After Thoughts

-
The "Sugar Run" movie followed the blueprint of the final proposal from the race between the gingerbread man and I to the advertising scene with the product placement at the end. It was good in that the original plan was actually carried out.

Using After Effects was much smoother for me this time around than during the animation project. Using the computer mac towers instead of the mac sandwiches also helped in the rendering processes. Compiling of the compositions and using the zoom and panning features was not as stressful this time around.

I also used and experimented with Adobe Flash, for the first time, for the animation. After exporting images from Photoshop to Flash I experimented with the bone tool. Fortunately, the bone tool was actually useful in creating the waddling movement and the running hands movement, much more efficiently than using just Photoshop. However I could not find a solution to importing the animation files into After Effects without a translucent background and instead resorted to using After Effects' key color masking option.

Using sound from Logic Pro also became ideal with the tremendous amount of loop sounds available for the user. When it came to recording the voices for the characters, it seemed ok when just played by itself, but when I placed pitch and amplitude modifications, the sound quality somewhat became too muddled and static-like. It was modified in Soundtrack Pro.

If more time was placed in this project, the simple animation of the gingerbread man would have been more refined with added textures. I would also fix the pixelation when the gingerbread man zooms into the camera. The music transitions should be smoother along with the video clips of me running. The sound during the talking scenes would be refined as well. Overall, I liked how it came out and how it makes the audience laugh/smile, to me that was a success.

Creating a DVD menu was also new to me and very glad to be exposed to it. All my links worked fine using a simple interface. Definitely will use that program again for future projects.

-
From not knowing a thing of Soundtrack Pro, After Effects, and Flash, to making a movie using these programs unfamiliar to me was a good improvement. Like all things new learned I just need refinement through more practice and projects. The ideas from my fellow students also spurred good ideas and possible future collaborations. I made mistakes but I'm also glad I did because I learn best from those mistakes. It may take some time but I do learn to be better.