The Animated Self: Animation is Nearing Completion!

I have really surprised myself with how much work I have managed to get done over the past three days. Today I have managed to get the visuals finished so now I am ready to start adding the finishing touches, such as sound, and maybe even a title introduction if needed. 

Today's focus was to get the drawing completed, so I started with the trees in the background, in particular the one in the centre. Originally I had pictured this to be an ordinary tree, but I got the idea to change it into a Cherry Blossom when I passed one in the car on the way home. I think Cherry Blossoms are so beautiful, and I thought including one in my animation would be a great way to brighten it up and add a variety of colour. 

Still of Cherry Blossom Tree 

To make the tree, I experimented with different brush presets until I finally found ones that looked like bark and leaves/flowers. It took me a while to do as there were so many different brushes and so many different ways I could use them, but once I had found my own way of working the rest of the trees (lined up on the right) were completed in no time, with the exception of the willow tree. As this tree had different leaves I had to experiment again with different brushes to find one that could mimic the leaves of a willow tree, as I didn't fancy drawing each individual strand. Again, I think I was successful at finding a tool that was useful, and I like that there is now a variety of texture in the background, making it more realistic and interesting to look at.

Still of Completed Trees

My next step was to finish the background, which was the easiest task of the day. I created the grass by using a number of different greens at different opacities and then created the sky by blending a light blue into an off white. I thought this looked okay but I felt that it was missing something. It didn't feel like it was a real place as there seemed to be no depth beyond the trees. I tried to overcome this problem by adding some sort of hedge or background scenery behind the trees, which I thought greatly improved the composition. In my opinion, this addition made the space much more believable as the world seemed to extend past this plane/set. 

Composition With and Without Hedge/Scenery

Now that my background was finished, I was ready to animate the trees that moved (The willow and the far left tree in the line of four). This was somewhat straight forward to do, as I simply had to make sure I used the same colours and brush presets for each tree. The willow was a bit harder to do, as I didn't really have a reference to work from, so I was unsure of how the leaves should have fallen. I gave it my best shot, and playing it back I think it runs rather smoothly. 

The next thing I had to do was to arrange my layers so that Maressa was positioned correctly amongst the trees. This meant that I had to dissect the video layer that she was created on into separate layers, three to be exact. I positioned the layer behind the cherry blossom tree, and I cut the layer once she had fully emerged from behind the tree. I then moved this second layer so that it was in front of the tree. I did the same thing for when she is at the willow tree, and moved the third layer in front of it once she had fully emerged so that she was positioned at the front of the composition. This didn't take long at all and it worked really well. (I have since discovered that I need to bring her hand forward in some of the frames, as it is still positioned behind the willow leaves. I noticed at the time, but completely forgot to implement). 

The next thing I added into the animation was more willow leaves when Maressa pushed them aside, because at the moment it looked as though it was 2D or that she was just brushing away the leaves at the edge. I added them in behind her character to make it seem like she was actually walking through the leaves rather than just walking up to a 2D layer of them and moving them aside.

Without Willow Back

With Willow Back

Once this was done I moved onto adding shadow, and I did so by using a similar colour to my grass and lowering the opacity. I started out by placing circles under her feet, making sure they got darker once they were closer to the ground and then I went over these with a larger circle for where the shadow for her body should be. I then adjusted the transparency of this layer until it was subtle enough for my liking. I didn't want it to stand out too much as I thought this would have brought attention away from Maressa. Even though it is only a subtle touch, I think it has worked wonders for my animation. It may not be entirely accurate as I was creating it from my imagination rather than any reference material, but I think it helps to create the illusion that she is moving throughout a 3D space rather than a 2D one.

Maressa's Shadows

I then thought that the tree's shadow in the foreground should move as its leaves are played with, so I drew them in on a separate video layer, but once I had finished them and played the animation back I wasn't too keen. I didn't think that the shadow was in the right place compared to the shadows of the other objects, and it didn't seem to move accurately/realistically. Instead of removing the work I had done, I simply made the layer invisible, in case I wanted to return to it.

Tree Shadow

Once I had finished the shadow I thought that was me finished in terms of visuals, but then I realised that I had somewhat messed up Maressa's layers. I noticed that when she pushes the leaves aside that her hand that does so isn't brought forward. I couldn't just move the positioning of the layer as this meant that she would be stood in front of the leaves too early. This means that I am going to have to make a separate layer for her hand so that I can bring that forward without moving her whole character. It won't take me long to do, and when I am finished with this I will be able to move onto post-production.