Lifting Tower Xmas Projection

After a couple of weeks of further animation development and re-tweaks, plus group discussion on our facebook group page, keeping each other up-to-date of each others progress (or not in some cases) this project was nearing completion.

I've filled my animations out a bit more, making sure there isn't too much 'dead-time' where there's isnt anything moving. People are only going to taking a glimpse of the projection so i wanted to keep it eye-catching, but simple looking. After a project meeting this week where we presented the work we had completed so far, our group is in a pretty healthy place as far making the deadline. 

Tri-Tree development

To fill some of the dead space in the corners, and to make it generally a bit more interesting to look at, I've added streamers. I settled for a more straight forward transition in the end; in my mind i would've had them maybe fall down at the end along with the tree, or go baggy. I'm still very much learning the core basics of A.e and with time running on this i didn't have the hours to sit watch tutorials on how to make it do exacty what i want. Frustration with own abilities is beginning to creep in somewhat.

Advent candle development.(below) From sketches to the last experimentation in A.e using masks to create melting effects. The spinning dots on the green disc represent the 24 days leading up to xmas day, but i'm not entirely happy with how they're looking at the moment. 

Will try and develop that element of it, but otherwise I'm quite pleased with how the candles look and move in general. 

I'm starting to really get back into this whole animating lark.i know it's only simple stuff that I'm doing, but for the sort of work i like to produce it's all it really needs. I'm at the tipping point where i'll either walk away from it to refocus on static digital work, or ill be further drawn into the A.e world and will be exploring the countless other effects and techniques. But at the same time I'm not sure i wanted to be sat in front of a computer screen for days on end just to produce a 10 sec bit of moving animation...?

Lifting Tower Xmas Projection - animations tests…

After meeting with the Lifting Tower group, there was a talk about which designs we should focus on and develop for the animation. It was agreed that my '12Days' concept was probably a bit too complex and intricate to make into an effective projection image - but if i could combine the simple graphics from my 2nd concept and apply them to the '12 Days' storyboard then i might be in business.

So i set about simplifying the drawings into simple vector graphics, and doing some test animatics.

As far as a group project goes, i'm not really sure where this one is headed - as the two animators i've been grouped with have already made the graphics they intend to animate (well one of them has) so i cant see where they would need an illustrator.? My animations are pretty developed, as far a tests go, so wouldn't need a lot of tweaking if they got the green light. We've been told that we're not expected to make work that looks similar to our other group members, but they have to transistion smoothy - i just don't see how that can happen if we all have different styles of illustration/animation, that it appears we all individually want to illustrate/animate.

Lifting Tower Xmas Projection...

After finally deciding to have a go at creating some concept designs for the Lifting Tower project i made them a bit more developed than i needed to and thus ran out of time to sumbit, which was a shame as i'd done a fair bit of development in the end. After hearing that there wasn't much of a submission response from the illustration group i felt bad, and that i should be representing the course so i requested an extension, i wouldn't usually do it as i understand full well that a deadline is a deadline - but i was in luck this time and got my proposals finished and turned in.

Proposal 1

Proposal 2.

Lifting Tower - Xmas Lighting Project

Area that the projection will fill.

I've been a bit to & fro with whether to take part in this project. As much as i'd like to project my designs onto the side of a building i'm not sure that i could produce something that could be both cool and non-traditional and cheesey (or either)? I'd also been preoccupied with trying to sort out what i'm doing as far as my COP dissertation goes so i haven't got a lot of time to get my initial proposal designs together before the initial deadline.

Having said all that, it looks like a good and rare opportunity to work with projections, and could also oil my After Effects cogs - so i'll make a last ditch effort to sumbit a couple of concept ideas; one illustrative one minimal/graphic/shape based.