

 

These were the initial ideas we had for our animation- it was going to be around 3 minutes in length and primarily focused on 3 specific areas- rotoscoping, arts and crafts and motion graphics. This was a storyboard I (Eleanor) did to try to show a visualisation of our ideas, though these have now changed and we have new storyboards.

Week 6 – 04/03/2014 – Action Plan

Our action plan for the following weeks:

• Voiceover scripted – PADDY & HAMZA

Not a finished script, just a rough idea on what we need to talk about, for example 100% profits go to the cause etc.

• Storyboards – ELEANOR

Quick detailed and updated version of the storyboard so that the whole group understands what we are trying to do and what our advert is going to be.

• Logo – How are we going to animate it? – PADDY & CAMILLA

For the logo do some rough sketches on how we can animate the logo, for example having a waterdrop from O in Long Well Walk etc. Research aftereffects templates online (Bring these in for next session 06/03/2014)

• Rough Rotoscope – KRISTIE

Just do a rough version of the rotoscoping from the footage that we filmed today, just a rough idea on how its going to work and then discuss to fellow group members on what colours and shapes etc that we are going to use.

• Making the motion graphics body – HAMZA & TOM

Piecing together the graphics from Tom, making transitions and animating it together (Tom speak to Hamza about this)

Week 6 04/03/2014 – Filming For Rotoscoping

As Kristie and Eleanor are in the rotoscoping team, we decided that we have to film some footage of Paddy with a backpack walking on the spot. Now we have filmed that footage we are able to rotoscope as soon as possible.

 

 

Week 5- Client presentation and feedback

This session we had to present our current ideas in the form of a powerpoint presentation to the client Liam, and gained some vital feedback from him expressing concerns he has about our ideas and added new points of view.

In our presentation, we dicussed our current idea and explained our concept of having multipule areas such as a rotascoped section, 2d animation graphics and a physical arts and crafts section using a variety of materials. This was to generally give an idea of what we wanted our finished product to look like and how we would visualise it.

We also disscused the roles we have in this project such as who contributes and gives advice on different areas and why we are suited to these roles- posting images or gifs of work we have done related to the kind of thing we’re going to do.

 

After the presentation, we recieved a number of questions from the client Liam and his graphic designer Tom, and he raised concern that he thought our project seemed very ambitious and asked us if we think we could deliver this product to as a high a standard as what we pitched in our presentation.

These were the pieces of feedback we were given summarised and what we need to think about;

• We need to work out how the animations will transition without making them look too radically different from eachother and making each segment look out of place
• How are we going to do our voice over- who do we want to voice it?
• We were told to be careful having our rotoscoped man walking on Africa- it gives off negative conotations
• Liam also suggested he would find it interesting to see a story told in the animation and see it progress from happy, better conditions to poor and trying areas
• Prephaps cut our video down and focus on primarily two ideas which will transition more clearly and fluidly
• Liam also said he would find it interesting if we could show Sheffield and England in the animation

 

Week 4 – Preparing for Presentation (18/02/2014)

Today we have created

• Rough storyboard
• Roles onto the blog
• Logo has been created
• Rough skeleton of the presentation
• Brainstorming and building on the ideas

To do

• Eleanor will be drawing up the storyboard onto Photoshop
• Other group members have to fill out Roles blogpost
• Powerpoint needs to be filled out by each team member
• Think about voiceovers
• Presentation rough script

 

Week 3- Meeting with the client

This week we met with the client Liam, who is leading the Long Well Walk project. He gave us a speech about the project and also delved into what kind of things he would expect us to produce in regards to the animation.

He also informed us that now the progress is being recorded by a film crew and the film will be shown at numerous film festivals.

We asked him how he was feeling about the walk and he said he believes it will be a mental challenge more than a physical one but regardless he was pretty excited to begin his walk.

The aim of this walk is to raise money for 10 projects in different countries in Africa, which Liam will walk to, helping out the local communities by building water pumps and improving their water supplies.

However, the walk does come with its dangers- many areas of Africa are currently engaged in conflict and there are various religious related clashes occurring, meaning some stretches of the journey will be extremely dangerous, and in areas such as Sudan, Liam and a group of Americans will be cycling meaning he can cover a much larger distance much quicker than he would walking. He will also at times be accompanied, the camera crew will be with him for around 4 to 4 and a half months and friends and family are planning to join him at different parts of the journey.

He also emphasised the importance of 100% of the donations going to the cause- the website even has a mechanic where you can input the email address a donor used when they donated money and another window will open which shows exactly which project their money will go to.

To raise awareness of this project (so far he needs £800 more for the project to be a success or else he cannot set off), Liam is planning to do an 18 minute talk at the next local TED talks, and this will be uploaded onto you tube and will be assessable by everyone, and he also talked about getting support from celebrities such as Stephen Fry via twitter and social networking sites.

Overall, the talk with the client was very helpful to our group as when we got a chance to talk to Liam one on one, he was very relaxed and confident in all our current ideas, he also told us if we needed any help or advice he will help us as much as he can, and his graphic designer Tom also said we could use the graphics he used on the website (which we plan to use in one of our ideas) and it gave us a much more clear idea about how we should undertake this project and what kind of direction and style we wanted our final animation to be like.