Okay so for my second official post ever, I've decided to talk about my most popular Youtube video! It's a fan animation of the game Faith: The Unholy Trinity that I made for my animation class in college.
The teacher allowed us to make an animation about anything, as long as it was animated (obviously, duhh) in any way and between 1 minute to 1:30, the deadline was 2 months. At the beginning my two ideas were either this or a small illustrated documentary about the KATU exploding whale that happened in 1970, very random I know XDDDDD I just thought it would be funny LOL.
I ended up choosing the Faith animation, and the 3 reasons I decided Faith was:
- I was in my Faith phase at the time, watching multiple gameplays etc;
- The story from the first installment was simple enough to fit the one minute mark - priest enters abandoned house, encounters ghost, dies - Simple, fast, easy;
- The style: The game has a very simple yet distinct style, thanks to the lack of details I could draw more frames for a smooth motion and make good looking scenery quite fast.
:･ﾟ✧:･.☽˚｡･ﾟ✧:･.: STORYBOARING :･ﾟ✧:･.☽˚｡･ﾟ✧:･.:
After deciding the topic and art style, it was thumbnailing/storyboarding time! This was the trickiest part, it was also the part that suffered the most changes, because of course it did! Thumbnailing is where you let your ideas run wild, figuring out the camera angles and what scenes to keep/discard, making sure a good story telling composition! It's my favorite part of the entire creation process, imagining various cool shots/angles n' such, my mind just goes to outer space with the wildest compositions! It's lots of fun.
Anyway, the original plan was actually to cover the entire story of the first game, once John encounters Amy, they would fight, Amy would leave and John would find her with the shotgun in hand, with the movie ending with a black screen and a *BANG* sound effect, then after a while a newspaper would appear on screen with the same text from the "Murderer" Ending.
✦ Early concept for the shotgun scene (Hope it's clear enough to read/see lol) ✦
(btw yes I do take my notes in english despite not being my first language lol)
While I really wanted to go this route, I started noticing not only would it be too much work, but most importantly I did not have enough time, specially since I wanted to build some form of suspense/anticipation that requires time/space between the scenes. So I decided to cut John's journey short, and just let him die LOL.
✦ Storyboard - First page ✦
*1: "September 21, 1987". Black screen with text on center.
*2: John walks out of the car. Close up on John's feet walking out of the car. Feet goes from right to left.
*3: Forest wide shot. A deer in the distance lifts its head and looks at the camera. Subtle movement of the background trees from right to left.
*4: "It's been one year...". John walks forward. Medium shot of |John's front body, no head showing. Focus on cross and collar. Trees behind going back in a loop.
*5: "...Since I first went inside that house". House wide shot. John's silhouette enters the scene from right to left.
*6: "I have to finish what I stared". John stops in front of the house. plongée shot. Determined yet worrying expression.
:･ﾟ✧:･.☽˚｡･ﾟ✧:･.: ANIMATING :･ﾟ✧:･.☽˚｡･ﾟ✧:･.:
That decision being made, the storyboarding section came to an end, and so began the animation process!! The most time consuming and irritating part for me I must confess.
The way I did it was:
- Took some irl video footage and turned it into a png sequence;
- Traced over the pngs on IbisPaint X;
- Arranged the frames on fipaclip then exported as a gif file;
- Put all the gifs on Sony Vegas Pro 13 and added the text boxes and sound!
That's right, all the scenes are a bunch of individual gifs put together in Sony Vegas, the text boxes are also separate pngs! The video footage I traced over are random royalty free that I've found online, sadly I didn't note them down anywhere so I can't give direct credit for them :( I'm sorry please don't be mad internet > <
I even took some parts from the actual game on my video, such as the part of John turning around, or the hand coming out of Amy's face (I traced over an actual scene from the game).
Out of all the scenes the car is my favorite! I worked really hard on that one and it just turned out so smooooth!! I'm happy with the forest shot right after, I re-did that forest like, 4 times, because it always ended up either too detailed or not detailed enough, a real pain honestly.
✦ Gifs and stills ✦
These are just a few that I've made for the video, thank you every single one who watched it and left comments and likes!! And thanks to whoever shared it to the Airdorf Games! Like holy flippity jippity mother of Christ I could not believe this like oh my God-
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