Scene 2- Pub scene improved

This is the scene improved, with the inclusion of Mario, I wanted to include at least one other car in the race, I tried to make sure that Katie speeds off before Mario, I think the improvements I made to this scene are good and were needed, and I am pleased with the second scene.

Scene 2- Pub scene

This clip shows the second scene in the animation, this is the pub scene which shows the start of the race, I have included animated text of the countdown before the race, I am pleased with the art work and how the scene has turned out, however I want to add one of the other race characters.

Digital Skills- Scene 3

I have continued working on my digital skills animation. I have skipped ahead by one scene and made the 3rd scene in which Katie is on a race track and zooms past Lewis Hamilton, I used various tools and effects for this part, including the wiggle effect on the cars, I tried to create the illusion of the cars moving by moving the cars as well as the crowd and the road. Again the scene and the characters were made on photoshop, I retained the layers when importing into After Effects.

Race Track Scene

This is the next scene in the animation. The racetrack, I made this using textures once again, I will now go about creating Lewis Hamiltons car to place into this scene for the animation.

Pub Scene

This is the next scene of my animation, Straight after Katie is sucked into the TV she ends up at the start of a race in one of her favourite places, a small pub. This was made using various textures for tarmac, checkered finish line and wood as well as images of beer pumps and a pint of beer and pub stools, I also included a pub carpet, I quite like how this scene has turned out.

Because Katie likes Ed Sheeran's music, I thought it would be a good idea to incorporate him into the animation so I used the same technique I used to create Katie character and this was the outcome, I made Ed into a bartender.

I then included Ed in the composition for the scene behind the bar just to see what it would look like in the animation. I then decided I needed to include someone at the bar having a drink.

I made a man to sit at the bar, I used the same technique to create him as I did with Katie and Ed I  then wanted to place this man in the composition with Ed sat on a stool at the bar.

Here is the photoshop file with Ed and the Man placed where they should be I must now go on to start making the other scenes and characters so that I can begin to animate them for the final animation, I am very pleased with the outcome of this pub scene.

Digital Skills- Scene 1

This is the scene in the living room where Katie is sucked into the TV, I have since changed the character designs and actually given Katie legs therefore I have been able to animate Katie as she flies through the air and into the TV, I key framed the limbs of Katie in order to make her move, This was quite challenging, especially when it came to make Katie move as she was being sucked in. I had to time the movement of Katie's whole body to make sure she wasn't moving before her body started to get sucked into the TV. I have included some moving footage in the background in the form of the pendulum and hand of the clock. Although the movements are quite robotic I am Overall pleased with this scene.

Background/Setting for Scene 1

This is the first 5 seconds of the setting or background for the 1st scene in my animation, I used images from the internet to create the scene of a living room, I tried to include some moving footage in the background by making the pendulum in the clock move as well as the ticking of the hand on the clock. I am pleased with the outcome of this so far.

Character Development for First scene

 This first image is my initial design for Katie in the first scene of my animation, she sat down and playing the wii, I included the same techniques used to make my character designs with the use of the real life photograph for Katie's head and then the use of textures from Google images to create her clothes, I also cut out a hand shape and filled it to create Katie hands, I then added several layer effects to each of the layers of clothing and the hand.









During an overview of my work with Jon he suggested I play with the effects in photoshop and therefore showed me some tools for changing colour effects and other handy tools needed to add a bit more excitement to a photograph. By doing this I made the photograph of Katie's face a lot more vibrant and therefore complimenting the rest of the character.

Whilst working on the animation I realised how hard it would be to animate the legs of Katie once she gets sucked into the TV, especially seeing as they were a big block, so I thought that i'd use the same principles with the legs as I have done with the arms so I made separate layers for the waist, to top and bottom parts of the leg, and the foot. I will then go on to keyframe the movement of the legs in After Effects once I begin animating the new character design. I am happy with the overall outcome of my change to the character.

First scene of film- After Effects

So far I have put together the first scene of my film and exported it to see how it turned it, this is the outcome, I am quite pleased with my efforts on After effects, I used images i found to build a room for my character, I imported them as layers from photoshop retaining the layer sizes so that I could edit them individually, once I had my composition I was then able to add the composition of Katie's character which I have used the auto key framing tool to animate, I moved the centre point of the parts of the arm for the character and from there I rotated the parts of the arm and also attached the "wii controller" to the hand by making the hand layer a parent of the controller layer, I need to start working on my other scenes so I can put them together and make any improvements needed once a general outline of the film is shown.

Katie- Character Puppet- auto key framing

This is my character design for Katie, I have animated the character by using auto key framing on After Effects, I imported a photoshop file retaining the layer sizes in a composition, from there I used keyboard shortcuts such as "W" for Rotate, "Y" for Pan Behind Tool, which allowed me to change the centre point of the layers for different parts of the characters body. I used auto key framing and moved the centre point of the layers and then rotated them to animate the body parts, I found this technique easier than the puppet technique however it does make the movements quite robotic.

Character Animation- Hierachy

This animation was made in a similar way to the puppet one however, this was done with a heirachy of layers. Each layer made up a part of the character. The layers were imported from Photoshop, in a composition retaining the layer size this allowed me to edit each layer, I could use the pan behind tool for moving the centre point of the layer so that when the layer for something like the forearm was rotated, it rotated around that centre point. I found this technique for character animation easier and better than the puppet technique.

We also explored The puppet starch tool and the puppet overlap tool, the puppet starch tool allowed me to stiffen up specific parts of the character if i didn't want them to move as much and the puppet overlap allowed me to make certain limbs overlap/underlap other parts of the character E.g The arm going behind the characters back.

Character Animation- Puppet

This animation was made on Adobe After Effects using the Pin Puppet tool, After importing the character from Photoshop I used the tool to animate the limbs of the body, I clicked with the Pin tool on the joints of the arms and legs and then using the pin point, which I could move; The points would make the limbs move. Although it is a way to animate it is not a very comprehensive way.

Storyboard Designs for Animation

These are the storyboard sheets for my Digital Skills animation based on my Digital Skills partner Katie. The story is a simple on which consists of Katie playing Mario Kart on the Wii, she suddenly gets sucked into the tv and becomes part of the game, the tracks are in her 2 favourite places "A Pub" and the French island "Il De Re", I've added in scenes such as driving on a formula one racing track along side Lewis Hamilton, and the race also takes place under the sea, Finally the race ends in one of Katies favourite places and she wins the cup, however it all turns out to be a dream as she wasn't actually playing the Wii at all.

Character Designs- Continued

This is one of the character designs after more development. I took a good look at the British Gas adverts and realised how the characters are in an obvious caricature style therefore the heads are purposely made disproportionate to the rest of the body. I took that into account and made sure that Katies head was bigger compared to her body.

To make sure that the body was a bit more life like than before; but not too realistic, I used images of different textures from the Internet. From these images I cut out various shapes depending on what type of clothing I wanted Katie to wear. I tried to make sure that the legs were quite thin as well as the inclusion of pointy feet. I think this technique worked well as the textures complimented that shapes they were cut into and the character designs were beginning to look more impressive. for the hands and skin around the neck area I used a cube with a specific colour for the skin and cut out a hand shape using the "Lasso Tool".

Continuing with the same technique I made another "Katie" this time with a different costume, With this costume I played around with the affects trying to see how I could make the body stand out along with the face.

 I made seperate layers for things such as buttons, pockets and a scarf and then applied Layer Effects to all of these. I did this by double clicking on a layer and a dialogue box labelled "Layer Style" This allowed me to apply different effects such as: Bevel and Emboss, Contour, Drop Shadow and Satin.

These effects made parts of the clothing such as the Coat to look rippled and creased and the Pocket and buttons looked raised. I even applied the Bevel and Emboss effect to the hands of Katies character. I thought that it looked good as it gave the hands a "3D feel" whilst also maintaining a cartoon style. Overall I was very pleased with these designs. I can continue to make these using various effects and a variety of different clothing/costumes.



Character Designs- Original Design

This is the original character design for my partner Katies Character. I made this by initially cutting out Katies face and hair from a photograph of her. I did this using various tools in Photoshop such as the "Lasso Tool", "Polygonal Lasso Tool" and the "Magnetic Lasso Tool". This effectively made sure that I had 2 seperate layers. One layer of Katies face and another layer for her hair.

Once I had the two layers, I made sure that Katies face was on top so that the hair didn't block it. Inspired by the British Gas adverts I wanted to make a character with a live action face but then a cartoon body. I begun my test by drawing a generic body for Katie, I didn't like this as a character design as it looked boring and not very good overall, but it helped me see how Katies character would look without a real life body. Seeing as this design looked slightly like a cartoon, going back to this design I added a layer effect to the body of this character.

This effect added a black outline round the character depending on whichever layer I applied the effect to, I think this improved the character design in terms of a "cartoony" look. However I was still not satisfied with the design overall.



Spotlight Animation- Using masks on After Effects

This is an example of using masks in After Effects, I cut out the Mona Lisa from the picture frame using a subtract mask and then using another mask i placed the "Keep calm and carry on" poster into the frame. I then used a mask for the spotlight, Animating the movement of the spotlight until it finally finds the poster.

Quad Bike Animation

This is another session, learning the basics of Adobe After Effects. Here we used the different photoshop layers of the wheels and the body of the quad bike. we made each of the wheels move seperately. With the inclusion of parent layers both the wheels followed the body layer of the quad. The wiggle effect was also used on the quad to give the impression it is rumbling as the bike moves. The floor and background both move across the page to give the illusion that the bike is moving.

After Effects Practice



This clip is a result of practice on Adobe After Effects, I used various tools, and also a bit of Photoshop to create the different layers included in this clip. I also applied some effects to it. This gives an insight into what work is going to be like on After Effects.

Lesson 1- Weekend Poster

This is my weekend poster from the first Digital Skills, lesson. Mainly showing the various skills practised in class, there is a heavy use of the magic wand tool and polygon selection tool both of which i used to cut out these various images, I have also included text in the poster.

Lesson 2 - Keep Out Sign

This is the keep out sign I made in photoshop, I made use of the typography and used the magic wand too and lasoo tool to cut out the pins and the keep out sign, the paper has had layer effects applied to it to make it look more realistic against the wood background.

Digital Skills 1 Blog introduction

This is my blog for Digital Skills 1. On here I will post work produced throught the course of the Unit.