I think the pieces that have done well so far have been videos that included a mix of real life footage and animation, created using a range of software - particularly Photoshop, Premiere Pro and Blender. I also liked using some pencil drawings as a way of planning my digital drawings like I had for the typography brief. For my third Final piece I will try to include all of these features.

Photoshoots 1 & 2

There were 184 photos taken for this photoshoot. On the first one I took the photos of mostly buildings which looked quite similar, so I did a second photoshoot to try and include some natural settings to pair well with the architecture shots.

I didn't want to just take ordinary pictures of the buildings- I wanted them to have the slightly imperfect proportions of Haynes work, mimicking the style of someone who has limited time to draw their subject. I took different photos of each part at a range of focal lengths and at slightly different angles and then assembled the smaller images into one large photo. The effect of using this technique was it made the pictures slightly distorted and altered the proportions of the buildings. 

Using the pictures as references to look at on a screen I drew them into a sketchbook. I divided my references and sketchbook pages into 4 sections to make it easier to see where each part should go on the page. I started in pencil before tracing over the pencil lines with a felt tip, then rubbing away the pencil lines. 

I scanned in the pen drawings using a scanner and imported them all into photoshop, then traced over them in photoshop using the brush tool. I turned off the smooth setting when drawing so that the lines were slightly uneven to stick with the hand drawn style.

After creating the main outlines I added some colour to the backgrounds of the images. I lowered the opacity of the brush I was using so that I could create some layering where the colour becomes darker, like water colour building up, again trying to stick with the handmade look.

I didn't want the drawing to be completely static, otherwise the look like still image being moved rather than the camera being the thing that moves. It would take too long to draw each scene multiple times so similarly to when I made the MF Doom advert, I used after effects to give the drawings a slight shake to mimic the effect of being drawn one frame at a time. To do this I imported the image into after effects and added an adjustment layer. I added the effect 'Turbulent displace' to the adjustment layer which creates a distorted and rippled effect on the image. The evolution dial in the settings panel of this effect changes the direction of the images movement. I created six key frames where the image wobbles to 6 different degrees and selected the "toggle hold key frame" setting which makes the image jump between positions rather than fade between them. The effect of this was a constantly moving image.

I applied this effect for each image. For one of my images I had the people walk behind a rope so I exported this part of the image separately, applied the effect and then put them together in Premiere Pro. Applying this effect to separate parts of the image meant I can have the people walk behind certain objects.

To animate the people I played the videos in Premiere Pro and took a screenshot every couple of frames. After that I Imported each screenshot into photoshop and traced over each individual person one frame at a time using the Brush tool. Once I had completed this I had to also draw underneath each person again with the brush tool so they could not be seen through. I repeated this for each of the three scenes which contained 13 people to animate individually one frame at a time. This amounted to hundreds of people to draw. After the animations were completed I exported them and overlaid them with pictures in Premiere Pro.

I imported every piece of footage into a new premiere pro document and put them in order, using key frames on the position panel to make the images and videos drift in and out of the frame, simulating camera movement. 

I recorded the static noise of the vinyl player and added the audio to the opening, as well as overlaying the song, making it begin a few seconds after the needle drops

For the logo at the end of the video I used some of the trees from one of my drawings for the background. I took the logos of the two companies I was working for and redrew them using photoshop. I changed their style to seem more hand drawn to fit in with the rest of the video.  

I exported the logo outlines with a gradient map applied over it to change the colour to brown and yellow because this would make it easy to trace later. Then I imported the image into blender and I traced the two logos using the brush tool and applied the build modifier to the object, which creates the effect of the lines being drawn. I also added the noise modifier to the object which gives the lines a slight shake so there is constant movement in the video. 

The tower in this image took a very long time to get right, and I had to erase the pencil lines a few times. I didn't want to get rid of the imperfections because this wouldn't fit with Hayes' sketchbook style. To have this reflected in my digital image I made a copy of the tower, and moved it a few pixels to the left, then lowered the opacity, so if you look close it will look like faint pencil lines that have been rubbed out.

Evaluation

One thing I thought worked well on this video were the transitions between real life and animation and mixing the two, which I think I demonstrated well with the animated text edited to appear behind the real life vinyl. I also really liked using Haynes style: he works quickly from real life subjects so he has quite a rough, informal style and is not focused on photorealistic proportions, but more about drawing viewers towards details, which his pictures are full of. His pages are always very full and he leave very little empty space, filling the page with as much detail as possible. Something I would want to improve would be to have created longer animations for the people- this would mean I could make the camera movement slightly slower and the animations would look smoother. Contrasting colours are used to separate different parts of his subjects, making the viewer focus on them as individuals and how they all happen to have fitted together to create the image. I tried to include this on my picture with the bus - the building in the foreground is one object, as is the bus, and the towers in the distance, but at that time and from that point of view they all come together to create that particular photo.