Animated documentary: Week 16

During the week I refined the animation, finishing up . I did the additional SFX for the animation in Premiere with sound effects from several resources, considering the depth and the suitable atmosphere. Such as the different kinds of rolling of the wheels where the woven machine is spinning and the movement of the carriage, with similar kind of sounds but tiny difference. I did the SFX in three steps which was adding the atmosphere sounds first, secondly the appropriate effects such as obtaining cocoons from the tree, and finally the edited background music through out the animation. When choosing the music, I was looking for a nearly muted and not distracting audio that works with the voice of the narrator. Chinese flute was what I came up with and started looking for them on varies online sources. The audio I finally decided on and we agreed appears as in the final animation, which I edited it in Adobe Audio again to fit the length and to emphasis the narrator near the ending part.

So finishing up the project I made the DVD screener for our demonstration DVD pack, where we chose the highlight scene of the silk goddess with the woven machine and silk. Though due some printing issue the colour of the final outcome of the printed screener, the contrast level changed and the colour varied a little. But we are pleased with the final outcome of the DVD.

Finally the last step before rendering the animation, I did the the ending sequence with the credit. I decided to use one of the backgrounds with the sun boiling and shift slightly as the credit part, and went back to add the LCA logo to the title sequence as the brief indicated as well.

So here is the final animation I rendered from the final Premiere composition, in H.264 and MP4 format, but compressed to upload to the blog. The HD version could be found in the submission folder. We were happy with the final outcome and I will burn it onto the DVD with cover and screener we produced.

Animated documentary: Week 15

Stepping into the post-production of the animation, I edit the audio track that Bash's dad recorded in Adobe Audio, separating the audio by the script, adding spaces or delete any that is too long. I then edited them by Premiere where I replaced the animatic bits by bits with the final animation, put them in appropriate places. So at the stage we need to test out and add any sound effect to create the atmosphere during the following week, and to gather the animations we did individually in Premiere to finish up the animation.

I also did some frame by frame animation at 6 frames per secs for the threads on the silk woven machine, where the silk goddess make silk from the cocoons she obtained from the leaves. I decided to do it digitally as the water color assets are not transparent whereas I could make the effect by choosing appropriate brush in Photoshop. I tested a few brushes and end up using this one as it demonstrate the texture of threads effectively.

Animated documentary: Week 14

The week was a production week where I kept producing the remaining assets that is needed for the animation, and kept animating. I used the same assets of the hand for each scenes containing the zoomed in hand, and composited the assets for the trader that I did with the background Rey produced. Simultaneously I did tests for the water color backgrounds and assets to see if the texture fits, and decided to use a pencil outline in fore scenes where using water color without pencil outlines for any further scenes to create depth and highlight the main movements.

Here are some stills from the animation I did: