And it's Finished.

Finishing this project has been so tedious and just painful to an extent I can't even put into words. I once again spent the morning fixing the animation - rekey-framing every single wave. That's 73 layers. All of them. Re-animated.  I also acted on some feedback for instance I changed the colour of the text to make it more visible, I added some waves to the 'sea' to give a bit more context (although I'm still not completely happy with this part, I may have to re-think this for the gallery), I changed some timings and just had a general clean up. 

Once that was exported after many attempts - I apparently made something transparent that shouldn't have been and it was coming up bright blue during the export, but only during the export not in the actual After Effects preview which meant a few failed attempts.

Then in the afternoon I went back to Protools to re-sync the music and add a few more diegetic sounds the the social media tones and some general sci-fi noises just to give the audience a bit more information to grab onto.

For me sound has been the most straight forward aspect of this project so ending on this was a good move for me because it gave me the chance to do something I was comfortable with and use that to make the piece better. However there was only so much I could do before I overworked it. So I finished up quickly and exported in Premier Pro.




I honestly could have continued working on this project for a lot longer, I feel like what I've produced isn't quite up to the standard that I had in my head and that's been messing with my judgement a lot. As I'm typing this I'm not entirely sure I feel comfortable putting it on exhibition in the gallery or even handing it in. I don't feel like it's my best work, although that might be the stress talking.

But on the other hand I also have to keep reminding myself that the majority of the skills I used in this piece were brand new to me. I have never used Illustrator before, I've never used After Effects in this capacity before, I did my sound scape in within 2 sessions in the studio because I forgot to schedule time to do it.  It's been eye opening and the actual conjuring of the idea and the research was fascinating to me, the actual execution could do with some more work. I guess the most relevant thing I've learnt during this project is that when you have an idea you're passionate about you also have to be prepared to fail.

Also that there is no shortcuts - sometimes you just have to sit at a computer for 4 hours staring at binary code going up and down. Always up and down.

My time management skills have been pushed to the limit and whilst I'm in a better position now than I was with my last After Effects project (I seemed to have planned up until the studio shoot and then nothing, it's like I never expected to make it out the other side). But I've worked hard and whilst I'm not entirely happy with the final product I can honestly say it's not through lack of trying. I'm aware of the shortcomings of the piece and have tried to fix them to best of my ability. Working alone has been hard but worth it because now I am aware of my strengths and my weakness, giving me something to aim too.  I'm also very proud of that wave.