[University] Royal Armouries Scene 2: The Mines

As we draw towards the end of the project, I think now's a suitable time to run over everything I've done for it. Below are all the animated segments I worked on, I created all of the character animation for this video and split it into 2880x720 (the maximum width that Flash would allow) segments for Will to composite in After Effects. For these first two mine scenes however, I left the compositing to Will. The shorter shots mean that the stage could all fit into one panel.

Jack and I had previously planned to texture the backgrounds. To help theme the animation, we decided to stick to a solid vector style which was simpler and easier on the eyes. It also meant that the characters would fit in with the art style a lot better. The overall animation is going to have a tapestry texture overlaying it in the final render, so having these parts textureless also stops it clashing later on.

The colour scheming played an important role in these dark scenes as a lot of the miners blended in with the darkness of the background. Having the focus character in white not only drew attention to him, but made the highest possible contrast against the rest of the scene, highlighting his importance. The files are designed to continue straight into one another, while leaving some room to overlap and line them up. The final stages I need to take for this video are to make the inbetweening animation. I created these characters like videogame characters, in that they have separate "states", such as idle and running. Once the timing is 100% planned, I can inbetween the transitions between these poses.