17 // Final Edit

With all the final images layered and imported into After Effects, I spent a day or so working on the final edit. I used all my earlier storyboard and refined storyboards to plan out the best way to present each shot, and opted for a return to some of my earlier camera motions. I had re-watched the first animatic and realised that it had a lot more variety and fluidity to it, which I wanted to capture in the final animation, so I used some of the same techniques here.

Since I'd already went through this kind of process several times, it was pretty easy to get the results I wanted. I also found time to add a few extra lights and glow layers, to add a little more variety and polish to the final render.

The following screen grabs should give an idea of my process for most of the edit:

Following the precomposing of each shot, I arranged them all within the main composition and added the audio track. I'd planned on having a voice-over for the narrative but I was unable to get someone for that job in time as I hadn't planned it well enough. I could've just used my own voice but I'd tested that in a previous animatic (unshared) and it sounded rubbish. So rather than ruin the clip with my own voice I returned to subtitles to get the narrative across.

Editing the subtitles and title was straightforward enough, so this stage went pretty quickly without any problems. The only problem I found was with render times: due to the amount of 3D layers in the footage, the render times were pretty intense on my PC, resulting in a crash at one stage. Thankfully though, I'd allowed enough time that this didn't present too much of a problem and I was able to try again.

The final animation turned out alright I think. I'm fairly happy with it overall (other than the sketchiness of some of the drawings I didn't have time to revisit) and it's taught me quite a lot about my own methods and what skills I need to develop, so that's good.

Here's the final:

16 // Final Images plus Atmospherics

I figured that for completion's sake I should probably post the final image JPEGs with their atmospherics included, to show how they'll look.

I realise there's a little bit of colour manipulation still to be done, but my intention's to take care of that in After Effects later.

15 // Final Images Progress - part 2

Same deal as the last post, just a quick progress update on the final four images.

The files are layered and ready for importing into After Effects - minus the atmospherics layers for each shot, but they take about two minutes each so they'll be done in no time - and editing should be done in a day or so, fingers crossed.

14 // Final Images Progress

Just a quick progress update on the final images' colouring progress.

I managed to get through the first four shots over the past couple of days but have noticed that because of some of the lineart being a bit less refined than others, the colouring process actually suffers a little when it comes to detailing. It's a shame that there's going to be a quality shift at a couple of points in the final animation but there's not a lot I can do about it now. I don't think it's a big enough problem to cause concern, so I'm happy to continue as is.

The files are being worked on in prep for editing as usual in After Effects so there's still a bit of last minute editing to be done with some of the colours - if necessary - in case they're not working out quite right later.

13 // Moving Onto Final Images

I had to take a bit of time away from this project in order to get through some of the other modules, but I'd left this one at a stage where I was confident I'd be able to jump straight back into it and get the images coloured and ready for final editing with time to spare.

There were a couple of instances of lineart that I'd left a little less refined than I would've liked, but I had to bite the bullet and leave them like that - I couldn't spare any more time on that stage just in case I ran out of time for editing later, in case anything went wrong there. It's not as if they're too sketchy looking though, so I don't think it's a major problem - it just bugs me a little to have to leave them like that.

Shortly before getting back to this project I'd spent some time working on my art style in prep for second semester work and I'd refined my technique quite a bit to produce - hopefully - a tighter lineart and more interesting character style. I'd also leveled up my colouring technique a bit, so even though it's too late to apply the new linework style to this - which I would've liked to - I can get the new colour-tech in here and hopefully get a nice result from that. Here are a few shots of my new style:

The way I go about colouring now means that I can get a wider range of values into my images, but my technique's still in development so it's not quite at the level I need it to be just yet. A bit more practice with it and it should be better. I think the style looks way better than the basic cel-shading I was doing before, even though the technique is very similar, albeit with some comic-book colouring methods thrown in to provide  a little more variation and depth.

I spent yesterday getting my working files for this project ready for colouring, which meant I had to get the base colours applied to each shot. With my colour keys as reference, I worked on all eight images at once as I figured this was the best way to go about keeping uniformity throughout them all. With the base colours done, I'll be spending a day or two on shading and highlights before adding final polish and atmospherics, after which they'll be ready to import into After Effects for final editing, animating and rendering.

12 // Colour Themes and Storyboard Finalisation

I spent a few hours today thinking about and applying a test colour scheme to the animation. It was a simple enough process as I was able to take the working files from the lighting exercise and colour-adjust each layer until I had what I was looking for.

As I said in the last post, I was planning on making a cold to colder transition through each shot. I wasn't sure if this was going to be the best approach for the animation and this method of colour application allowed me to test my theory quite easily. It didn't look right to me when I tried it, as there wasn't much variety throughout the colour scheme, so I opted for a cold to warm transition, while still maintaining that it should also go from light to dark, to reflect the narrative.

I tested out a few different colours during this process but eventually settled on the blue to dark red theme. It seems to be more effective at matching the comic-book style of my illustrations, although seems a little garish in places. I'll be able to tweak the colours easily enough when it comes to producing the finals though, so there's still room for improvement.

The first couple of shots definitely need to be made lighter - I imagine those scenes to be set in a daytime, snowy environment so I'll need to boost the lighting later on, which should also benefit the change to dark as the story progresses.

I'm quite happy with how the last few shots turned out; as the narrative describes Maal Ta'raath becoming a slave of the dark lord the setting shifts to the hellish underworld and the evil that consumes Maal, so the warm tones suit that transition quite well I think.

My colouring technique makes it quite easy to test different colours on the fly, so when it comes to the final illustrations I'm confident that I'll be able to make a few tweaks wherever necessary and get the colours exactly as I'm imagining.

I didn't plan the character's colours much as I intend to make the demon-hunters look similar to the Witch Hunter I made a few months ago. As for the dark lord guy, I don't have too much of an idea what to do for him yet, but I'll figure that out as I get closer to doing his final shot.

I also went back and had a look at the first animatic that I produced. It seemed to have a lot more fluidity and variety in the shots, so I took this into account and applied the same camera movements to the new storyboard. again, when it comes to editing, it's simple enough to make adjustments on the fly so if I come up with any fresh ideas for that side of things I can do it quite easily.

11 // Further Refinements

After reviewing the revised animatic with it's atmospheric and parallax effects added in, my priority this week was to sort out a few of the things that I felt needed immediate attention as a means of refinement before I go on to produce the final artwork.

The main thing was to get some audio sorted out for it. This would serve two purposes: firstly, adding a music track would add to the atmosphere of the animation and give it some life; and secondly, a voice-over of the narrative would help me to see if there were any problems with the flow of the shots.

I had some music (Machinimasounds.com) from a previous college project which suited the fantasy genre well, so I gave it a shot and placed it onto the animation in AE. It worked pretty well, it's quite a powerful piece of music so it brought a lot of extra emotion to the piece. Also, the timing of the music matched my animatic quite nicely without any of the shots needing adjusted.

As for the voice-over, I recorded myself reading from the refined narrative script as the animatic played silently. This way, I could match the narrative accordingly with each shot, adjusting the pace where necessary. It took a couple of goes, but I got it as well as I needed to for this stage - it's really just a means to an end, to see what areas of narrative might need adjusting to sync well with the animation.

I won't share the new animatic with it's audio, as my voice-over sounds a bit daft and is a little embarassing, but I learnt that I'll need to add an extra bit of dialogue to one of the earlier lines in order to have a narrative that keeps a nice pace throughout. There seemed to be a slight gap of silence that could do with filling.

The next thing I wanted to do was test out my ideas for the lighting scenarios of each shot. Since the beginning I'd planned to make the lighting play quite a major role in each shot. I'm still learning about lighting and it's uses in illustration, so having 8 shots to figure out is quite a challenge. I drew up a few examples of how I initially imagine the lighting to work and applied some shading to the refined storyboard stills.

I'm hoping that the animation will go from light to dark, based upon the darkness of the blade consuming Maal Ta'raath. In terms of colour, I still only have some vague ideas for this in my head at the moment, but I'll maybe produce some colour keys to give some indications soon. The colours will likely start quite cold and get colder as the shots go on (I'm not sure if this is a good idea though, it might be better to give some variation in the temperature throughout the animation, I'll test it out and see how it goes).

So that's where I'm at now, with my next step being to plan a little more variety in the storyboard shots - another student recommended I give the Witcher 3's cinematics a watch; I was impressed by the variety of shots they were using and knew I had to take a similar approach in my own work. I think I had more variety in the first animatic, so I'll need to review that and see where I went wrong.