OSTN Ident - Busker

the brief for this project was to create an ident for a student television network. to brainstorm ideas i started to draw images which i thought would relate to student conditions such as sports, music, living conditions and being broke. we spoke to our client o ask some clarifying questions which i found helpfull because it allowed me to define the borders in which we were expected to keep.
i chose to go along the theme of music and had an idea of a busker which also ties in with the theme of money.
i new from the start that i wanted to animate this piece by hand and that i wanted the style to be quite loose and scratchy so as the image seems to be alive and will move of its own accord.
when i started story boarding the idea i found that it was hard to come up with anything resolute in 10 seconds so an animatic was a great tool to see if my storyboards would work.
once i finished my animatic i started to think of how to do the animation. before i started i needed to record the sound of a guitar in order to get the cues for the motion in my animation. i set up one of my flatmates with a guitar in a sound recording studio and recorded a light up beat accoustic track using three key notes. after refining the sound i then researched the hand positions in all of the notes. i took photos of his hand in all of the positions from both a front view and a birds eye view in order to get the right shape in both of the camera angles i was to use in my animation. i then drew a detailed picture of each position to become more familiar with the shapes of the hands.
to come up with the design of the buskers appearence i drew from various photographs of guitarists to become familiar with the shape and position of the body when holding a guitar whilst sitting on the floor.
i then animated to the dope sheet i produced whilst analysing my sound track frame by frame giving me my cues. this procedure was helpfull and very effective as it allowed me to map out my animaiton to create convinsing movements in time with the sound. i animated the front view (or shot 1) up to 5 seconds. then i switched to a birds eye view of the buskers legs and his collection blanket. this was made from several frames that were repeated to create 2 boils, to give a base for the zoom in to the OSTN logo. between the two boils i animated a coin falling from behind the camera into the collection blanket. this was the end of my hand drawn process.
i then scanned in my drawings according to the dope sheet and sequenced them in after effects. i then created my background/foreground. i chose to put my background infront of my animation so i could use the boils i created and still be able to zoom in on the OSTN logo without spilling over the background and created a much claener edge. this was a simple process, i just created an alpha channel where my animation would be and this was all i needed to do to create the illusion that the animation was in front of the background.
to finish the animation i made a fade out to the official OSTN logo and recorded sound effects to fit the actions taken in the animation such as dropping a coin into a pile of coins and blowing across a microphone to create a 'woosh' effect for my fade in. i also used a sound effect of a busy street off of a CD to give the animation a sense of place. to finish i adjusted the sequence so fit neatly into the 10 second slot and recorded a voice over saying 'You're watching OSTN' to finish off the fade in.
i think that this piece is a successful piece of animation which i found demanding as i didnt have the digital luxuries of a software programme to create my animation until it came to editing. i think after effects was a good tool to use when sequencing because of the user friendly interface which was clear and precice and was a relief to end up with a piece that i am proud of.