The Secret Circus - Work in Progress!

Exciting developments for The Secret Circus. The film has been completly animated now, so the only thing left is sound editing. I rendered the whole film as TIF sequences the other day, and created several quick rough-cuts using Quicktimes to give a feel for the film. Final editing in progress;





I designed the DVD cover and disc earlier too;

The Secret Circus - Tilly jumps into the Circus

One of the most important shots for The Secret Circus is when Tilly jumps into the circus. This scene needs to be magical and really engaging to the audience. My initial idea was to make the circus spin along with sparkling at the same time. However due to time, I decided not to make the circus spin, instead, I made the circus sparkle, both by using preset animations in After Effects and creating my own sparkles in CelAction (I re-used the previous sparkles from Tilly leaving the circus scene) Although I am quite dissapointed I couldn't make the circus spin, I felt the sparkles were much better and worked with the storyline instead, especially as Tilly leaves the circus in a cloud of glitter. Here are the WIPs and development shots of Tilly's bedroom scene;


First scene;

This scene involves Tilly jumping, a first development shot without the darkness of the bedroom. As well the stars I rendered in After Effects were red at this point, which I ended up changing through to yellow.



The second take on, this time now with the night-time background. However the stars remained the same in this one. This was to show how the night-time background would work.

With crit from Derek, Kathy & Niki, this scene then developed further. I changed the stars to white at this point, as well this part is critical, the jump needed to be slower and the whole point of Tilly jumping into the circus needed to be emphasised. Kathy, Derek and Niki suggested a close-up and a pan to aid the viewer when watching the film. As this is aimed at young children making sure they understand what is going on is crucial. Adding in the close-up has really emphasised the scene and made it much clearer to the viewer of what's going on. I also added some stars around Tilly too which I feel completes the atmosphere and makes a really interesting and magical setting.





To show the WIP;




This scene was animated by Alice Holmes.

Eye for an Appetite - Final Animations.

I created Four animations for the project 'Eye for an Appetite' One is still underway, however this is being animated by myself and Phoebe Herring. The four I have done myself are complete. I had a few tweaks to a few and there. The Fox and Rabbit animation now loops;




I also created 'The Death of the Fox'. This sequence illustrates how once an animal has deceased, bacteria and micro organisms will begin to break down the solid material. The remains of the animal will decompose naturally and fertilise the soil, thus allowing more life to grow. I chatted to the director who suggested a 'wave' of bacteria. I did this in Flash, to get a more realistic motion of water, rather than using CelAction. The Wave Animation started out as a simple blue animation, from there I exported the piece as a PNG sequence which I then bought into Photoshop. I painted each frame, using the same colour pallet, however I varied the brushes from frame to frame. I added in small green dots as well to illustrate the bacteria. Here's the animation of the basic wave and the final painted wave;




From there, I animated the fox. I used the same fox as in the previous animation 'Head of the Food Chain'. After the fox gets destroyed by the bacteria, I created an underground background, in which the fox's skeleton lies until it fades out, illustrating the decomposition process. The camera then pans up to a background above ground, in which fresh flowers grow. Thus illustrating the process of decomposition and how the remains of the fox help fertilise the soil. This is the animation I completed;



However, upon review from the Director, he felt it needed to end with the Fox's remains lying on the fertilised soil. This I then changed as so;



The final animationis that of a Beetle, explaining how energy transfer works. The grass the Beetle eats has 100% energy, the beetle eats the grass, however only received 10% of that energy. The other 90% of the energy is given away to reporoduction, movement, growth etc.



This still needs a bit of work, just to extend the animation.

The Secret Circus - Tilly says Goodbye.

Tilly leaving the circus has been animated. I wanted to gain quite a magical atmosphere, so created a lot of stars in photoshop, both normal and some with more of a 50's vibe to them. when animating them, I made some move faster than others, I tried to make all of them move at a varying pace. I kept to quite a simple pastel colour scheme of blues, yellows and pinks. The clouds I created with a paper texture and gingham fabric merged and overlayed on each other. I tried to animate the cloud swirl in Flash, however I felt it wasn't working (I didn't keep a copy of this). I felt the clouds in CelAction worked better, I got some critique from Elliot, Phoebe and Lauren. Lauren thought the clouds needed slowing down, as did Phoebe. Elliot felt they gave more of a sleepy feel especially as she was leaving to go back to bed. I worked with what they said to create this piece. I also used After Effects to create some light, simple stars which float in the background, just to add a bit more to the piece. I still need to add in the 'pop' of smoke as Tilly is whisked home.

The Crowd - The Secret Circus

The Crowd for The Secret Circus. Only a short shot as I felt it didn't need much, however I wanted to create an exciting atmosphere. I created each character by making one individal model, then in CelAction, I created it so the model could change their hair/clothing easily.

By layering up the clothing and the hair in Photoshop, it meant in CelAction I could easily scroll through a variety of hairstyles and clothing to create a variety of characters. I changed the skin tone in Photoshop, creating 3 Actors in CelAction and repeating the process. I then animated the moving characters in different files to gain a variety of movements, then exported them all as PNG sequences and exported some static characters as PNGs before putting it together in After Effects. I haven't given the characters legs, as this will be hidden by the Circus Ring.



The first render without the background.



The Crowd rendered with a quick background.