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 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.

The Secret Circus - Final Scenes & WIP's

The Secret Circus is currently underway, a lot of shots have been finished by myself and Alice Holmes. The second years I have working on the project are also producing a lot of work too. Despite this there's still a lot of work to be done. I feel though my animation has improved and my knowledge of CelAction has vastly increased. Although there's still lots to do, I am feeling positive about this project.

This is the shot list at the moment;



These are some final scenes;







WIP's;



There's still a fair few scenes to do. Hopefully I can get most of the edited together to finally see how it will look together. The one major part I am concerned about is making the Circus spin. At the moment I am thinking of maybe changing this and instead using a variety of After Effects pre-made illusions to render or maybe making my own sparkles to mix with. I'm going to try a few different techniques and try and make the circus spin itself. However if I feel this isn't working, I will begin to work on something different.

Scenes 1 - 6 of The Secret Circus

First 6 Scenes of The Secret Circus completly animated! Wahoo! The project is making progress now, still a lot to do though!

Scenes 1 - 4

New Animatic

Current Animatic of 13th March 2013. New narration has been added. I animated the opening scene without narration, this proved to work and not work at the same time. I need to add in small bits of animation to bulk it out a bit, however it's coming together slowly.

CelAction & After Effects Typography test

I animated Tilly in CelAction. I created the typography quickly in Photoshop and composited the whole thing in After Effects. Currently I am still toying with the idea of using typography, I feel it would add a nice touch to the piece. I'm going to ask for critique from friends with small children and see if the typography is easily read by children.