Please see prior posts for additional process and background information. Post 1 Post 2
Collaboration Process:
Todd and I worked really well together. We started by breaking down the tasks so that we would eat be able to work on parts of the piece separately.
Todd and I split up the work as follows:
Visual asset creation (background and characters) – Daniel
Sound design and audio asset creation – Todd
Main character animation (Walkman and CD Player) – Todd
Ensemble and background animation – Daniel
We were lucky enough to be in NYC so we met on the floor to compile our piece together.
Animation:
After completing the character animations for the Troll Doll and Echo Mic, I started on the background. Making the scene feel like a club through the lighting peeked my interested.
I spent some time playing with the movement of the anchor point in order to replicate club lighting. Here is a shot of the scene without characters and only the lighting.
While working with Todd to compile the final piece, I noted that the stage reminded me of The Sally Jessy Raphael Show but I want able to place why. I was able to find the following clip from an episode that affirms my feeling.
I also found this course on character animation by Angie Taylor through LinkedIn Learning to be very helpful.
Challenges:
Since I was most interested in the process of working collaboratively withing After Effects, I spent time figuring out how Todd and I would integrate our work together withing AE. I looked out how the files would import, where to place items withing AE so that I could easily identify them, and mapping assets correctly. In the end, I learned a lot about the challenges faced when merging different versions together and how to do it successfully.
Overall:
This was a fun project to work on with Todd. Originally, we had planned a much longer story to tell, but quickly realized that the animation would take much longer then we had to tell the entire story. We decided to focus on completing the first scene from our story board.
In the future, I might finish animating this piece as it aligns with my interested in tech reuse, repair and recycling. This piece was envisioned to be a PSA for tech recycling initiatives, specifically the Lower East Side Ecology Center’s E-waste program. Unfortunately, that program is yet another casualty of 2020. I do hope that it finds new opportunity to reopen.