Evaluation

I am quite pleased with the final piece I have produced for the animation practice module. I had chosen to work mainly in Adobe Flash to produce the main body of the rotoscoped animation. The footage I had was of an old silent film so the quality wasn’t great and therefore some elements were fairly difficult to trace as they were pixelated. I feel this led to some erratic movement in parts of the animation and if my footage had been better the animation would have been smoother. If I had to redo this module I would film my own footage of someone impersonating Charlie Chaplin in that particular scene and use that instead. I decided to stylise my animation using black outlines and filled my character with white. If I had more time I would have liked to colour my character in various shades of gray, black and white to make him appear more realistic.  I would have also liked to have gone in to more detail in the background as I feel this would have added more depth to the animation, maybe including some shading.

The overall finish of the animation is quite pleasing. I would have liked to have done more work on the title cards, made them more decorative but I felt that my time was best spent rotoscoping my animation frames as the movement of the character was most important. I am happy with the grainy distresses effect of the footage and also the use of the circular wipe out to end the animation. The music used in the final piece is from the original Charlie Chaplin film but I would have liked to have composed something of my own to make it more original to me.

Overall, I enjoyed the module and I found myself becoming engrossed in the rotoscoping of the footage. I would definitely rotoscope again as there was nothing more satisfying than completing that final frame!

Chaplin Animation

Final flash animation of Charlie Chaplin to be used in final animation!

Final Backgrounds

Final background images. Decided to draw them on Flash, tracing over the original footage so that they match the final character animation.

Background ideas

A couple of ideas for my backgrounds. Just simple black and white landscape images. I feel that these won't work with the final drawn animation. The first image is too grainy even for a silent film and the second work looks to clear and modern.

Even more animation tests

My third animation test was mainly about trying to master the circular wipe out I will use at the end. I used the same background and swf of my animation. I created a circular mask and feather the edges and the made it smaller using key frames. It works quite well!

More animation tests

Another animation test for my final animation. I imported my partly finished animation as a swf from flash which meant the background hadn't come through as well. Used the same background as before. Need to go back in to Flash and fill in the character. I have decided to fill him in just white with black outline so that he stands out.

Animation Tests

Added my partly finished animation on to the a jpeg of the orginal footage background and used a mask to delete the white background. Searching for a way to import just the animation and no background! Quite pleased with the movement so far though!