Treasure All Animation Behind the Scenes

The Treasure All animation is an experimental, vertical format film about growing up with autism, through the eyes and words of Peyton Goddard. Here are a few of the tasks that went into creating this moving short film.

Process

Treasure All Animation poster
Treasure All
  1. The animation process began with meetings between the Director L. V. O’Connell, Producer Elaine Dill, and the Goddards. A brief for the project was created and filming was done with Peyton.
  2. Pre-production consisted of researching, writing the script, and creating storyboards. After storyboards were refined character and background design began.
  3. Production fell into two phases. The first phase required casting two actresses (Juniper and Laurel Davidson) to voice the narration parts and recording the audio (thanks to Frank Forth ). The second phase involved rigging and animating the final character designs and placing them in their environments.
  4. Post production included editing the animation together, adding sound (effects and

Experimental Vertical Format

The vertical format allowed us to play with the space in a new way. The main character is shown quite small at times to show how the world came down around her. We also wanted a sense of falling into darkness, to capture the isolation, and the sensation of being trapped that she must have felt when she lost her ability to communicate.

Peyton’s Voice

Peyton’s autism makes it difficult for her to speak. She uses a device that allows her to type in order to communicate. Her written word is quite unusual, unique and poetic. Her ‘voice’ in this format gives us an insight into her thought process and the depth of the world inside her mind. That voice was used as the basis for the script.

Recording audio for Treasure All animation
Director L. V. O’Connell (left) recording audio with voice talent, Juniper and Laurel Davidson, and Frank Forth. Photo by Jessica Davidson

When creating the short film we wanted to depict her early life and the heartbreaking challenges of a child, and the change that came to her later in life. To help with this distinction, we were able to use two lovely young voice actors, Juniper Davidson and Laurel Davidson, together with the sound work from Frank Forth of Forth Dimensions Video Productions, they were able to translate Peyton’s words into a wonderful soundtrack.

Treasure All Animation Character Design

Treasure All Animation character design young Peyton
Young Peyton

The short film features two character designs. The first is the main character and narrator as a young girl. We wanted a young girl that reflected Peyton’s age and innocence. We also wanted a hand-drawn and imperfect appearance to compliment her imperfect movements.

I am Intelligent Cover
I am Intelligent by Peyton Goddard

Photographs of Peyton as a child were used as inspiration for the young character design.

For the second character, Peyton as an adult we stayed with a 2D character but a more polished design. She is shown larger on the screen, with more confidence, due to her ability to communicate via a device and advocate for herself.

Treasure All character design - adult Peyton

The artwork for each character was first sketched by hand and refined. The art work was then scanned and transferred to Adobe Illustrator, and further refined. The young Peyton was rigged and animated with Adobe Character Animator, while the adult character was animated in After Effects.


O’Connell Design is a consultancy offering creative services in Animation, Motion Graphics, and Visual Effects for film and television.

After Effects Plugins

A few notes and information on After Effects plugins from the San Diego Premiere Pro User’s Group Meeting 2020 March 18 meeting presented by DJ Summit.

After Effects plugins meeting members.
After Effects plugins at the San Diego Premier Pro Users Group meeting 2020 March 18.

Trackmats

Set Matte

  • Applies it to the size of the layer
  • Allows you to set using hue, saturation, lightness, and more chanel (not just alpha or luma)

EXtractoR – allows remapping of red, green, blue and alpha channels to another layer

Color Correction

Levels vs Curves After Effects plugins for color correction
Levels vs Curves for color correction.

Levels

Go into single channel in plugin and use grayscale in color window = make it look like a good grayscale image = dial it in that way then eyeball it from there

Curves

Same thing as Levels but different interface
Use grayscale colorspace
Single color channel on Curves, and pull the line to match the greyscale

Fast Box Blur

Can be used to degrade the foreground footage = 1 to 3 px
* Can control with a mask, check setting in plugin

Optics Compensation – Can help place a figure in a scene

After Effects plugin meeting screen
The meeting was held online due to the Coronavirus health recommendations.

Keying

Keylight

  1. Garbage matt
  2. Eyedropper
  3. Screen balance 50/50, 5 or 95 (balances screen between red or blue)
  4. View: Check status (black = transparent, white = opaque)
  5. Clip Black: keep as far apart as you can
  6. Clip White
  7. View: Intermediate result (not doing cc and other stuff)

Advanced Spill Suppressor – Get rid of the green

Key Cleaner – Can get chunky

Simple Choker – Fastest and cleanest way to get rid of outline

Levels (See above to CC figure to scene)

Note: FX Console from Video Copilot = help access plugins from layer https://www.videocopilot.net/blog/2018/05/fx-console-updated-to-v1-0-3/

Roto

Rotobrush

Good for fur and hair, and high contrast
Control click resizes the brush, pink is in th shot
Alt+w – refine brush, go over the edge (white is alpha, all detail comes across)
Blue box on window timeline with arrows, modifications only go one direction from there.
Add Advanced Spill Suppressor
Freeze will recalculate whole piece

New Plugins

Red Giant VFX Toolkit $999 or $599/yr https://www.redgiant.com/products/vfx-suite/
Good, makes a lot of things more straight forward

  • SuperComp – takes all the assets on one layer (light and atmospheric effects interact with all of your layers and the elements of a scene in a far more natural way than can be modeled with a simple stack of 2D layers
  • KingPin Tracker – Mocha alternative
  • Optical Glow – Inverse falloff (more like a neon light)
  • Shadow – Physically accurate shadow with a plane, animate-able to follow a lightsource
  • Chromatic Displacement – 
  • Primatte Keyer
  • Spot Clone Tracker – 
  • Knoll Light Factory – photo-realistic lens flares that render fast
  • Reflection – 

Lockdown ($249 AE Scripts) https://aescripts.com/lockdown/
Script and plugin (follow directions in the plugin)


O’Connell Design is a consultancy offering creative services in Production DesignAnimation, and Visual Effects for film and television.

Lower Third Motion Graphics for CARDA

Lower Third Graphics for the California Rescue Dog Association (CARDA)

We recently created lower third motion graphics for CARDA and their spot on Canine Corner. Founded in 1976, CARDA is a 501(c)3 non-profit, and the largest volunteer search dog organization in America. They train canine teams (dog and handlers) for search and rescue. They deploy throughout the state of California and occasionally to larger search operations outside the state.

Videos such as these and their brand recognition are used to generate funds to support the all volunteer teams.

Shattered the Movie

Motion Graphics Movie Title: Shattered

Motion Graphics Production Notes

Movie title test for Shattered. This video was produced using After Effects, Premiere Pro, Photoshop, Audition

Credits

Motion Graphics Design, Artwork, Art Direction: L.V.O

Typography of Good Motion Graphics

Leading for typography.

Finding the Music in the Typography of Good Motion Graphics

When describing good typography, terms like rhythm, proportion and motion are frequently used. The music of superior typography has a good measure to each line of text in a paragraph. Horizontal motion and a vertical motion even of static typography can aid in the ease of readability and ultimately the flow. This flow is the same you find in psychology or the gaming world.