jumpjump

Video Breakdown

Added 2018-03-03 16:45:26 +0000 UTC

I was listening to a few tunes done by a buddy of mine. Here is his Soundcloud:

https://soundcloud.com/facade-the-slacker

From listening to his latest work I started to get a few ideas for very simple videos to go with them. Nothing complected, just something I believed I could do.

For this I decided to go with a simple looping animation using one of my original characters, Adamantha. So I sat back and listened to the track "Coffee Liqueur & a Woman" and drew what came to mind. The biggest hurdle I have to face is that I have no idea what it is I'm doing. I have a big problem with reading tutorials as I just end up coping them and not learning anything (I think that makes sense).

Anywho, after about an hour and a half I got my draft done:

Now I started to see how efficiently I could go about making this.

I had to start thinking about frame rates and making it look as smooth as I could. I decided to give Ada two extra frames of animation to have to hair move a little better and not have the movement so jarring:

Her hair is quite differently to how I normally do it. I guess that I was worried about how difficult it would be to animate, but looking back, I think I could have done it. I think it's a lack of confidence.

I was happy with what I had so far with her and I moved onto the background.

Now I needed to see how it was with the curtains:

I had 4 frames looping for the curtains. Not the best looking thing in the world, but it kinda works. Now lets see what happened when I add Ada to the mix?

Hmm, see that? The curtains stop for two frames at the end of Ada's Loop. As I gave her the extra frames, it's effected the other animation layers. This is not a problem at all as I plan to have them exported as two separate animations and I will put the together in after effects.

So everything is going to plan and it's working well. I think it's time to add some colour to this little puppy!

First I work on our happy little lady. With some simple shading, a little highlighting (and 8 animation folders), she is done!

I think that If I am able to plan these better, I won't end up with so many folders, but I learn by doing and doing I shall do!

With Adamantha done, I colour in the curtains:

Ah, it's coming together very well. Just three animation layers for the curtains this time.

Now time to add colour to the rest of it!

Now this is where it starts to get tricky.

Having saved it as two separate animations, I was able to get them into after effects and have them loop seamlessly with each other. Sadly when I loaded them in and played the music, it was moving a little too fast. I had to use time stretch to slow down the movement. It worked well and I moved forward. After Effects soon started to get a little cluttered with all the things I was trying to do with it:

While I was listening to the music I was planning on using, I was getting flashbacks of using my old VHS tapes and how bad some of them got. I wanted to get that look and feel. Doing this made my cpu fan die on me and it took a week before I was able to get a replacement.

I'm not even sure where to start when it comes to the opening for this. I had to rely on some stock footage and sound for the distorted tape (I would've made my own, but I don't have the things necessary to make it right now). While it is very simple, the timer you see in the top right corner took a very like time to do. It gets less then 10 seconds of time visible, but it took me over an hour to make it!