24 Hours of Animation

I didn't get around to working on my final piece for my animation class until about one day before it was due. I had been putting off and procrastinating as much as humanly possible. Part of the reason is that I set out to do it hand-drawn, frame by frame style and was having a lot of trouble. I decided to do it in After Affects and cranked it out in about 24 hours, peppered with periodic sleeping and short breaks for meals.

I came up with the story last quarter. It is about an elephant, a bird, and a giraffe. I story boarded the whole thing out.  Here are a few of the panels.

In order to put it together in After Effects I had to draw my characters as a series of separate pieces. Then I colored them in photoshop and put each piece that would move independently on its own layer. Then I stacked and arranged the layers to put the characters together. 

Then I created the backgrounds

 Then I brought the files into After Effects and the animation could begin

Two birds from Michael Schwalm on Vimeo.

It turned out OK for my critique but I would like to go back in there and keep noodling with the timing and stuff. It still feels off to me in a few places but I am happy with it for the time I had.

If you wanna check out other After Effects animation that I have done, you can check it out here.

See ya next time,

-Mike