Multiplane Animation- A Bite of History, and How I Did It

Hello, all you wonderful people.

Multiplane animation is nothing new- it's been around for decades. It may often be glossed over because of how simple it seems, but it's an integral part of making dimensional animations that can really set up the scene perfectly.

The History of Multiplane Animation

In days of old (and by that I mean when Walt Disney was alive), multiplane animations were made using large glass frames, each with a different part of the scene. Sort of like a traditional animation cell, but on glass. This was so it could be put in a sort of camera, where multiple glass layers would be layered upon each other and moved at different speeds using a crank. The movement would then be captured as a frame of animation, creating a scene where all layer of the foreground and background and such are moving at different speeds and directions to create something that feels truly alive.

So How Did I Do It?

In recent years, as we've moved on from large manual animation machines and such to computers and more convenient forms of animation, we've discovered a newer (and MUCH easier) way to produce multiplane scenes of animation. It's very simple- to make a three-layered multiplane animation, I created three layers of an environment plus a sky layer in Photoshop. After the scene was set, I popped it into After Effects to animate it! The closer the set piece was to the viewer, the longer it was, allowing the front layers to move faster. The middle layer was a chunk shorter and moved more slowly, and the back layer was the shortest and moved the slowest. The sky can also have some animated parts such as clouds and birds, but I opted out and just made the sky pan to the side a little. After all the keyframes were set, my animation was rendered and completed! Here it is if you'd like to view it.

(Not-so-fun Fact- My first attempt at making the layers was a hot mess and I ended up making the front piece too short and the back piece too long. It was an easy fix, but boy was I upset.)



I am EXTREMELY proud of the final product! I love the way the sky looks, the way the weird space-bubble-needle things look, the way the land itself looks, the way the house looks, and the way the character looks... I could go on forever, but then this blog post would be exceptionally long and boring to read. Whoops.

As always, thanks for reading!
-Tate

Coat Dog Does a Walk (Walk Cycle)

Hello!

Our most recent project in animation was quite a big one- making a walk cycle using after effects! When I first heard the project announced, I was quite overwhelmed and had many questions. Such as "How will I make this animation?" "How will I draw the character?" "WHICH CHARACTER WILL I USE?" While at first I was a little uneasy, it would go on to be one of the most fun projects I've ever done in Animation!

The first thing we had to do was draw the character- on paper, that is. This was to make life a little easier, rather than drawing the character with a mouse and shaky hand (I'm shivering just thinking about it). After that, we scanned our drawings into Photoshop, refined the lines, and added color. The hardest part of building the character was separating the character into chunks (head, body, legs, etc). I had to refine lines using a mouse, which was... painful. While the recommended shading tools were the dodge and burn tool, I used my preferred method of cell-shading. After the character was done being built, I animated it in After Effects by keyframing the limbs, to make the character look like it was walking. But animating the legs wasn't enough- to make it look more convincing, we had to animate other parts of the body too- such as a head bob and swinging arms. (My character doesn't have arms, so that was a bit of a Get Out Of Jail Free card for me.)

Here it is if you want to watch it-



Overall, I think I did great! I'm VERY proud of how the character looks, how the background looks, and how fluid the animation is. The legs do slide a bit, which I didn't go back to fix. Looking back, I should've fine tuned the keyframes to prevent sliding. Another thing I would do differently is in regards to timing. The timing is a bit too fast, causing the character to look like they slip along a bit. However, extending the project when I was already this far was a nightmare so I just left it as is. Other than those faults, I'm super proud of the end result.

Thanks for reading,
Tate

INTERVIEW PROJECT THAT HONESTLY COULD'VE GONE BETTER BUT I'M ALRIGHT WITH HOW THINGS WENT DOWN

Hello, all you wonderful people.

Our second video project in Exploring Video was to make an interview. An interviewer would ask the interviewee questions, and the interviewee would provide answers, giving an insight on the interviewee and their life.

We worked in groups of four- the cinematographer, the location expert, the interviewer and the interviewee. We had to write down 20 questions for the interviewee to answer, pick an appropriate location for the interview that fit with the context of the topic, record, edit, obtain a chunk of b-roll in between somewhere, done. I was the cinematographer, so I was in charge of manning the camera. All I really had to do was maintain a steady camera angle and make sure nothing turned off, fell over, or exploded. The interviewer would ask questions to the interviewee (who would answer, of course). I think that the Locations Expert was meant to find appropriate filming environments and make sure that the location was available, suitable, and non-combustible.

The topic of our interview was in regards to Ashton (our interviewee) and her life in sports, specifically soccer and track. We chose to film on the track surrounding the football field, which wasn't the most fitting location due to the massive football field. In retrospect, we should've focused our angles more on the track. We were able to finish filming in one shot, and went back inside to start editing. There was just one problem- one tiny, little problem that we couldn't fix. And that was because of good ol' Mother Nature deciding to prank us with insane gusts of wind that we couldn't edit away. So, we just had to make do. It was hard cutting down our footage to less than 2-ish minutes, but we did it! With sparse b-roll, jump cuts aplenty, and heavy wind. So after the initial upload, I jazzed it up a bit with a title transition, more b-roll, and removal of a chunk of blank space at the beginning.

Here it is if you want to watch it.



If I did this again, I'd obviously choose a different location than the windy annoying track field so that we could more clearly hear our interviewee. I'd also reposition the b-roll to hide those sneaky jump cuts, and maybe add some light background music to make it more fun. I'd also keep the camera more steady.

Thank you for reading about my flop of an interview.

Until next time,
Tate