Fantasy Olympics Rational

The second project in this term is to design a promotional advert for a fantasy Olympic bid, we had to create our character, sport,environment all in 2D but using Adobe After Effects to animate a 30 second 3D animation . This is my first time to work with After Effects software.

At the beginning of the project, when I read the brief there are several ideas came out, I've chosen the hurdle race as the Olympic sport, then I sketched those design ideas. To using a dog for my character in the project, I thought dogs are human's best friends, and we are quite familiar that lots of designers are using dogs in their animations. After completed the character design, I scanned those sketches into my computer, then using Photoshop to separate the character in different layers. I also made the environment scene in the same process. All the things are ready, I started import them to After Effects.

Before watch the tutorial, I have no confidence in this software. It is a little bit like a software that combination of Flash and Premiere. So I decided to work with the tutorial step by step.The tutorial is really helpful, puppet tool is amazing which brings me a lot continence in controlling the character action. I have found that I still got some problems in this project, the most serious one is background, I've failed in creating the 3d environment space, so I only keep it in the flat view.

Throughout the project, I feel that I have done quite well in creating the character expression and action parts, but created a 2D animation is much harder than 3D one, especially in the environment part. I have to say I really enjoyed in doing this project it gave me a chance to learn new software and explore further into actual animation side of the program.

Fantasy Olympics-Character Design

Different side view of my character.

Character with his expressions.

'The Chess Player'

My chess player animation.

This term the project was to create 'The Chess Player' animation.Firstly, when I read the brief, I found the chess game is unfamiliar for me, so I did some research on-line. I also made a quick storyboard for my animation idea. My story is quite simple but easy to understand, also I am focus on the player's action, and trying to present the story clearly.

About the design of the robot arm I keep the shoulder part as the same as the tutorial given, but change the hand part. The shape of the robot palm is trapezoid, and close to the human palm. The chessboard design is to keep the original look, but the chess pieces got some changes.
I have use some warm colors in my texture, especially the robot arm, I added the light bronze and mottled pattern on it.In addition, I have to say the tutorial is extremely helpful, not only learned how to create the models, but also helps us solve the movement, animating and lighting problems.
I am quite like the lighting in the scene, shadows are helps the viewer more prominent the light area.This time I tried to use 4 camera and shot from different view, such as long shot, close-up, full shot and so on. The curve editor is really useful, it makes the movement more smooth, but I am not good at control of the gravity action, so still need more practice. I have used the mental-ray for my rendering, it makes the texture and lighting effect feel more realistic.
Overall, I really enjoy doing this project, after finish this project my creating and animating skills improved are lot and brings me more experience. The action part and camera view both animated successfully. If I practice more on the 3d animation , I think that I could work in the part of the 3d pipeline.

500 words rational and review

Finally finished my Design Practice 3 animation，there were many little stories happened when I was doing this project，such as my computer crushed twice，the Adobe premiere didn't work...hu...but I still enjoy doing it.
For my project I've choosen to using the 'dojo scene', I am quite interested in the action story, therefore, I hope that could be related with my work. This is not my first time to create characters, however, it still tricky for me to work with. At the beginning, my plan is to create three characters, a man , a woman and a mouse. When I making the woman character I made some silly mistakes, so I decided to change my plan at the last minute, then the role become to two character, but the main storyline stay the same. The man character design is based on my boyfriend, I also record his voices to add the animation sound effects. The mouse is the other role in my animation, I did lots of research about it, I want to make it different and act like a 'Kung fu' mouse.
Comparing this piece with last Robot animation,there a little bit improvement, like the environment I put lots of elements, such as trees and surrounding things, which to make it more rich and diverse. The characters looks more flexible. On the other hand,I am not happy with the camera set at this time, the angel shot is strange, which made the screen moving too fast to watch, also, the action is still not consistent. I will keep practicing and improving my personal technical skills perfect.
Overall, through produced this project I've learnt lots of different skills such like add bones to character is really good for them to move, also the skin modifier, and thoes tools all can use in my 3rd year porject.

Dp 3 nimaion and animatic.

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