Seior, Wight Priestess - Conclusion & Analysis

Overall Analysis

Over the course of this project, I have certainly had my doubt and apprehensions, both about the
project itself, and more so, about my ability to actually see my ideas through. However, in the end,
Im actually quite proud of how the final animation has turned out. I feel I have gained a few things,
chiefly being a better understanding of how long a project takes, how useful milestones are in giving
direction and aiding with progress of certain pieces, and one of the most important being the use of a
good work ethic and the need for focus and dedication to the component at hand, without
distraction.

The project itself I feel turned out really well, I managed to complete the final render of the video
with two days to spare (well, a day and a half) leaving me time to work on analysis and touch ups to
other projects. Measuring at just over a minute long, the video has eight scenes which cover a brief
overview of the town of Elskliff, showing the Jormunds raiders attacking, pillaging and killing
before Seiors execution and eventual resurrection, including background sounds such as the wind
and ocean, warriors battling, as well as recurring theme of drum beats to provide music.

Development Methodology

Development of the video was split between three main stages, being initial storyboarding and
design, asset creation and animating/compiling.

Stage One: Storyboarding and Design This only took a couple of days at most, but I spent this
time looking back at my research into Viking culture and designs while scripting up ideas, which
then built into the rough idea I had originally of an undead warrior seeking revenge, later
developing into the story of Seior, depicting her fall at the hand of man, and her rise at the hand of
Gods.

Stage Two: Asset Creation/Sound Collection This was the majority of the development time,
which was spent using an ArtSlab to draw and construct all of the assets for the video by drawing
them out, redrawing them and designing them. I began with the scene sets and backdrops first,
using several reference images of different landscapes and locations to base my scenes off of, before
then later drawing and adding the character models into each scene where needed. Between
character designs, I also took aside a couple of my classmates to do voice lines for the characters
involved, such as generic raider war cries, Jormunds curse and Seiors last words.

Stage Three: Animating and Compiling After all scenes and character models were completed,
voice lines recorded and SFX collected, I took to Adobe AfterEffects to piece together each scene,
setting up camera and character movements, setting up some of the flash fades and transitions in
scenes so that each one was ready. After this, I exported each scene as an AVI file before adding
them together in Adobe Premier, compiling them, editing them into a single video by adding
transitions and effects, finalizing it all by adding in the sounds, such as music, backing sounds of
battles and storms, as well as including music and mood sound, which finalized the video before I
rendered it out.

Visual Assets - Development Notes

Despite taking my time with the entire process, I made good progress with the use of Sketchbook,
and over the course of asset development I eventually actually realised how proficient I had become
at using an ArtSlab compared to when I had originally started the project, despite it being beginner
quality none the less. This was due to the extended time I spent using one and the amount of
practice I had at mixing and using different techniques and skills, such as colour blending and
blurring for the skies and using RGBs for matching skin shades.
 There also came the animation, which while I may have forgotten some of the techniques and
commands needed originally, with some quick pointers and assistance from both my tutors and
fellow classmates, I managed to pick up the core skills again before I started to learn the more
advanced techniques I needed to construct the videos, such as activating a 3D video perspective in
Adobe AfterEffects or adding the crossfade transition function in Adobe Premier.

One of the techniques I learned as I went was a good way to blend and blur colours to create
realistic and well shaded colours and pitches, which I put to use on creating the skies and seas shown
during the animation.

In the future, I would like practice with drawing Human forms so that I could create more realistic
people.

Audio Assets - Development Notes

The sound design used in the final animation is simple and crude at best, but given the beginner
nature of the project it works well at creating a violent, melancholy and aggressive atmospheric
tension during the final piece through the mixtures of background sounds of battles, storms and
fires, to the sounds more at the forefront of the piece, such as the war cries, curses and other various
voice lines used.

I originally intended for the war drums, with various low, single beats and the faster active
drumming during the battle, to only be played near the introduction, but during editing I discovered
I rather enjoyed the sound, and thought it worked quite well throughout, so for the quieter sections
I took a sample of the drum beat, the tail end of the slow, single drum beat, and played that on loop
through the piece, setting a good pace and tension.

All voice lines used in the piece actually came from myself and my fellow classmates, with Seiors
voice lines being done by my classmate Freya, warcries provided by Ronaldo and Holden, and
Jormunds bay for Seiors head provided by myself, all of which were recorded at the college.

Complications

During development, I ran into a few unexpected mechanics in the program, unforeseen
circumstances and effects that I had to learn to counteract, such as, once all the animation and effects
for each scene had been completed in Adobe After Effects, I rendered them all out as an AVI file that
I then imported to Adobe Premier, intending to edit them together, however, I discovered that the
AVI files had a slideshow framerate, a low resolution and at seemingly random points in time, would
simply error and fail to load. With some help from my tutor, I discovered that rendering out each
file individually as an MP4 through Adobe Premier would correct these issues as the AVI files were
very, very large, meaning Adobe Premier was having trouble reading them all in time to give a high
quality playback, and by rendering them out as MP4 files, I reduced the file size and waste data,
meaning they could run correctly.

After this, during the final stage of compiling and editing, I discovered that the final scene, the
newly resurrected Seior only lasted for a single frame. This took me quite some time to figure out, as
I attempted to re-render the AVI and then MP$, even recreating the scene over the old one, and
THEN re-rendering the AVI into an MP4, but nothing worked. Eventually, my tutor once again
came to my assistance and showed me the simple yet catastrophic error I had made; when rendering
the AVI, I only had a single frame timespan selected in the time-feed, meaning it was only rendering
out that single frame. We quickly corrected this and rendered out the full scene, allowing me to
complete the piece.

We also had the unforeseen circumstances of several power cuts across a number of weeks, which
set me back a bit at several points, including corrupting renders and asset files, but thankfully I keep
several backup-files encase of emergency, meaning the work lost was minimal.
 Final Assessment

Over the course of this project, I feel Ive gained a vastly better understanding of how to use
Sketchbook. While I may still be at a beginner level, I look back to my first attempts where using an
ArtSlab felt floaty, unresponsive and dull and feeling how natural and fluid it is to use now, I
actually feel much more confident and accomplished in my ability with it, as well as a functioning
understanding of how to use both Adobe AfterEffects and Adobe Premier, meaning I believe I could
use both my current knowledge and notes I have made to allow me to quickly re-create something of
a similar level, or better yet, make a better attempt and a more well put together video.

The overall quality of the production is at the level of a novice, as is to be expected, however, I feel
like it came out much better than I originally expected. While developing the stills, character assets
and individual scenes I felt it looked much worse than it did, but once put into motion and animated,
I thought it looked somewhat passable as a working animation. I know I can do better, but I will
need time to practice and learn better techniques, even just to give different character forms to let
me add actual movement to a characters limbs.

Alongside purely improving my ability to animate a character asset, I need to improve actually
creating them, which I have already to a limited degree as when I originally attempted to create a
character asset, it was little more than an inflated stickman to begin with colours, and as I was
making the others I started using reference images and making multiple practices to each one,
which, over time, slightly improved my ability to draw a Human being, though it can still be seen
that the joints are either too curved or they arent curved enough, making the characters look janky
and disjointed, and the proportions are also slightly off, but theyre better than they were before
none the less.

Final Conclusion

At the beginning of this project, I had nothing but absolute confidence in my ability to create a
passable animation in time for the deadline; I know now that I was wrong. One of the most
important things I have learned over the course of this project is that I need to knuckle down and
apply myself to any given project, I need to put some music and just start working without
interruption or distraction, because if I allow myself to be diverted then I can waste literal hours
without making any significant progress or development in the project.

At this point in the course, I understand these things as being more important, and Ive also, as a
result, gained a better understanding of the duration and expected time a project will take when its
first set out, as to begin with, I was making gross under-estimations of the time it would take me to
complete individual sections and pieces. With this, I believe that on the next given project I will be
able to better lay out my intended and planned milestones to let me give a more accurate estimation
and evaluation of what is needed of my by which points in a projects life cycle.