Now that I had a set time for my animation (dictated by the length of the trailer) I was able to put together a more cohesive storyboard and list of assets needed. I did research a couple of other animated podcasts on YouTube but they differed in animation style and content quite significantly, these included the animated Ricky Gervais Show clips and animated Joe Rogan Podcast clips. Most of them looked as if they were created in After Effects or similar software and none were hand drawn. I couldn't find anything similar for the Sweet boys Podcast, partially due to the fact that it had only been out for a few months when the project began. I re-watched episodes of Adventure Time and Midnight Gospel with a critical eye to note anything else useful about how the characters could have been animated, as well as tracking down YouTube clips from cartoon network's behind the scenes of Adventure Time showing animators at work. I gathered that after creating a pre-visualization of an episode with the main shots/sequences as static storyboards, the animators were able to understand how characters needed to be drawn throughout the scene, the perspectives and colours to create the right atmosphere, and how markers needed to be hit with the right timing to make a moment more humorous. 

​

After creating a final set of storyboards I was able to import the podcast audio track (which I'd separated from the video in Premier Pro) to my main After Effects composition. I then added the png storyboards to create my own previsualization that I could refer back to when working out timings for animated elements and how many backgrounds I needed to create. I spent a long time refining my character designs, painting backgrounds on my i-pad and exporting the finished hand drawn files to my PC. I spent a while trying to decide whether to use Adobe Character Animator or hand drawn frame by frame animation for Garrett and Andrew's characters, I was not as confident with Character Animator because I'd only tried the built in tutorials so far and only knew the basics controls of other Adobe software but I'm happy how they turned out. I still managed to hand draw both the characters but I used a blank puppet from Animator as a skeleton for my character's structures as this was pretty complicated.

 

I found that the bounding boxes around each part of the character were too large and were causing the Animator rigging system to incorrectly label layers/behaviors. After correcting this and starting again it seemed to respond better, fortunately the Photoshop file automatically updates to Character Animator which makes rigging and testing a much quicker process. I created swap sets of mouths for the characters to replace the generic default mouth shapes, this again took quite a long time and is something I'd improve my consistency with next time (some were more accurate than others) but overall I'm pleased I made the decision to do this over using the standard mouth sets. I was able to learn about the settings for lip-syncs in Character Animate and correctly sync the audio to my characters, instead of clipping the audio like a script for each character to lip-sync to, I manually edited the visemes to reflect who was speaking, I was able to slow down the audio playback temporarily to make sure I was accurate with this.

I used my webcam to record facial expression movements and blinking separately afterwards; the limb behaviors still needed work but due to time constraints and my lack of understanding of IK chains/programmed movements in Animate meant I had to improvise. I made sure the feet were pinned and then made the arms draggable so I was able to achieve some movement in time. now that I am more confident in this software I will spend more time learning the behavior functions, physics and other important functions. Although I used a background for the scene I exported my puppets without it in order to better stage them in the After Effects composition, this is an option when exporting (Media Encoder with Alpha).

I'd hand drawn all the backgrounds I needed and hand animated a few sequences (highlighted in my project log) to go alongside the main trailer elements, I think that the combination of hand drawn elements with digital animation worked well in this case as it allowed me to use my artistic side as well as learn a lot of new software skills that will be useful in future projects.

I just had time to animate some of the background elements before exporting the sequence as a final product, if I had structured my time slightly better I would have spent it learning more After Effects controls and effects that could have enhanced my work. I wanted to include bubbles in the underwater scene that appeared when the characters talked, import my other giant spider walk cycles used in the treetops scene and successfully animate them, add a hand drawn flame effect to the rocket ship/space scene and added other small finishing touches to the backgrounds/extra creature characters. I was more disciplined towards the middle/end of the project as I had a clearer idea of which software I wanted to use and how I could overcome a few technical hurdles. I did look into using Blender Grease Pencil but I felt that After Effects and the other Adobe software was worth trying to work with as all the programs can easily communicate, I also relied on Creative Cloud to transfer documents a lot which meant that I could import/export anything I needed instantly.

I will definitely be learning more animation techniques on After Effects in my free time to use in my future projects and will hopefully help me to progress to a career in the VFX industry. Although I haven't yet received any feedback from the Sweet Boys Podcast as of yet I think posting in the channel comments or interacting with fans prior to my project would have been interesting, however I will post the finished animation online and gather some feedback from other podcast fans, I was able to present my animation to the class who laughed in all the right places!(Thankfully) and offered helpful feedback which I can take with me into my future projects. 

I was asked in my presentation what I would hope the podcast would say about my animation but I explained that I'm pretty biased and would be happy with anything they said, but hoped that they'd recognize the little details I'd added as a fan.

I don't think the lack of primary research impacted the project too deeply although I recognize it's an important element of the research and development stage; I got feedback throughout the project from the rest of my class, friends who listen to the podcast and my partner which helped me to refine my character designs and develop my software knowledge. I did use a planning schedule for this project but next time will better understand the length of time it takes to complete each task and how to better organize my time.