What colour is a black hole?
This is my latest and most superior group work at this point, the goal was to work together to form an animation which does not teach others about the facts about black holes while applying a science vibe to the animation. This is an animation which can reignite interest many to become interested in science again, especially to get more younger students more into science, such as studying it or maybe pursue a career into it. The premise of our animation consisted of a faceless character, who walks up to a tree, and finds an apple, which has a screen within it, and that screen summons a black hole which puts the character within an alternate dimension, only to get sucked in by another black hole which takes him into space, where facts about black holes are demonstrated while referencing many innovations within science.
My involvement within this animation consisted of the segments in the space scene at the end of the animation, where I formed the 3D character and applied white outlines around not only that asset but many other assets in the background too, all the floating 3D assets in the background (that are glowing while also being low in opacity). Even the sequences to showcase facts about black holes which mix 2D and 3D, the dust like transition alongside the robotic voices and the text. The others did the massive planet background, alongside the scenes in the countryside and even the quirky 3D scene in between the countryside and space screen. I on the other hand did apply everyone's rendered scenes and other After Effects material, which was great teamwork experience to become not only a better team worker compared to the past but it does make me better adapted to being a leader, which is useful when I want to work with others to get my own content created. Everyone used Photoshop and After Effects to form each scene in their own way, like the middle scene which looks like a 3D version of the 2D countryside scene and the first countryside scene only made up of 2D aspects, even the character then has parented features, and so does the 3D version of the character. Both the middle 3D setting, the main character and the background assets in space did involve Maya in this animation too, but this animation overall is mainly 2D.
Despite quite a messy workflow between all of us working to form the final animation, it does show that even if the workflow gets a bit messy and disorganised in some places, we can all work together to form a decent animation piece, just like Toy Story 2 having a rough history but still resulting in a decent piece of work. I like this animation as it did enhance my teamwork and leading skills, alongside the kind of visuals that were created. Even what I and the others have done I have liked a lot too, we go through three different forms of animation, and we still made a film which I believe is consistent, thanks to the use of the same character and the kind of environments we formed. This was also a steppingstone for me in terms of mixing 2D and 3D before I wanted to take that further, and I did end up learning more within After Effects, further making me a more competent animator, including the dust like transition. Finally, after being a part of what made this piece, I would like to lead and teamwork more in the future to prepare for high quality work. On top of that, as you view this animation on YouTube, I have shared credit with the others who helped make this film, who are also developing animators like myself.
The brief's length was five months, and it was one the longest projects, this is because of the amount of planning, organisation alongside a very full animation along with some supporting presentations, this brief dragged until the very end. While my other animations were competed somewhere beforehand which allowed time to breathe and time to render, this project never had that, there were also rapid and often idea changes that were common, and it did take a while to organise who did what for both the planning and the animation itself. The evidence of the project being slow would be seen around the second to last week, where a couple of people finally finished their scene for the animation, they were even unable to render it until they gave the resources to me, and I was able to render the animation just before the deadline, it was one of the closest deadlines compared to any other project. To simplify, the planning mainly took a month, until it was revisited throughout the brief as planning changes were made. The production however took the rest of the months, which would have been slowed by the presentations we had to do and having to change ideas often. Despite that, it was good experience for me in many areas, such as adapting to idea changes, working with people with various routines and having many presentations in between this film’s creation.