Even though a large focus of our project is user generated backgrounds,  for the sake of consistency in the animation, we do require some of our own. 

This is the star town through which the parent stars scramble to find their children! There’s two angles, one from a birds eye view, and one more close up. You’ll see how these come into play i the animation, but the first is used for a very aerial and distant sequence where we see the parents dance around the town like sparks.

The following scene is more close up and personal, and allows us to describe the parents despondence in the context of star town. 

Mitchell Galavan

June 2nd
12:14 PM
# Mitchell Galavan

I modified some assets for specific use in a number of scenes.

These minimal alterations can change an expression from confused, to looking to another for assurance. It can also switch the parent stars expression from content to despondent.

Being able to create such small changes to the character, but end up with radically different emotions was something I had really strived to achieve throughout this project!

Mitchell.

June 2nd
12:09 PM
# Mitchell Galavan

Over the past number of weeks I have been creating assets as each member needed them. These are the assets I’ve updated and created for myself and other members. 

There’s over 24 individual meteors, not including those at the base of the monsters body. 

Mitchell.

June 2nd
12:05 PM
# Mitchell Galavan
Using the puppet tool I can create some pretty neat loops to bring different pieces of the animation to life. As the monster chargers, I can have him breathe and pulse.

Using the puppet tool I can create some pretty neat loops to bring different pieces of the animation to life. As the monster chargers, I can have him breathe and pulse. 

May 28th
4:53 PM
# Mitchell Galavan
A preview of what I’m working on for one of my animation scenes.

A preview of what I’m working on for one of my animation scenes.

May 28th
1:53 AM
# alder cass
Another piece of the animation. Mitchell

Another piece of the animation. 

Mitchell

May 27th
10:50 PM
# Mitchell Galavan

Working with Illustrator & Flash

Ken and I (Alder) will be working in Flash to animate our scenes, with assets created in Illustrator, as we are much more experienced with using the two in the animation process, and also for what we wish to achieve Flash seems far more appropriate than After Effects. Although assets have already been created by Mitchell using Photoshop, they are all raster and therefore unsuitable for Flash animation, so I will be regenerating the graphics we need using Illustrator to take advantage of their much cleaner scalability.

Benefits of Flash:

  • More intuitive, cleaner workspace/interface than After Effects
  • Motion Tweening much more streamlined than the AE equivalent
  • Movie clips can be used for easier looping of animated assets
  • An external library can be used for me and Ken to easily share assets
  • Vectorised graphics mean much cleaner, high-fidelity scaling
  • Scenes can be used to break up long pieces of footage

Drawbacks:

  • Far fewer file format options for exporting clips, although to get around this we can just export our scenes in SWF format, bring them into After Effects, and render them from there.
May 27th
4:19 PM
# Alder Cass
# ken kidney