Tuesday, 26 November 2013

Production Update 1#

Today I finally set about working on the final armouries animation. I began by going through my final, animatic once more, to refresh my memory on the scenes and camera angles. I decided to work from a new flash file, instead of converting the animatic into the final piece, as I have changed my mind about a few scenes.

I started off easy, getting the rain animation done. I attempted to use a script to get this done, and tried to find a source online, that could either show how to create the script, or simply give me a pre existing script which I could paste into my file. After an hour of searching I still couldn't find anything that was what I was looking for, so I scrapped the idea of using a script, and drew 4 frame which Id double frame, and loop throughout the trench scenes. It only took a short amount of time, but I feel it is effective, and with the addition of sound will have the viewer convinced.

The success of the rain began my momentum, and I decided I'd do the first 15 second, trench sequence tonight. I followed the same process I used in the animatic. I drew all the backgrounds and symbols in the same scene, and had them tween to and from the work space in time with the animation. I drew the main background, the trench, and objects within it first. It came out well. Although it was trickier than I first thought itd be in the animatic, and needed to invest some time into making it look like a realistic trench from the first war, so barbed wire and planks where the main things I wanted to show. I considered maybe putting in some blood and dismembered limbs, but such things would distract the viewer from the main point of the scene, and only raise questions. It'd also be inaccurate. Blood wouldn't stand out against the darkened wet soil around it, and any limbs or 'bits' of soldiers close to the trench would be removed and disposed of as soon as possible.

I did modify from the animatic here. I had the character sitting and resting against the trench wall instead of standing in the middle, which seemed very weird when thinking about the fear I wanted to show the character to have. A scared soldier wouldn't be standing in the middle of the trench and seem almost eager to go over the wall and fight. He'd be tired, scared, and trying to hide and escape from the violence.

I also switched from the 3 clouds moving in the opening, and explosions, to still clouds and thunder. I did this as I felt it was stupid to have 3 small cloud moving under a giant rain cloud, and to save time. Lighting only needs one frame and then a complete white frame to be effective and realistic, while half a dozen explosions of different size and shapes would take ages.
Its a strong start. I feel the rain in realistic, and matched the timing and duration of the tweens as I had originally envisioned in the animatic. The next step now is to add the characters, their movements, and the final whistle scene.


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