Showing posts with label wwf. Show all posts
Showing posts with label wwf. Show all posts

Wednesday, 25 March 2015

Submitted!!

Today we managed to resize our animation after asking around a bit. A techie guy told Aggie to use media encoder but it was taking quite a while and it wasn't really great quality anymore so i asked Mat in my tutorial and he said theres a much simpler way and our animation definitely shouldn't be that big! Turns out theres a quite easy way in after effects. Apparently the amount of kbps was waaaaay to high causing our animation to have a massive file size so we limited that to 10,000kbps which means its 10mb per second. This retained the quality while giving us a file under 200mb.
Both Mat and Annabeth looked at our animation and they both really liked it but wanted us to tweak a couple of things as they thought that would up our animations value by a lot! They said put some motion blur on some things that are moving fast. Which made it look so cool! and there was a bit of cleaning up to do on the smoke that i had moved with the puppet tool but i didn't know how. There was a really easy way! Annabeth just told us to click a button i pretty sure it was in opacity and it just magically disappeared! Very clever stuff. She also has a keen eye for editing and realised that there was a flash where the bulbs went back to just bulbs with nothing growing out of them so we changed that.
It was definitely worth putting in the extra work because now it looks even better!! 
Submission time!! Now we could finally submit our work. It was a very exciting and scary thing to know that we were entering a very big competition and people have said we might actually have a chance of winning. The video uploaded fine, then we went to upload the pdfs and they were too big! so Aggie used a compressor on her laptop. Then we just had to pay and that was it! 




It was such a good feeling to know that its all over and done with now and we are very happy with what we produced. I personally feel its the most professional thing i have produced to date. I honestly believe it would not look half as good if i didn't collaborate with Aggie because her illustrations are amazing and she was great to work with! Definitely glad i responded to her email!
Unfortunately as the rules state on the brief I am not allowed to upload our finished animation online until the winners have been announced, although i really want the world to see it!!!

Thursday, 5 March 2015

animatic

So i did an animatic of our idea to see how it would go. I really like it and can't wait to do it properly!! the video ended up being 1 min 12 seconds but a few things went to fast but it should definitely end up being less than 2 minutes which is the timeframe we are allowed. So exciting! Here is is: Please note images used here are not final images, they're just for the purpose of the animatic...



Responsive progress

Last night, Aggie emailed me some information she had picked out from the living planet report, I then put that into a rough script as an idea of how we could use the information to make a story. heres the script:
Our earth has a big problem. Us. We are using more than Earth can provide.

·      We can cut trees faster than they mature,
·      Harvest more fish than oceans replenish
·      Emit more carbon into the atmosphere than forests and oceans can absorb

·      Carbon from burning fossil fuels has been the dominant component of humanity’s Ecological Footprint for more than half a century, and remains on an upward trend
·      In 1961, carbon was 36 per cent of our total Footprint; by 2010, it comprised 53 per cent.
·      Low-income countries have the smallest Footprint, but suffer the greatest ecosystem losses.

·      Populations of mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and fish, has (fallen by half) declined by 52 per cent since 1970
·       
What we are doing to fuel our needs is destroying everything else

·      But oil concessions have been allocated across 85 per cent of the park
·      Drilling for oil could lead to habitat degradation and see the park lose its protected status and World Heritage Site listing, leaving its wildlife increasingly vulnerable.

·      Globally, habitat loss and degradation, exploitation through hunting and fishing and climate change are the main threats facing the world’s biodiversity
·      They have contributed to a decline of 52 per cent since 1970

·      Terrestrial species (animals that live predominantly or entirely on land) declined by 39% between 1970 and 2010. Causes:
o   Loss of habitat to make way for human use
§  For agriculture, urban development and energy production.

·      Freshwater species declined by 76%. Causes:
o   Loss of habitat and fragmentation, pollution and invasive species
·      Forest ecosystems provide shelter, livelihoods, water, fuel and food security for more than 2 billion people.
·      Food production accounts for around 70% of water use and 30% of energy use globally.


And theres a bigger problem
·      World population is growing at a fast rate
Meaning that our problems are only going to get worse, unless we start doing something to improve our planet


We do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children
We can:
·      Produce Better – reduce inputs and waste, manage resources sustainably, scale-up renewable energy production.
·      Consume more wisely – through low-Footprint lifestyles, sustainable energy use and healthier food consumption patterns
·      Equitable resource governance – Share available resources, make fair and ecologically informed choices, measure success beyond GDP
Examples of solutions in action today:

·      Wind power provided for 57.4% of Denmark’s electricity consumption in December 2013
·      In Chile, Conservationists are working with partners to protect one of the world’s most important marine ecosystems.
·      In Australia, More efficient sugar farming practices are helping to conserve the Great Barrier Reef by reducing the impact of chemical and soil run-off.
·      In South Africa, Smart land-use planning has helped restore a critical wetland, allowing commercial tree plantations and a World Heritage Site to thrive side by side.

Changing our course and finding alternative pathways will not be easy. But it can be done.
We know where we want to be
We know how to get there
Now we need to get moving.

So I emailed that to Aggie and she came up with a rough beginning of a storyboard that she brought to the lesson. This is what she did:


And this was it in a more finished form:

So when we met up today, we really got stuck into it and were determined to create a finished storyboard. We did it!! :D 
 Here is our storyboard. I will write a description of what is happening to explain:
So firstly we have an image of the earth with handwriting over the top saying the earth has a big problem. 'The earth' is all fancy writing that is on one line and will continue through the whole piece. in the third scene, the line cuts through a tree 'we cut trees' and it falls over 'faster than they mature' 'harvest more fish than oceans can replenish' a little fish swims across then the nets come up full of fish. the line carries on and goes over the outline of a car and writes in the smoke 'emits more carbon' 'into the atmosphere than forests and oceans can absorb''what we are doing to fuel our needs is destroying everything else'

'Drilling for oil' oil starts glowing all over, 'carbon development' starts off with trees but they go down and disappear and skyscrapers appear in their place. 'energy production' power plants that are smoking 'this all contributes to habitat loss and degradation' 'causing a massive drop in population' the next page start with lots of land animals and they slowly disappear 1 by 1 'decline by 39%, the same happens for freshwater animals 'decline by 76% and marine 'decline by 39%' 'and theres another problem' 
'Our population is growing at a fast rate' babies appear at the bottom. 'meaning these problems aren't going to get better' 'unless we do something' 'protect nature' Someone planting a tree. 'reduce waste' image of a recycling bin' 'consume more wisely' wind turbines turning. 'Changing our future will not be easy' 'but it can still be done' 'we know where we want to be, we know how to get there, now we need to get moving' WWF image of logo appears.



Aggie is going to start doing the drawings and assets soon and send me them as she goes so i can start working as soon as possible. In the meantime I am going to create an animatic to try and show what is happening in real time, to see if it works and to see how long it will be, this will show us if we need to make changes before we start the real thing.

Monday, 23 February 2015

test 2 responsive

Today I went to and After effects lesson and i came away with what i think is a better way of doing our WWF animation. Before, my technique was to draw out the whole thing and then frame by frame use the eraser tool and make it look like its been drawn on photoshop using the video timeline. However this new way I believe will be more than twice as fast and so much simpler. Its on after effects. There is a brush tool which allows you to draw free hand, then down on the bottom right, there is a 'write on' option and basically this puts your brush strokes on a timeline so just records what you have just drawn! so it does what i was trying to do without all the erasing and frame by frame nonsense! I am so glad I found this I think it is going to make this project a million times easier! I do however need to figure out how to get an image that I can trace over so I get nice clean images that are how they are supposed to look for example, to make them look like Aggies drawings. Im sure I can just go down to the AV suite and ask Matt for a hand on that though. 
Im quite excited now! here is just a very simple test animation so show the result that I made in literally 5 minutes as apposed to the hours that the previous one took.