Out Of Your Head
For this group project, we based the story on 5 random words; tortoise, star, fall, love and ask. We decided to animate the film in After Effects using techniques we’d learnt in the motion graphics rotation. After taking into account the 20 second time limit we had been set, we decided to go for a simple storyline, leading us to start researching various children’s stories, reflecting on their simplicity, to help us to learn how to break town a tale into its key parts. Our tale consists of a lonely, old tortoise who no longer had his partner and would watch the sky miserably, thinking he was the only one who was alone in the world. However, he suddenly sees a lonely star fall from the sky and rescues her. They then agree to run away together and they run off into the distance.
Story Board
Once we’d thought of the initial idea for the story, we created a story board to help plan out the scenes and work out the different assets that we’d need to make.
Mood Board
We then collected reference images of characters, backgrounds and styles that we could use to create our concepts.
Character Concept
Since there were going to be 3 main scenes, we each created a background in Illustrator. We also created the 2 characters with all the different poses that we would need.
Animating
Then bringing all the different elements into After Effects we each animated a scene following what we had already planned with the story board. Once all the scenes were complete we exported them and imported them into Premiere Pro to composite them together. We had to cut a lot of the scenes shorter to fit it to the 20 second time frame. However, this improved the film as a whole as we eliminated the worst bits and kept the best bits which lifted the overall quality. We also sped up and slowed down various parts to help the scenes flow together better.
Music Composition
When we were happy with the timing and spacing, it was time to add sound. I used a software called MuseScore which allows you to compose music for any instruments. I decided to use piano and cello as I feel like they sound great when combined which also reflects on the 2 characters coming together in the film. Since I didn’t have an actual piano with me when we were working on this I also found an app that let me convert my touchscreen laptop into a virtual piano. I tried to reflect the mood of the film in the music, so to emphasise that the tortoise is sad and lonely, I began the music with 3 low chords that when combined sounded serious and sad. I did these chords with just the cello to portray the loneliness of the tortoise. The mood then changed when he saw the lonely star, so to represent this in the music I brought in the piano, climbing the notes higher and higher to show hope and the spark that the tortoise is feeling. The chords that are being played by the cello also change at this point to match the piano. Meanwhile the piano keeps climbing up till it reaches the highest note at the same time as the tortoise is changing from sad to happy. It then holds this note to add contrast to this special moment as the tortoise dramatically smashes through the window in slow motion. The piano then continues with a twinkly sort of tune whilst another line of piano joins in harmonizing it. This matches up with the tortoise and the star coming together and the music then fades out as they walk off together into the distance. As well as the music, we also recorded sound effects for everything such as the footsteps, the smashing window, the star falling, the tortoise crying etc. However, when we compared the version with the sound effects and with just the music we felt that it was better with just the music.
Final Film
I enjoyed working in a group for this project as everyone has their own styles and ways of doing things and sees things differently which adds variety and allowed us to learn from each other. I think we worked well together and I learnt a lot more than I would have if I was doing this independently. I think we could have improved the film by sticking to a more consistent colour palette as well as creating more poses for the characters to give them more movement, but apart from that I think this project came out very well and I’m happy with it.