Editing

I am now in the final stages of the production, the editing stage. As I have been thoroughly checking each scene and editing after it has been rendering, I do not have too much to do at this stage. I am using Adobe After Effects as I find it is my preferred choice as I find it enables you to carry out a range of techniques.

In my previous projects, I tend to neglect to give myself enough time for the editing process, I have learnt that it is just as important as all of the other stages of production therefore I ensured that I would have a comfortable amount of time to edit my animation.

I need to put sound to the final piece and I think I am going to experiment with the shot cuts as I feel that they are too sharp, I am going to experiment with fading the shots.

I have already found some sound effects that I think are appropriate, I will be testing them to see which ones suit the best as I find sound does have a huge impact on the final piece.

I think the most challenging aspect of editing is the timing, it has to be right otherwise it could ruin the animation.

Final Scene - The Elephant Environment

I have finished all the scenes, I just need to produce the final scene of the elephant and its baby. I haven't been looking forward to this scene, just because I thought that I would find the composition of this scene challenging as I didn't want to produce an elaborate environment for such a small scene therefore I had to be clever about the positioning of the camera and characters. From observing my research and my concept drawings, I decided what I would need in my scene. I produced the appropriate objects and textures, such as the 'muddy' floor and the vegetation. I did download and elephant model to use in this particular scene. I sculpted the landscape in Mudbox and duplicated it. I put grass texture on one landscape and mud on the other and positioned them so that there appeared to be areas terrain with different textures.

I played around with the composition, the position of the camera and objects to recreate a scene similar to that in my storyboard.

I experimented with a grass texture, I have always had problems producing a high quality realistic looking grass. I attempted the method of projecting an image onto a flat plane with the results below.

I think it looks pretty terrible so I experimented with paint effects to see which looked better, the results are below. 

 As you can see, the small patch of grass on the mud looks better than the first method therefore I decided to use paint effects.


I then imported, textured and positioned the mother and baby elephant.

I then put in a pool of blood using the method I had previously used in the final nursery scene. 

It looked a little 'straight' so I sculpted the plane more.

 I then noticed that the shadows from the trees had disappeared at some point, I then realised that I had imported the elephants from a different scene which had its own physical sun and sky therefore I deleted the other sun and the shadows returned.

This is the final result of which I am happy with. Each frame is taking ten minutes to render therefore I have decided against animating this scene at this stage. I had planned to have the baby elephant raise it's trunk but I do not think it is necessary, if I do feel that it is needed, I will add it in. 

That's all my scenes rendered! Now it's time to start editing!