Applied Animation - National Geographic - Final Resolution

Here is the finished resolution to the National Geographic brief. Overall i am pleased with the result but I feel that there are things that i would have changed about my approach to this animation. I opted for a motion graphics aesthetic, which i think it does follow but i can't help feeling that it is lacking depth, it feels too 'flat'. I am happy with the soundscape that I created using clips from the apollo shuttle launch, there is also a bass tone in there gets gradually louder and simmers down towards the end where the National Geographic logo appears, this adds an element of anticipation o the animation.

Applied Animation - E4 Ident - Summary

For this animation to be effective and to take inspiration form the likes of animator Cyriak, I knew that this animation would have to be experimental in way that there should not really be concrete plan for the narrative of the animation - except only a rough destination that the animation/creative process should head toward.
This is the reason why there are no storyboards for this particular animation, as the animation does not really follow a narrative, it is really more about the visual patterns that are being created on screen by the different moving components. I feel more at ease working in this way, although I do realise that this process would probably not be suitable when working with a corporate client that need to see proposals  before hand.

Applied Animation - E4 Ident - Final Resolution

Here is the final animation for the E4 ident, I have added in a sound bed of which i created myself using various samples including the voice of the character Frank Gallagher. Added to these short sound clips are effects such as echo to emulate a psychedelic sounding soundscape that is not too imposing yet is interesting - humorous - to listen to, something which seems to be a running theme in the other E4 idents.

Applied Animation - Maya Tasks Updated

 In the previous post I had not added any lighting on the truck or the phone, i have now added a spotlight to each. The phone uses two spotlights to light it from the back and from the front, so that the object catches the light equally. The lighting on the truck i tried to make it appear as if it was another car's headlights shining on to it at night, with one side light up well and the light decaying as it moves past the rest of the truck.

Applied Animation - Maya Tasks - Walk cycle

In this exercise we had to put in the key poses of a walk cycle and and animate the 3D character called Moom. To do this I used a reference image imposed onto a flat plane by assigning a new material to that plane called a lambert, in the attribute settings I was able to add a file to the colour attribute and this file was the image of a walk cycle - side on. This reference imagery helped me to move the limbs of the character into each pose and I was then able to key frame in these movements.
I found this task to be very fiddly and the way the character moves - although I am happy that it moves - to be very unpredictable, as the character appears to be leaning to one side at the shoulder and I do not know how that has occurred.

Applied Animation - Maya Tasks

 Here are the results of my labor in Maya, for the 'to-hand' object i decided to create a model of my mobile phone. I built up the shape by using the cube in polygon primitives and using the edge loop tool and the edge tool i added some bevel to the edges of some of the components that make up the shape. I also added a reflective texture to the screen of the phone so that it would seem more realistic.

Here is the final rendered image of my truck, I have added plenty of bevel on the different objects so that the truck had some realistic features even if it does look comical in essence.
I also added a dirt texture on a flat plane beneath the truck to give it some setting.

Applied animation - E4 ident - Further Process

 In this image I have screenshoted a composition I have made in premiere by exporting the original animation out of after effects as an image sequence and the file type as .png so that the rest of the animation other than the character that contains the movement would be transparent. By doing this it then enabled me to layer up the two different animations by creating lots of video tracks on premiere. By doing this I was then able to change the position of each layer to create a continuous stream of anticlockwise motion with one of the animations and key in a center point with the other.
to give the animation a feeling of fluidity I made sure to key in the center point to emerge on the screen as the other animations did so too.
I have decided that using only the two movements that I have created would be more effective as I could apply them in different ways and not over complicate the animation with too many different movements going on at once.
I have realised that by using the same animation but in different ways is in keeping with this pattern of duplication that runs through this animation.

Applied Animation - E4 Ident - Process

 Here is another one of the movements that I will be including in my animation, frank's arms will appear to duplicate from one point as if he were some mancunian demi-god.




To get this affect I had to duplicate each arm that I had disassembled from the rest of the body, roughly 20 times. I then key framed each one of those arms to rotate on an anchor point which i had place on the elbow of the arm so as to appear as if this was a somewhat natural movement around the joint. Not only did I key frame a rotation in each arm so that the arms look like they were multiplying/trailing I also key framed in an opacity drop so that each arm after every movement would fade much like the leading arm was moving very fast and there was a time dilation of sorts.

I think creating this movement has led me to think of a psychedelic approach to this animation with things rotating and growing from a point like that of moving mandala. It was at this point that I knew that the sound track of the animation would also have to take a very psychedelic approach by perhaps combining psychedelic music and some vocal samples of the character that we see on screen - perhaps a memorable quote from one of the series or a catchphrase.

Applied Animation - National Geographic - Storyboard

Here I have my story board for the National Geographic ident animation. The first image is meant to represent a terminal typing the words 'press button for launch' and the camera would be a still of the screen with some miscellaneous computer sounds. The second image is of  the rocket in a stationary position waiting to take off, I would have noted some sound effects such as crows crowing to give of a kind of desert atmosphere to accompany the landscape that the rocket sits on. The third image is of a computer screen -still shot- with numbers counting down in a launch sequence, in this scene I would include again miscellaneous computer sounds. The fourth image is of a button being pressed, a still shot, I would have perhaps a clicking sound effect in this scene for affect.
In the fourth image is the rocket taking flight and in this scene I would add a sound of a rocket taking off, perhaps a sample of an actual shuttle taking off.
In the last scene I imagined the rocket flying past he national geographic logo, in this instance I have not used the logo - purely to save time.

Applied Animation - National Geographic - Research

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cu07lVDiq_Q

The existing National Geographic idents seem to have a scientific orientation around them, using perception, color (yellow), and certain props such as a chemistry set to convey the atmosphere of the channel.