Foley Magic

Happy Saturdays!



above is the latest pass on my animation, there are some big changes in it.

My good friend and colleague Richard Blackley kindly created some foley sounds in his own time. A very talented guy, the audio adds a lot to the animation, some of it is subtle such as the doctors hand opening and closing near the beginning. Some of it is vital such as adding some ambient sound to the beginning and the captains hand slam near the end.

I've added some environment scenery such as chairs, plates, cheese, a cheese knife, another glass and a coloured background. I chose the dark slightly desaturated green to complement the captain. To the right of the background it changes to an orangy brown to complement the doctors blue hues. For the chairs I made the captains chair have baroque connotations to reflect the captains rockNroll personality. The doctors chair contrasts with sharp angles and straight lines to reflect his personality. I deliberately left the detail out of the chairs so that they complement the minimal style of the characters and don't become distracting. The bolts on both chairs are there to tie both the chairs together. Im trying to say that they both belong in the same world.

For the animation, i've been trying to add some texture to the timing of the movements to make it more interesting. I see this as the weakest part of the animation, the area i need to do much better on next time. To add the texture some movements have been sped up, some slowed down. I've heard people describe it as the crescendos and and low points in music. If music is the same volume, speed and tone all the way through it becomes very boring. Maybe that's why i dont listen to a lot of hardcore techno.

Of course, any feedback i get will be added to the wave:
Animation Wave

I showed the latest pass to Doctor Durkin last night and he had some very good feedback which may mean there will be changes to the camera cuts and compositions in another pass.

Next steps are to polish a couple more little bits of the animation, make a lighting rig, render it in HD720p, render an ambient occlusion pass, combine the layers in a video editing programe, render out a video file and evaluate the whole thing objectively in a blog post...phew! Better get cracking!