Ident Continued...

Having made a couple of rough animatics to see how the animation would work and come together I realised I really need to work on the design a lot more for the ident to work. From the second flash animatic I made I found that my storyboard was still too long. I did make changes to the ending which I thought would cut it down. However, the finished animation will hopefully be a little shorter as the animatics were in parts so it was hard to see it all at once and time it properly. Making the animatic did give me more of a chance to work in flash though and get used to it a little more. I did keep making mistakes such as not making objects into seperate symbols, which I must remember to do when making the actual thing otherwise I'll just be complicating things. I think I could really get to like using this program and I think with practise and learning more you could make some really interesting work with it.

To develop the design for the ident I looked at each part seperately. Even though I have changed it slightly so that the characters aren't seen up close, I still did some character designs so that if they are shown, they have details and a character. I therefore did turn around drawings for the two characters on paper and then on flash making note of all colours used as reference for making the actual thing...











I then thought a little more about the background design. I painted a couple to see how, when scanned in, they would look when put alongside the flash characters. I think this worked quite well, however I then thought about using a 3D background and using my painted image projected onto it to see how this would work. I therefore research and found out how to make a sky dome. I think this worked well and I like the overall look of it. I need to work out how to put the 3D dome and the rest of the animation together and how this would work, but I think if it is possible, it could work out quite well and not contrast too much between the styles. Below is the image I painted, and then it shown in 3D in the sky dome...






Having decided on a background to use, I thought about the other objects in the ident. For example the asteroid (logo), the hills and background surrounding the scene and the house. So I thought about what they could look like and did some design work on them, again making final drawings with colours to use as a refernce throughout the animation. I also thought about the lighting of the piece as this will be quite important for the concept of the design. For example at the beginning the main light source will come from the moon making the shadows of the characters and objects directly behind them, however when the asteroid appears, a lot of the light will come from that showing how strong and bright it is. The shadows made by the characters, house, trees etc will then move according to the placement of the asteroid logo in the sky, and I will have to make sure I remember to do this and make a point of it throughout the animation so that it appears to be moving and effecting the rest of the scene.

I feel a little more confident about my idea and how it will come together now that I have thought through it one part at a time. I am roughly on target with my timetable and as long as I get a few bits finished on monday afternoon, I should be ready to start the actual thing on tuesday afternoon. argh!!!