Finished Animations / Sound / Evaluation

Choosing the soundtracks for my animation was harder than I expected.  All my tracks had to be edited to fit the 15 - 20 seconds which was challenging because you have to be careful where the music stops or it will sound like it just finishes in mid air. Using the last 20 seconds of the song helped but then the start was an issue.

Snake Splatter
For my Snake Splatter video I used a great part of Gwen Stefani's Yummy at the end which is just drums and sound effects of drills and things. As a storyboarded this animation before choosing the music I had to make the sound effects fit the action, the wrong way round. I had to change some of the actions so that they would work well with the music.

Using audacity, I cut the music off before the trumpets came in and then copy and pasted the end of the song which has the WEE! sound effect for the exploding square. It took some nudging backwards and forwards to make it sound right but I managed it quite well i think.


Lightning Tree
Again, for this video, I took the end of the song clip and pasted it onto the end of my composition. This was for the sound effect of Lady Gaga's face burning up, or in my video, the tree returning to the ground. I'm really pleased with how this dramatic music works with my scene. The lightning flashes were timed with the loud drums in the soundtrack using markers in After Effects, and I chose the music before I storyboarded or even decided what my idea was so I managed to get a good match between visuals and sound.


Shoes
Although I like this song (again i used the start and the end pasted together) I am not at all happy with the animation. I spent too long on the first two and ran out of time to make this one any good. I tried to hide the fact that nothing really happens with a shape that changes colour to the music but it didn't work. To do this I used the hue rotate effect - which i pick-whipped to an audio levels layer that I made using the 'make audio into keyframes' tool.

Overall I am quite happy with what I did. Hopefully my first two animations make up for the third. I learned a lot about after effects and  I'm looking forward to using it on more complex footage.
I do have some screenshots but blogger wont let me upload any pictures :(

Alejandro / Lightning

I've chosen another purely percussion soundtrack for the second animation. I didn't do this on purpose but after listening to loads of bits of songs looking for a suitable 20 seconds I found that it was hard to cut a piece of music in the middle of a melody without it sounding like it's obviously been cut.

The section of music is taken from the Lady Gaga video for Alejandro:

Auto starts at 0:48

These pictures show the kind of look i'm after:

I really like these black and white pictures of lightning storms. I will synchronise the drums in the soundtrack with lightning flashes on screen.

 

From the actual video

Splats research

After showing Kate my first animation she said I need to make my splats more realistic:

Wall splat

When the blob hits the wall it needs to completely stick to the wall, with no gaps. Also the outside curve needs to be smoother.
Splat to snake

To make this splat look more realistic I will look at how splats work in real life and in cartoons.
A splat from the internet


This splat wobbles a bit after it hits the wall.

Animation One

My first animation tells the story of a ball that splats against a wall, then falls on the floor and splats so much that it turns into a snake. Then it snakes it's way off a ledge, falls down again and folds into a square.

The soundtrack I will be using is this part of Gwen Stefani's 'Yummy':

(Video starts at 3:57)


On each sound effect I would like to have an action such as a splat, but because I drew my storyboard before I chose the music, I might have to change things around and edit the music so that it fits.