Progress Write Up

 Today, I finished editing the final animation in Premier Pro. I found the editing process to be really fun. It made me realise how important editing is, and how it can transform the work into something that looks professional and well put together. I didn't have any problems with editing, since Premier Pro is a program that I use a lot and know well. I used quite a few effects, effects that I haven't used before. I used cross fade a few times, to smoothly blend scenes together. I didn't like the cold, hard cuts between scenes as they made the animation feel disjointed at times. The cross fade helps make the animation flow smoothly and therefore is easier to watch. A lot of films have a high contrast filter on them to bring out the colours of the animation. I wanted to do the same since Dekilios is quite a richly coloured planet. It was important that the pink plants, purple crystals, blue skies stood out, as they are all important characterises of the planet. This also helped the contrast between the dark ship and the desert. Now, with the filter, the ship boldly stands out which makes it easier to watch. The eye automatically knows where to look. Adding the dust effects was a lot of fun. I used some royalty free green screen effects that I found on Youtube. I then found a tutorial on green screening in Premier Pro. It was a really easy to follow tutorial. It got straight to the point and worked through the steps quickly. I tweaked the effects in the controls to make sure they blended well with the animation. It was important that the effects looked like they belonged in the animation and they weren't just thrown on the top. I focused a lot on the edges of the dust, making sure that there was no cut off. Since that would look completely unnatural and ruin the illusion of the effect. I also tweaked the colour, to make it fit in and blend with the colour of the desert. Getting the timing of the effects were also crucial. When the ship lands, and the legs of the ship touch the sand, some of it is kicked up. It was vital that this was timed correctly. If the effect happened too early or late, it would not only ruin the illusion but also look wrong. I knew that when the ship touched down, there had to be a slight delay between the time when the legs touch the ground and the dust comes up. This is because the ground would have to get squashed down first, releasing the dust. I managed to use the same dust effect for both legs. All I needed to do was tweak the second, making the duplication less obvious. I also worked on the scanner. It was important that the scanner had a light, since it is an important part of the animation. Like the dust, getting the timing right was very important. I needed to make sure that the light effect happened in time with the sound of the scanner. The colour was also important. The original royalty free green screen video's light was a light blue colour. I needed to match it up with the colour of the scanner on the model. I used the dropper tool and colour matched it. I really think that putting effects on the animation was a great choice. It has made it look much more interesting. Not only that, an effect for the scanner needed to be included. Otherwise that section of the animation would have been quite confusing as people would expect some sort of light to go off. 

Before today, I was rendering my animation. It was a very long, and repetitive process. I managed to render the entire thing using my laptop at home. I could have used the computers at Uni but it meant going through all of my files and putting them onto the Uni computers which would have been a very long process and it most likely would have set be back quite a bit. My laptop at home was also managing fine anyway. However, this meant I had to render through the night. I set alarms at various times, got up and set up a new render. This was a very good way to get it done though. 

In the next post, I will be posting the final animation.