Design 4 Media: Studio Project (Step4d)

So I've finally put something together that actually shows the beginnings of an animation at work, and not just a practice run. Yes, it's small, but it is on its way! I've finally added the colored background, but I still haven't added the pattern overlay on the outfit. I did try to figure out a way how but didn't get very far. I'm assuming it would have to do something with setting the layers to multiply and applying a vector mask.... I didn't get as much done as I would have liked to for this final meeting; I was hoping to have finished her picking up the doll, smiling, and hugging it to her. I only got to her bending down to lift up the doll, grabbing a hold of it, and picking it up. Still, that took me hours. I did also figure out what I was doing wrong that was making my videos so fast, but sadly I didn't figure it out until about halfway through what I was working on. So, the first bit is still faster than I would like it to be but the second half is much better!

Design for Media: Studio Project (Step4c)

This time I attempted to animate the facial features of my character using After Effects. Once again I assumed it would be easier than it was, but it was still definitely fun and I was pleased with the result until I saw how quickly it played once rendered.

Obviously with my character there aren't many facial features to animate, but what I attempted was zooming in on her face, a breeze through her hair, and then her reaction which is slightly hunching her shoulders and a smile with squinting eyes. Once again, it turned out much faster of an animation than I would have liked it to be, but hopefully this is something I'll learn to catch earlier on in the creating process.

This is definitely getting to be quite enjoyable, actually. It was especially fun (and hardest) to create the seperate pieces of hair and animate them by themselves. This simple animation took me hours, however.