Pre-Production
As mentioned before, I am animating the book Goodnight Moon in Photoshop and After Effects (with audio capture in Final Cut Pro and edited in Audacity, since I have no idea how Final Cut works). The planning and pre-production phase mainly consisted of me rereading the book and getting down the proper rhythm to read it at, while also scanning in the book's pages and storyboarding the changes I would be making to each page. For example, on the page reading "And there were three little bears, sitting on chairs," I storyboarded it so that the bears would open their eyes as I read. I scanned the book's pages in using our fancy-schmancy Epson scanner (which makes a whole lot of cool sounds) so that I could later alter them. I've included the three storyboard pages I created below.
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| My storyboards (Observe my lack of drawing skills) |
As you can see, for my storyboards, I listed the text being read, the planned animation for the page, any audio clips I would need to find, and then drew a really, REALLY rough sketch of the altered element. After this process was complete, I moved on to the actual creation.
Production
I began the process of animating the pages in Photoshop by importing the scanned pairs of pages and changing the canvas and image sizes so that only one page was showing. I then selected the actual pages (while scanning them in, the scanner also included extra empty space) with the Quick Selection Tool and created a new layer by copying them, hiding the background layer under them. After that, the process began to vary. I made a lot of small alterations using one very simple process: the content-aware fill. Since I was working with pre-drawn images that I couldn't really add on to, my only real option was to play with what was already there. To do this, I would make a selection of the element on the page that would be animated (for example, the cow that jumps over the moon) with the Quick Selection Tool and create a new layer by copy from that selection. I then hid the new layer, selected the original background layer, and covered the area encompassing the element with a marquee. After that, I used the content-aware fill to fill in the background layer and unhid the copied layer. This gave me a replica of the element that I could alter the position and opacity of. I also had to do this with some text containers, since they were in positions that would interfere with the animation or were too difficult to see. For some pages, like the one with the little toy house, I made further alterations (like the dark windows). To do that, I just duplicated the copied layer to make a second copy of the element. Finally, for some pages, I just panned across the background, which just involved a position keyframe in Photoshop. After I made the animations in Photoshop, I exported them as .mp4 files, and imported them into After Effects.Post-Production (Unfinished as of now)
In After Effects, I began the process of synchronizing the audio with the animation. In order to do this, I had to cut some clips short (I made them all with a little bit of extra time), and also had to do a Time Stretch on some clips to make the animation synch better. The process was pretty menial, since most of it consisted of me waiting for the RAM Preview to catch up to where I was (After Effects doesn't play audio with the default preview, and RAM Preview always starts from the beginning). I'm still working on synchronizing some scenes, improving the audio, and finding good sound effects, but you can see the work I've done so far in the rough (read: REALLY REALLY ROUGH) animation below.
I'll keep updating this post as I make more edits, but that's all I have for now.
EDIT: I'll probably end up putting this is Post-Production after I finish the project entirely and finalize this blog post, but I figure I should update my current progress. I've found sound effects for most of the elements, but still need to find a good "plop" sound for the mush. I synchronized most of the sound effects pretty well, but I'm still toying around trying to make it the best it can be. I also sped up the balloon in the first scene, since it was moving much slower than it does later on, and added in the text for the first page. Since the text for the first page was on an entirely separate page, I had to grab the text from that separate page, grab a black text bubble from another page, and then overlay those two on top of the first scene. I've also been working on getting rid of the book's crease in Photoshop, mainly through the content-aware fill. On pages where there's nothing but white space or solid colors behind the crease, it's been very easy. On other pages where things like the fireplace or wood basket are in the way, it has been a trek to keep the content-aware fill from obliterating whatever object was in the way. I used the Brush tool to fill in areas of the crease that content-aware fill couldn't, taking a color sample from a near area and trying to free-hand the design to look as believable as possible. (Also, content-aware fill hates the patterns on the rug and wood basket. I had to redo all of that by hand with the Brush tool. It wasn't fun.)
Items still on the agenda include audio edits to my voiceover and finding a few elusive sound effects, as well as finishing getting rid of the crease. I'm also going to try to darken the rabbit's room after he says "Goodnight light," probably through an adjustment layer with low Brightness. I'll see how it works and whether or not I want to include it, since I won't really know how well it will work until I do it. I'll finalize this post whenever I finish/a new deadline approaches.
EDIT: I'll probably end up putting this is Post-Production after I finish the project entirely and finalize this blog post, but I figure I should update my current progress. I've found sound effects for most of the elements, but still need to find a good "plop" sound for the mush. I synchronized most of the sound effects pretty well, but I'm still toying around trying to make it the best it can be. I also sped up the balloon in the first scene, since it was moving much slower than it does later on, and added in the text for the first page. Since the text for the first page was on an entirely separate page, I had to grab the text from that separate page, grab a black text bubble from another page, and then overlay those two on top of the first scene. I've also been working on getting rid of the book's crease in Photoshop, mainly through the content-aware fill. On pages where there's nothing but white space or solid colors behind the crease, it's been very easy. On other pages where things like the fireplace or wood basket are in the way, it has been a trek to keep the content-aware fill from obliterating whatever object was in the way. I used the Brush tool to fill in areas of the crease that content-aware fill couldn't, taking a color sample from a near area and trying to free-hand the design to look as believable as possible. (Also, content-aware fill hates the patterns on the rug and wood basket. I had to redo all of that by hand with the Brush tool. It wasn't fun.)
Items still on the agenda include audio edits to my voiceover and finding a few elusive sound effects, as well as finishing getting rid of the crease. I'm also going to try to darken the rabbit's room after he says "Goodnight light," probably through an adjustment layer with low Brightness. I'll see how it works and whether or not I want to include it, since I won't really know how well it will work until I do it. I'll finalize this post whenever I finish/a new deadline approaches.
