For my animation I wanted to a simple camera movement mimicking the multiplane camera effect famously created by Disney animation studios to mimic camera movement in early animations. I didn't want to go too extreme with the camera movement as that can require the creation of a ton of assets that would take up most of my time with this project.
To start I created 3 separate layers for my animation to create my own multiplane.
Top Layer: Anything in front of the animation layer I am going to place here. Rain, Foliage, Fog, etc.
Middle Layer: This is my main animation layer with the waterfall animation
Background Layer: This is just the background layer with the trees so i can attempt to mimic a swaying tree kind of camera movement. It ended up not looking as great as I wanted. I can also use this layer to change the lighting of the sky.
I looked for several techniques on how to make camera movement and I am trying to create my own I have this image in my head where the camera trucks in from the left side behind the bushes to the right revealing the house in the foreground while the camera adjusts to the light.
After watching several tutorials and concept videos about camera movement I was sure I knew kind of what I had to do to get the effect I wanted. Keeping the middle layer and background layer stationary I could create the illusion of a camera moving by moving the foliage itself instead often entire scene. Below you can see me setting up the movement of the foliage to move out of the way.
(Don't mind the audio I was listening to some videos while recording and didn't realize the sound was being picked up.)
Seeing how well it worked I wanted to add a little more to the scene making the background layer move creating a sort of parallax effect to make the space feel more real I also needed to add the lighting blur I was looking for kind of a similar effect to when you walk outside to fast and are blinded for a moment.
In this version you can see that I have implemented the parallaxing effect and the lighting I wanted. Both were pretty easy I was able to learn more about keyframe animation The ability to create assets and then move them around with keyframes kind of like you can in any video editing software which luckily enough I have had extensive experience with my background in film so it was easy to pick up after looking at a few tutorials. Both the background moving, the foreground moving, and the lighting effect were all created using keyframes which is wonderful because I don't have to worry about hand drawing anymore my job has gotten a bit easier.
The lighting effect was a little tricky I had to add an effect in the software called Transparency that allowed the use of keyframes to to bring up and down the opacity of a layer which gave me a good idea for creating lightening flashes for my rain sequence I want to create further on.
Reflection:
This took a bit longer than expected to come together but now that I am warmed up to everything I feel I will be able to increase my workflow. being able to move assets with keyframing worked better than I expected which was good but animation with them feels kind of impersonal to me as I am such a big fan of hand drawn frames.
This is my final animation sound and its pretty rough, but that was probably going to be the case from the beginning. I did learn a lot from my research into what programs and techniques to use and I am pretty happy with the end result I just wish I had come up with what I wanted my final project to look like on week one instead of like week 6 but live and learn I guess. I will submit my final video presentation as well as my outline to this project in the next day I still have some editing to do.
Just wanted to archive my set up for how I am working in Toon Boom Harmony for future reference. I took a few pictures of my set up and then I'll break down what each thing is. A simple set up using Duet Display Pro to create a third screen on my iPad and I use that plus a tablet pen to draw the frames. I drag the camera window over to the third screen and switch the frames on the timeline on my main monitor. I find it easier to work with the camera tab on my iPad so that I can see the background while I am creating the frames. Also onion skinning with the layers helps immensely. Here is a closer look of my main monitor and what it looks like in the drawing window when the camera window is on my third screen.
I wanted to at least get a test look at what I plan on doing for this project up onto my blog now that I have updated my background. I still have several things I need to do like split the layers and everything to create separate assets and create a few more assets but I was able to successfully import my image and create a simple animation that I am going to polish in the next few weeks. I feel like this project is finally making a lot more headway, but I still feel that I definitely bit off a lot more than I can chew with this one. To import the images into Harmony I exported the file from Procreate as a photoshop document so that the images in harmony would keep their separate layers. The import process was pretty smooth. I did intend to import with multiple layers, but I choose to import as a single layer for right now so that I can just create a test animation for right now. I plan on messing with the separate layers later on this week. I took the background...
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