The most important pieces of hardware used through this project were a Macbook and my personal Acer laptop. The vast majority of the animation, resource creation and research were all created on the Acer, whereas the editing and scanning was done using the Macbook.
In the beginning of the project, researching was key, and this was performed using the internet, accessed through Google Chrome. I used the search engine Google to find all the information that I needed, which included the digipak template and overlays to be used in my video. This also helped me look into the band who created the song that I planned to use. To download a copy of the song, I used Freemake's YouTube downloader.
To help me formulate an idea of what music video I wanted to create, I used the video site YouTube to look around at various animated videos. Doing so helped me come to the conclusion as to what I wanted to create.
When it came to deciding how to do the animation, I looked on my previous experience with Macromedia Flash 8, which I briskly reinstalled and practiced with. It took some work getting used to the software again, but after watching two interviews with internet animator David Firth, and rewatching some of his work, I decided on integrating hand drawn elements with digital animation, much like in his 'A Black and White Cartoon about Roof Tiling'. This cartoon largely influenced the style of my music video.
Before animating, I had to create an animatic for my music video. This was done by taking the drawings from my storyboard and stringing them together in time with the song using Final Cut Pro. Once this was done, I chopped the song into 22 pieces that I could animate over, using Audacity.
In trying to emulate the style of Firth's cartoon, I created artwork and resources for the digital animation using physical means. Once said resources were created, I then had to scan the drawings into the Macbook, where I could then edit them using the image manipulation program Photoshop. The edited and cropped components were then imported into Flash, where they'd largely be made to move using Tweens and Keyframing. This saved me animating my characters and objects freehand.
To make the digipak design, I took components that I made for the animation into Photoshop, and arranged them on the Digipak template I had downloaded earlier. I also used Photoshop's various tools to add the extra components for the pak, and used the Windows default font, System, to create the digital computer aesthetic. I did try finding another font to use from DaFont, but none that I found really matched the look I desired.
Once all the animation clips had been made, I saved them into an .avi format so I could work with them in Final Cut - Flash saves animations in the .swf format, which Final Cut can sadly not read. The converted clips were placed in Final Cut in chronological order, and the remaining audio chunks that were not animated over were converted to .wav files using Freemake, and then placed on the timeline to fill in the gaps. The stills were then placed over these audio areas.
Once the animation was complete, I exported it as a .mov, and uploaded it to YouTube. This took two attempts however, as the first time I tried to upload the video, YouTube would not accept the file. After trying a second time though, it worked as required. The video is now live and receiving views each day. Once I had uploaded the music video, I shared it on my personal Facebook profile, and also my Tumblr. I also used Soundcloud to host recorded audio feedback from my iPhone 4, which I had gathered part way through the animation progress.
And finally, to document all my work, I've used the blogging service Blogger, as is the usual procedure with Media Studies. Other services like Tumblr or Livejournal could have served the same purpose also, but Blogger is more preferable due to it's simple layout, and superb HTML support.
Before animating, I had to create an animatic for my music video. This was done by taking the drawings from my storyboard and stringing them together in time with the song using Final Cut Pro. Once this was done, I chopped the song into 22 pieces that I could animate over, using Audacity.
In trying to emulate the style of Firth's cartoon, I created artwork and resources for the digital animation using physical means. Once said resources were created, I then had to scan the drawings into the Macbook, where I could then edit them using the image manipulation program Photoshop. The edited and cropped components were then imported into Flash, where they'd largely be made to move using Tweens and Keyframing. This saved me animating my characters and objects freehand.
To make the digipak design, I took components that I made for the animation into Photoshop, and arranged them on the Digipak template I had downloaded earlier. I also used Photoshop's various tools to add the extra components for the pak, and used the Windows default font, System, to create the digital computer aesthetic. I did try finding another font to use from DaFont, but none that I found really matched the look I desired.
Once all the animation clips had been made, I saved them into an .avi format so I could work with them in Final Cut - Flash saves animations in the .swf format, which Final Cut can sadly not read. The converted clips were placed in Final Cut in chronological order, and the remaining audio chunks that were not animated over were converted to .wav files using Freemake, and then placed on the timeline to fill in the gaps. The stills were then placed over these audio areas.
Once the animation was complete, I exported it as a .mov, and uploaded it to YouTube. This took two attempts however, as the first time I tried to upload the video, YouTube would not accept the file. After trying a second time though, it worked as required. The video is now live and receiving views each day. Once I had uploaded the music video, I shared it on my personal Facebook profile, and also my Tumblr. I also used Soundcloud to host recorded audio feedback from my iPhone 4, which I had gathered part way through the animation progress.
And finally, to document all my work, I've used the blogging service Blogger, as is the usual procedure with Media Studies. Other services like Tumblr or Livejournal could have served the same purpose also, but Blogger is more preferable due to it's simple layout, and superb HTML support.
