After effects

After painstakingly renaming the files in each scene "0001" onwards I imported them into After Effects as 7 seperate sequences then aligned them on the timeline. I adjusted the time stretch settings for each one accordingly, basically using trial and error until i was happy with the result. I imported the audio track and synched it up roughly with the part of scene 2 that needed to be in time with it, then time stretched the scene to fine tune it a little.

Final Piece

Direct upload above, but for some reason the quality is much better on you tube one below (double click and go to link for fullscreen)

Super 8 Experiment

I thought it might be cool to make my animation look like it was made on an old super 8 camera so i had a stab at it.

I got some blank footage from a super 8 camera from the internet and added it onto my composition as the top layer, setting the blending mode to multiply in order to allow my animation to show through. This  added the old-school static-y effect.

I then created an adjustment layer above the super 8 footage and fiddled with the hue/saturation in the effect menu until I had something that resembled sepia-tone.

I'm glad I learned how to do this because i'm sure it will come in useful for something one day but i think that, having spent so much time getting the lighting and colours right on my set,  it would be a waste to use this technique on my final piece.

Photoshop Edits

Most of the photos used in the animation were left completely unaltered, but there were a few things I needed to do to some of them in Photoshop.

A piece of fabric and a bit of wire made an appearance for about 5 frames  (bottom right of left-hand picture)

And somehow my own hand makes a cameo appearance on one frame (top-right of left hand picture)

These were easily editted out on photoshop by using the freehand lassoo tool to cut out the same area from another frame and paste it over the unwanted object(s).

Also, for my longer zoom shots i had to zoom out so far that the area outside of the set was visible:

Easily resolved; I used the magnetic lassoo tool to select the edges of the set, erased everything outside of it, coloured the empty space black then tidied up with the paint brush. 20 or so times...

Scene 6 - The kiss

Another slight digression from my storyboard, based mainly on circumstantial necessity. I wanted the skeleton to be visible in places beneath the fabric "skin" so literally just got my girlfriend to stitch it into the same material as I had used to make the chair. Because of this method however, the model could not support its own weight (much like a skeleton covered in the fabric from a sofa wouldn't...) so I had to use the other model as support. I was planning to split this sequence into two stages: one zoom out from the "doll's" face then a second zoom out from the happy couple, but because of the support situation I settled for one long zoom out from them both together. Once again, I think this actually worked out better than the original idea, and inspired me to reverse the opening zoom in on the moon and add it onto the end to give the impression of one very long zoom out. The only problem i had with this was that the camera i was using's zoom capacity wasn't enough to keep on zooming out, so at a point i had to start moving the whole camera and tripod-resting-on-books-stacked-on-two-chairs set-up backwards to compensate, making the zoom-out inconsistent towards the end. As a result, as the head falls off the "doll" the eyes of the viewer get distracted by the inconsistency and this action is easily overlooked.

The chair with person-shaped hole, complete with stuffing and springs.

Scene 5 - Action Cloud

For this sequence I wanted to make a sort of action - cloud reminiscent of the type seen in the old looney-tunes cartoons.  It turned out to be a really simple but effective technique - i just took a load of cushion stuffing and assembled it differently on the sofa for each frame. I took the hands off one of the models, made new sleeves and attached them to wire which i stuck into plasticine "weights" for support.
Im also pretty proud of the diddy little scissors i made out of card and tin-foil.

Scene 4 - The Idea

The coincidental positioning of the models at the end of the previous sequence gave me an idea that made me break away from my storyboard a little here. I was planning on doing quite a linear pan across both of their faces separately but since they were in such a nice convenient position i thought i would try a longer zoom/pan sequence, which i think paid off. Its a bit jerky because it was difficult to regulate the camera's movement between frames but apart from that i'm really pleased with it.