Animating - Shot 5

Another shot I had given myself to do was Shot 5. This was one of the most ambitious shots in the entire animation as when I reviewed this shot I decided it required a 180 degree camera turnaround. I already knew that this was going to cause multiple problems but now it was time to face them.

Before I started worrying about the background and the turnaround I needed to rough the movement out again as it had been so helpful in the previous shot. I started by roughing out the part of the shot that didn't call for a turnaround.

selections of rough frames from Shot 5

more rough poses from Shot 5

Once I had roughed the movement for the beginning of the shot I added a background so i could see where the action needed to be and where to avoid. I then went over the rough lines with the thicker black outline and cleaned up the shapes to keep volumes and integrity.

working views of animating Shot 5

Once I had reached this point I now needed to tackle the camera problem. Flash itself has no camera tools so its impossible to create a camera to view through and manipulate so I wasn't able to do the camera move in flash. After effects however does have a camera tool so I decided to use it to complete the shot. Now I encountered another problem. The background that I had added as a template was a 2d flat image which is a problem when working in a 3d space as when the camera rotates round the image will be seen to be planar and flat and not an environment that circulates around in 360 degrees which is the effect I wanted to achieve. To combat this I put the image into photoshop and split it into eight equal segments. I then imported these into after effects separately and built the image again using these individual segments. To then achieve the 3d "cheat" I arranged these segments into a horseshoe shape that spanned 180 degrees and enough to be covered by the camera as shown below. This meant that when I added the camera and its movement in after effects the image remained in the background maintaining its perspective and keeping up the illusion that it is moving in 3d space. I originally had a team member working on some 3d environments however due to personal difficulties he was unable to produce anything for our animation so this workaround had to be created which I actually feel fits far better into the line art approach we were taking.

Top:keyframe images form the turnaround section Bottom:working views of the "horseshoe" background and camera in after effects

Once this background had been created in after effects I then exported this as a Flash professional XFL file so it could be imported into Flash as the background. I had to ensure however that I did this background first as I could animate to this to get the angle right and speed etc but alos because I could modify anything in Flash however I couldn't modify this background in Flash because it exported out as a un-editable video clip. The reason I did this however and not importing Flash into after effects because flash doesn't export with transparencies being a vector based program there are no alpha channels so importing into after effects would leave big white boxes around it and therefore making it unusable.

Top: the image seen through the camera Bottom: the arrangement of the segments to get the image above

Once i had imported the background into Flash I then animated the turnaround to match it, white blocked it and spot coloured it. the colour it would end up being.

Top left: finished stills from Shot 5 Top right: another finished still  Bottom: colour swatch for Shot 5

Now I had finished the animation for this shot I now needed to add the real background I would be using. Up until this point I had been using a templated background that had the dimensions of what I needed. Jason had drawn for me a background for this shot however it wasn't not long enough to stretch convincingly into the 180 degree cheating shot therefore i had to send it back to him requesting he add more onto the length of it. Once he had returned the new lengthened drawing I took it and applied the colour to it and split it up as I had with the template and simply arranged it in after effects literally replacing the old templated background segments with the new ones so the shot would remain the same just with the new background.

Top: working view of new background in after effects Bottom: splitting the long image in photoshop

 Once my background had been imported into flash I then ensured that the character turnaround matched the background turnaround and remained convincing. This shot definitely took the longest to complete because of its complex nature however I had made things easier for myself by familiarising myself with the character early on in the design phase and realising him many different angles helped me to achieve this multi-angled turnaround convincingly.

still images from the character turnaround

Shot 5 was now complete and I feel it is one of the most impressive shots of the whole piece. I have had to work hard and it has caused many problems and time wasted on solving these but the end result is all worth it. My original Shot 5 was a static shot that lasted nearly a minute and was extremely boring. This has transformed into a far more interesting 180 degree turnaround shot with 3d(ish) elements, big character movements and impressive text effects added on after effects which holds the audience much more effectively and gives the whole animation a more dynamic and visually appealing quality.

a selection of still images from the finished animation

Final shot: