Business of Animation- Live Brief

Heinz
The Heinz brief is to create an advert showing how fun and zingy it is to eat Salad cream. Getting young children as excited about salad cream now as they used to be. I planned to create foods which you would salad cream on. I took inspiration from old cereal adverts and tried to show how Salad cream brings out excitment and energy in food. Here is the first attempt:



I was given feedback that the chip (on top of the diving board) was unclear and so I had to change it. Otherwise I had not added sound yet which was another element I need to improve on. This aniamtion may have been alot better if I had generic characters for the foods but due to time shortage i was unable to do this, I know this is not realy a valid excuse but it is the truth. Here is the animation after I re-made the chip into a piece of broccoli and added sound:



I had a little play around with the colours aswell because i recieved feedback that the purple fence looked like the it was from catfood 'whiskers' advert. I feel that the sound can be improved, Im not a particular fan of the 'splat' when the broccoly lands in the salad cream. but in terms of aniamtion I feel that the story makes sense and is visually exciting with bright colours and believeable behaviours.

Kino 10
The Kino10 brief is to create a 5-20 second ident, which they will be able to play at the beginning of shows. I took this oppertunity to learn some new After Effects tutorials and  just have a play with all the different settings i could. The brief states that they want; something internet bloggers will talk about, something that will show some history of animation and look towards the future. Pretty tall order for 20 seconds, but I tried to fit as much as i could in.
I took the audio from Matt Tucker http://soundcloud.com/snare_65 
I had to edit the volume a bit so that when the screen fuzzes up, the volume drops. I tried to add soem static but that ruined the song. I felt the track without the static was a bit more elegent.

I animated this a few times. I came back to it at later dates in attempt to make it more interesting but not over the top, this also gave me a chance to experiment with alot of the presets on After Effects. Here are the 3 stages I went through:



At first i put in all the elements that the brief asks for, the different animation apparatus are shown centre screen, reffering to the history and the entire animation shows a stand by screen with a count down which is a classic intro to a feature film. Problems were that it was too long and needed a bit more umph!



So here i may have gone a bit over board, firstly i cut it down to 12 seconds but i also wanted to make it look as though the film was skipping. The feedback i got was that it made people throw up a little. so i knwe i had to slow it down.



Finally I slowed it down a whole lot and made the background lighter so that the logo and text pops a bit more. I also recieved feedback that because the text 'please stand by' is too fine it may be fuzzy when played on a tv screen, I felt fine with that because it will only add to the effect im attempting to portray. I may think about adding the music from the origional back in.

Business of Animation- Chello Zone Promos

ITALIAN MONTH, 15 SecHere is the first attempt at the 'Italian Month' advert. I story-boarded this quickly but felt I had to see it on screen so that I could make improvements on it, I always work with the thought that the best way to do something is to re-do it. Because the theme is on italian food, its realy hard to get away from the whole resteraunt scene. The example video shown to us was also in a resteraunt which is annoying, I may do this animation- work on other projects and then come back to this when the creative juices are realy flowing. I thought bringing a chef into it would be a nice idea because sterotypical Italian chefs are always bragging how good thier food is.





I think this is good enough for now, as I say I will come back to this and improve it later.

SUGAR RUSH SUNDAYS, 5 Sec
I feel realy happy with this one. Before I herd the audio track we had to aniamte to, I had two ideas; the first was sugar cubes breaking free from a sugar pot and rushing over to the TV which would have 'Sugar rush Sundays' on. The second was derived from the fast pace editing of You Tube videos of a girl playing with cookery props and images of sweet foods flying around the screen. This is what the origional story boards looked like:

The drawings are fast and sketchy, because I was more concerned about creating the final images on Photoshop, rather than perfecting the story board, as this is the 'buisness of animation' the focus was on the final outcome, more than the pre production. The closest  idea to the audio was the sugar cubes, but as the audio was only 5 seconds long I changed the sugar cubes to sprinkles, and thought they could sky dive into ice cream!  and so heres the new story board:

And heres the animation:


I find my work looks a more and more professional as I do more projects.

I later decided to redo this aniamtion because there was not enough of  a variety of sweets on desplay. Aslo I wanted to have a go at playing with different types of text. So in this animation I learnt how to 'pre comp' effectively in After Effects, and pre comping effectively allowas me to go back and change any small part of the aniamtion without disrupting the rest of the animation. Here is the Final:



STREET FOOD MONTH, 5 Sec

I had a few ideas for this animation. I think all of them are as good as each other. The first idea was pretty long, it felt that aniamting this would not fit the sound clip. But still it was my favourite and i would make it work if I could. While making this animation I was still learning Adobe After Effects and wanted to experiment with textures and lighting.

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The second idea (above) was simple but I think it has been done before. I was actually planning to go out and film a fast food worker, flipping a burger, and then aniamte the text on top. In hind sight this would have been the best choice because I could have had a go at compositing in After Effects, which is something I still need to do.  The third idea (below) was another simple plan. A pizza dlivery driver on the road, and the pizza boxes shuffel about as the bike hits a bump on the road to reveal the 'Street Food' logo. This animation seemed simple to start off with  but creating the street and buildings actually take alot of work, and it is not possible to repeat them. I attempted it but it was clear, where I had repeated them. Also, the main reason I diddn't use this is because it is too close to Pizza, (one type of food) and I wanted to show a diversity of fast foods.

So I went back to my origional idea to see if i could infact take a 10 second idea into a 5 second aniamtion.

I made a quick story board and then started aniamting:

One Small problem I faced was delaying some of the trucks that passed by, this was because I diddn't want the screen to be still when the sign came up. The final bumper looks preety good, it could be a little lighter but I like the contrast between the sunset and buildings, also the darkness makes the text on the board stand ot more.

Business of Animation- The Project Brief

New Year, new projects, and boy do they come in large bundles. This years new years reseloution is to better my professional online profile, and althougth I've had a late start to it, its one that im hoping to actually do!

On to the projects...
We have 3 small briefs, which are 5-15 second advert comps for Chello Zone CBS.
-Streetfood Month
-Sugar Rush Sundays
-Italian Month
But at the moment we only seem to have the audio for 'Italian Month', so I guess the others will have to wait.

Then 4 larger briefs, which I believe are Live competitions but sound fun.
-SEGA, 20th aniversary of sports interactive
-BLKY, mobile inbox content design
-Kino10, promo


And finally I have my first client!
And theres more information on that in the menu bar at the top of the page ^^