20 Second Short Production - Angry !!!

Whilst being in Production, Thaxnay and myself have found a really great way of working, and we enjoy how we both contribute to each scene; some more than others. We have taken a real likening to animating in After Effects, and having that freedom especially for me, who is not so experienced at after effects, to jump in with Thax, and have a go at being able to simultaneously animate a scene, and then add the effects, our Maya backgrounds com posited in behind everything, it has in a way simplified what is already a complex workflow. As our short, is heavily laden on the use of effects; the film relies on several com posited layers to create each scene. Each scene is then given a dirty overlay to make the film look old, and then is given the Blue & Red channels to make the scene Ana glyph 3D.
Aside the layouts, which were created by Thax, I contributed heavily on the artistic direction style. In After effects, Thax and I would sit down and I would talk to him about how each scene should look, how each component should perform, and then he would suggest idea's, and we'd continuously throw idea's down into our compositions, but in regards to the scientist character; he was animated in separate components. Each arm, was a separate component to the body, the body separate to a head, and when it was necessary for certain scenes, fingers would be separate components to the actual hand, depending on how we wanted the scene to look, and what we wanted to happen in that scene. We believe it gives us a very Zany, edgy graphic look, that also makes the film look low-budget and rather old; but to our advantage, it woks well with the film being in Ana glyph 3D because such complex animation would not allow us anytime to take in the depth in the picture that we have worked to create. Plus with the time frame we work against, and the amount of scenes and scope that we cover in our short story, we have a fast-cut style in the film where we cut from scene-to-scene rather quickily, if we had a busy animation style, there may be too much in our scenes, happening, that an audience would simply not be able to take everything in that was visually occurring in front of them.

Here we have some of the body components of the scientist that were used within the film. I photoshopped these, and then they were composited into After Effects, and we breathed life into the Scientist. Some Angry life.

And we have a still from the finished shot. We reversed the body to face the left of the screen, as we felt from a viewers perspective, this angle would be easier for an audience to engage with, as opposed to the other side. You can see the motion blurring on the hands, where he is in motion, and the Autodesk Maya backgrounds have been composited in, and with Stereoscopic camera's in the Maya programme, have helped to enhance the 3D look, and the character has been left in regular 2D, so that the background is indeed pushed back, to make way for the illusion that the scientist is indeed at the front of the screen. The Illusion works . There is also some lightning done in power surge tools in the background, and in this scene, there is some sparks that emit from the top of the frame and the right hand side, which produce mild lens flares as they emit.