d◨-◨med n00sletter - WEEK #015

Rooftop fun.

Finishing my last animation test this week went smoothly.

I approved the character design the previous week on Saturday. I spend a few hours preparing the file for animation in Photoshop. The new angle shows Ozzy from the back at a 3/4 side. I had to create a separate rig for the body, but I would never do any heavy animation on this angle, so this was pretty straightforward. I wanted the hair strands to move independently, so I had to separate some elements and assign some dangling properties to look natural.

I once again used the webcam to translate the movement of my head onto the character’s body. I had some issues with the body stretching and distorting the shape. I decided to pin the legs and the hip to one point so the body behaved more rigidly.

If you follow this newsletter, you will know that I have already shot the footage for the rooftop a couple of times. Unfortunately, what I had wasn’t usable, so I had to do it again.

The main two reasons for the reshoot were framing and lighting. I've consulted the footage with a friend who specialises in photography, and she gave me some good pointers on how to do it better next time. As for lighting, London is notoriously famous for bad weather, so all my previous footage featured a cloudy rooftop view.

I had my window opportunity this week when the weather was perfect. Yet, due to the sun, I had to wait for the right time to match the lighting on my character’s design.

Here’s me waiting on the sunroof for perfect lighting conditions.

Once I had decent footage and animated character, it was time to combine it all in After Effects.

I tracked all selected takes and matched the movement with the animation. I edited the footage and covered some animation flows I didn’t want to include. For the wide angle, I made some masks for the roof railings so the character looks like it’s standing behind it. I also added some shadows under the element to better compose it in the scene.

Next was sound design, something I’m not experienced with. I kept the original audio from the rooftop view. There was an ambulance sound in one of the takes that I originally didn’t like. After trying it out and cutting back to Ozzy’s POV of the ambulance, I decided it worked well and kept it.

The first few lines of my character in the bit are; “ This city is like a giant beehive.”

I thought this was a good time to use an establishing shot. I used drone stock footage of London, which shows the city on a grand scale, setting up the scene nicely.

You can see the animation test I’ve created below.