Essex News - Finished Animation

Conclusion

I chose the two locations in the news bulletin because they were places in Essex that I have fond memory's of. I all so think that for a lot of young people these locations would probably be more interesting than historic buildings for example. The thought behind the first news report was just a silly play on words that used the film director Guy Richie (Lock,Stock & Two Smoking Barrels/Snatch) in the joke, hopefully younger people would identify with that. There is also a big link with the east end of London were his films were set and parts of Essex including Southend.

The second bulletin is actually a true story which I found at essexherald.com, Apparently in 1701 a man called Mr Bradley was the first person to bring a crocodile to the UK. It lived in a lake in his grounds in Braintree! I thought this could be an excellent way of linking the zoo into the animation and being interesting at the same time.

The short animation could quite easily be made into a series of bulletins with different amusing reports that take the viewer all over Essex. I think the cartoon will appeal to all ages because the style of the animation is quite basic so kids will connect with it but also the jokes can have an adult side to them.

The task of of making this animation on my own with my limited skills was quite a challenge and one that I have enjoyed. I would of liked to of made the bulletin longer with more reports because I don't really think I conveyed enough about Essex than I would of liked but with the time constraints set I had to keep it sort and simple. I would of loved to of added a sports piece at the end because I'm a big fan of Essex County Cricket Club.

Overall I'm quite pleased with the outcome. I really liked the crocodile model and scene even though I would of liked to of animated the crocodile a bit more. The lip syncing went better than I expected and the thing that pleased me most was that the whole animation was exactly like I imagined it to be like in my original sketch's.

The things that I wasn't so keen on was the arms and hands of my models which once i had committed to weighting them to the biped I had no choice but to keep it that way. The sound quality of the speech wasn't that great and it would probably need recording with better equipment and in a better environment.

Final cut - Scroll Bar

To make the final animation look like a real news report I added a news scroll bar along the bottom of the animation. To do this had to create a simple animation in Adobe Flash. The text contained three amusing headlines and the Essex news logo. Once this was done I needed to save it as a Flash SWF file so it was ready to be used in Premier Pro for editing.

Here in Premier Pro I placed my AVI files from Max in a row and then above I added the SWF. I didn't want the scroll bar to be scene during the film exert so I left that slot blank. I also placed a fade at the end of the animation which made the end more tidy.

Crocodile Scene

Each of my scenes in the animation followed the same pattern. Position the camera, sync the lips of the character and maybe move the head or arm a bit. The crocodile scene was a bit more complicated as I had to make the viewer believe that there was a character in two didn't places on the same screen. This was something I had seen a lot in news programs and was going to try and replicate using Max.

First I set up a plane and cut two windows in it to act as the split-screen graphic. I then created some text to go on to the graphic. The large 'Live' text in the corner is quite important as it simply lets the viewer know whats happening. Next I set the window for the crocodile. I made two planes one for the grass floor and one for the fence background. I angled the floor at a slant so the camera at the zoo looked like it was looking down on the 'croc' as I wanted to show the whole back of the model.

The scene starts with the presenter asking for Mr Bradley but there's no reply then the zoo camera pans down to reveal the 'croc'! Wheres Mr Bradley gone I wounder???? To do this I just animated the two planes and 'croc' to pan upwards.

I finished by making the crocodiles eyes move side to side. I thought this gave him a bit of life and made him look sinister.

Intro Sequence

For the intro sequence I wanted to use a traditional news graphic and jingle. The main graphic I used was the earth. I created this by using the line tool to trace around a map of the earth and then using a UVW map to make it spherical. The main idea behind the into was to get as many pictures of Essex in the scene as possible. In my original sketches I imagined the pictures roiling in from the sides with the main title. There also needed to be a background with a colour that wasn't to overpowering and if possible matched my red, white and blue theme.

Once I had found the background and all my pictures I needed to place them into the scene and start to animate them by moving across the screen. Once I did this it occurred to me that the earth turning with the pictures would work well. And finally I linked the main title to the world so it revolved with it. Which I thought was a nice touch.

The sound was next and I needed to find a good 'news' sounding jingle. I found this on the Internet at audiomicro.com/free_anchor_man_sound_clip. All I needed to do was to crop and fade out the volume in Soundbooth so it fit my scene. Lastly I had a total after thought of having a cheesy talk-over guy introducing the presenters. I didn't want to use my real name so I made up a couple of comedy names. Joe King and Hazel Nutz! (It's not funny I know). I not sure if this quite works because of the quality isn't that good but I left it in anyway.

Script - Mastering - Lip syncing

The animation had a lot of talking parts in, so I needed to record the voices for my characters. To do this I used the voice recorder built in to my laptop. This isn't the greatest way to record things because the quality isn't that good but I would using Adobe Soundbooth after to clean up the sounds. The male voice is my own and the other is by a women I know. I didn't try and sound to much like a news presenter as I wanted it to sound like a authentic young Essex accent. This is probably something you wouldn't here on a news program!

The mastering was done with Soundbooth. Here I exported my windows Audio file and cleaned it up by first cropping the ends and then using a process that removes clicks and pops and also rumbles or other foreign sounds. At times I needed to manually take out small discrepancies as the software didn't do it automatically. Once finished I converted them into WAV files so they could be used in Max.

The tricky part was to sync the sounds with the lips of my characters. I did this by importing the sound file into the Curve editor in Max and positioning it on to the frame I wanted it to start from . I then used the wave to determine if the mouth should be open or closed. I used the 'Set key frame' button to set the lips of my character. I also used my own mouth as a guide to shape the characters mouth, by saying the lines out loud I could mimic my own mouth. This got a bit tedious at times because it took a while to set each lip, but total reality wasn't what I was looking for so it didn't have to be spot on. To make life simpler I added helpers to the mouth shape so that I could move the four sides of the mouth with ease.

Crocodile - Model - Part 2

Once the shape of the model was done I extruded some nostrils and eye whole sockets. The eyes where simple spheres with a multi sub object material added to it. This is also what I did to the main crocodile but for the green coloured skin I also added a scaly skim bump map to give the character a better look.

Overall I was quite happy with the outcome of the model it looks nice and 'cartoony' which will match the other models. I also used a little self- illumination on the teeth to make them stand out a bit more.