HOME distribution

For my distribution of HOME there are several methods I can partake in. The university has an interest in sending out the film to festivals, which while I want my followers online to see the film, may help to expand the viewer base and get my film seen by people more interested in animation than general viewers. As an alternative, I'm ok to upload the short to Vimeo, but I feel this is highly ineffective for my online work. As someone who works for online teams, and has a small following I'd prefer to be able to show my animation to my peers and followers without having to keep it secret, but some festivals require that the video has a low profile. In the time I'm not allowed to upload my video, I'll work on improving and ironing out any problems.

[Art] HOME poster

[Animation] HOME

Above is my final animation for university, HOME. This animation was made differently to my usual work as I wanted to add more variety in styles. The animation featured no voices, which meant I had to figure out how to tell the story through actions, rather than the characters simply narrating what happened. Because of this I feel I've improved body language in my animations, even with the simple character designs that the video used. I also used colour to tell the story, through things like the red warning lights clashing with a clear blue sky. 

I thought a bit more about the context and messages behind this animation when creating it too, and it has an environmentalist message behind it with the alien's character arc. In their story, they have escaped from an overheated, polluted planet to the calm, natural forest in which the scientist resides. When this area is in danger from their UFO, they decide to sacrifice it in order to protect the environment which they have fallen in love with. I also backed up this message with the screens in the lab, in which the aliens can see the beautiful outside world amidst the chaos in the lab.

The scientist/artist side of the story is intended to be a "don't judge a book by it's cover" type of theme. When the aliens crash land and are taken indoors, I built up an air of suspense through the way the characters interacted with each other. Dan also built up the sound to a climax at the point where the artist holds up a brush to the aliens. At this point the character is revealed to be harmless, and actually friendly to his new found visitors. In the end, he attempts to help the aliens out, and is repaid by them helping fix his lab, and staying with him so that he can paint them.
This animation was a lot of fun to make, the style was refreshing and allowed me to focus on areas I don't normally consider as much, and I feel I've learned more about storytelling and portraying characters through its creation.

[Production] HOME sound

Once I had the animatic and an early timing version done of my animation, I was able to get Dan working on the sound for the video. I spent some time working with him at his house where we were able to give each other feedback, come up with ideas for the video, and create the final soundtrack for the animation, including music, which was originally meant to be someone else, but due to time, Dan was able to fill in for. Below are the different parts of the final soundtrack:

[Animatic] HOME animatic and early renders

Above is the animatic for my graduation film, HOME. This was used to get an idea for the pacing before committing to the video. I knew that light was going to be a part of my video so I put in key colours such as the red glow from the UFO to illustrate the mood I wanted to get across. After this was done, I worked on a version of the video using keyframes that I would send to Dan to base the soundtrack on.

This version was animated mainly on twos, it was just there for Dan to base the sounds on, and as long as I kept the timing the same, I could then go over and put the animation on ones and make any other necessary changes.

With the sound in place, I created this version of the video, most of the video was animated, but this render was done to look for any errors or parts that I had missed out, such as hands and mouths. This was the final test render before the completion of the video, and I'd made some changes based on my thoughts and feedback of past renders. For example in the final scene I decided to change the key colour from a clear blue sky to an orange sunset. This was done because I felt it would add more to the tension of the situation, as well as give a sense of progression of time through the story when the characters were in the lab.