Past Project Evaluation - Metamorphosis Animation

This brief involved the creation and production of an animation morphing one image into another in 25 frames. The two images required need to be of an animal morphing into a machine (possibly the machine equivalent of the animal, for example a beaver into a chainsaw).

Initial Ideas

An Elephant > A Fire Engine

This morph consists of the Elephant sucking up water with its trunk and transforming into a Fire Engine Spraying water

A Fennec Fox > A Satellite

This animation uses the Fennec Foxes large ears as the main point of transformation to transform into a satellite.

A Frog > A Zeppelin or Hot Air Balloon

For this metamorphosis, the frog’s vocal sac expands and is used to form the air balloon for a zeppelin or a hot air balloon and the rest of the frog’s body is used to form the undercarriage.

A Duck  > A Hovercraft/Boat

The movement of the duck skimming across the surface of the water as it lands is used to transform into the movement of the hovercraft/boat along the water.

A variant of this theme could be a diving bird turning into a hovercraft or boat as it hits the water. This could work well due to the suspense that builds as the bird approaches the water.

Reference Imagery

To find reference imagery, I looked at Edweard Muybridge’s photographic frames of birds in flight as reference to help the animation look cleaner and more realistic. I tried to use this referencing to make the bird in flight animation appear more like the bird is landing by adjusting the angle of flight and by adjusting the angle of the wings when approaching the water.

Below is the Image I would be using for the Boat, which the bird will transform into. 

Using Muybridge’s study on bird flight, I isolated each frame to its own layer and used Adobe Photoshop to set up a basic animation.

After this I had to resize the images so that the proportions in the animation would appear correct and so that the position of the photo in the frame, was relative to my animation. I did this by using rulers and by using layer transparency to give a better idea of how to previous frame compared to the more recent one. To check this again, I set the animation to forever so that when more frames were added, a better visualization of the idea was viewable.

The next part of the animation I chose to approach was the basic shape per frame that the morph uses. To do this, I followed a similar approach to the way I had done the frame-by-frame animation of the Woodpecker into a Hand Drill. But instead of using a light box, I instead used the transparency setting in Photoshop

I followed this process for 5 frames to give me a better idea of what the animation would eventually look like and also help me to create a more dynamic and fluid morph.

Next, I approached sketching the Muybridge photo frames.

The approach I took to sketching out the scenes was  quite similar to the approach shown previously regarding transparency.

After the initial rough sketching I decided to add basic colour to give myself a better idea of which parts of the bird/boat would be morphing and where they would morph too. The colour scheme I used to do the basic colouring up came from the main colours used in the boat reference image that I simply sampled with the eyedropper tool and created a basic palette. Due to one of the main colours being white (or at least quite pale) and it being hard to see on the background, I chose to temporarily colour the background red to increase visibility.

After creating a basic colour shape for each scene, I decided to clean up the image, making lines blockier and cleaner but helping to add a stylized feel. The main reason I chose to do this was the constraints on the time I had to produce the animation. However, I liked the look of the basic metamorphosis and I think if I was to produce the animation again I would consider a similar style but with more detail such as basic shadows. To complement the basic style of the metamorphosis,

 I then changed the background to a  neutral, creamy colour to complement the colour of the water and the colour of the bird/boat. I also added very basic water detail behind the boat to give the impression that the boat has some weight on the water.