Evaluation

FDA Evaluation

Five Cycles of Mazikki

Project Update: Audio and Final visuals

Premiere Pro was the major program where I built the final piece. Some animation was created in here or overlapped. For example, some of the shots of 'she' are masked over other clips to avoid having to re-animate. (top: Middle and bottom screen print).

For the most part of the edit, I used (top print) I did not place fades until the bulk of the edit was down. This was to evaluate and pacing of the film only using fades it is suited the mood or and specific emotional point.

Fades also helped soften some of the transistions, however, I must avoid placing too much because I don't want it to feel repetitive.

Photoshop was the main animation program, using the very simple key frame system. It is not accurate like After Effects (AE) but allows creative freedom in terms of keeping the colours and right dimensions of the characters.

It also allows your animation to be on multiple layers with easy access of previous frames to repeat an action.

The cave sequence was firstly animated within Photoshop, and finalised within AE. This has been a common process within this production and has increased my workflow- creating more animations, fast.

The last screen print is to make sure all audio levels are checked and consistent through-out. It also allows me to add any last effects to the whole film and add the colour bars and tone for the final product.

Set Design

Bellow are shots of the sets used within the film:

 Single use- bridge shot

 Multi use- wider shot, mid shot
Establish shot of home

 Single use- running through the light within the forest.

 Single use- Dark, gloom corridor.

Character Sheets

Mazikki Poach

Mazikki Poach is a feline creature living in a small village surrounded by woodland in which both him and his wife, Annetted lived peacefully. He had always been a good natured, well established man within his village but a series of events caused him to lose touch with the world.

Annette unfortunately past on, dying from illness and a year before the series of events within the film took place. She was the love of his life, and without her, he fell apart- isolated from the village. He started to drink and loose touch of his home before hopelessly staying in bed.

He became even more distant to the real world when he meet his dream friend who declared herself as 'She'. It was up to her too pull him out of the mess he created by symbolically finding Annette and forcing him to accept her death.

'She'

She is a shadow of a feline women who treads the line between reality and dream world. The reason she came to Mazikki was unknown and never really explains who she is during the events. She communicates through very little speech, repeating or asking questions to reveal the true emotions of her friend.

Her body mass is unknown while she never stays the same shape between land and water. She remained a mystery after events, never to return to Mazikki again. He always questioned if that was Annette in shadow form but never thought to ask because of his emotional state.

Annette Poach

Annette was a kind natured feline creature, similar to Mazikki, but with delicate features. She passed on due to an unexpected illness a year before Mazikki met 'She'.

No detail is reveal about her within the film, as Mazikki could never bring himself to even say her name. He seemed to refer to her as she, similar to the shadow women, giving clues that he may have though of the shadow women to be Annette at some point.

Tackling Rendering Issues!

After doing a lot of straining to get those final animation shots finished and final touches to the audio, it can be easily assumed that there is nothing else to take into consideration.

Unfortunately that is not the case, as rendering the whole project can be just as taxing as the above.

This technical issue occurred because I have been combining three different software to export individual clips. Photoshop, After Effects and Premier Pro have been the main programmes.

It has been stated on the Adobe website that RGB colours sometimes get misinterpreted within the final render, causing blue areas to flicker on the image. This has been a problem the occurs mostly when using the animation codec within After Effects. In my case, it is the codec I used from Photoshop renders that caused this problem. Luckily there is a work around as stated on the Adobe site.

Using the crop effect within Premier Pro, is the most effective way of getting rid of the problem without having to animate or re-render any of the clips again. The effect does not directly do anything to the image unless you put in units. The idea is to flatten the troubled clip with the effect, causing the problem to stop. The only issue, is a small flickering at the bottom of the screen which can be fixed during and second render.

More info can be found out here:
http://helpx.adobe.com/premiere-pro/kb/movies-have-blue-cast-exported.html

Promotional Material

Above is another promotional poster to use within my own marketing material.

Audio Screen Prints

 

 Audio screen grabs-

Here I used effects such as equalisation and the high pass filter to create the TV effect. The more you add with the effect the more condensed the sound.

I also used effects such as delay to add echo to the piece. Using this effect allows me to have more control over the amount of echo used.