The images I created in MidJourney (my chosen from of AI currently) created a series of strange images from the prompt:
Deciding, after watching Joan Ross’s The Claiming Of Things to animate my images I cut out all the elements from each image in Photoshop from a selection of my favourite weird images and created single element images for my animation. Doing this in photoshop allows you to have more control over the selection and is for me faster as I am more familiar with the program.
Deciding, after watching Joan Ross’s The Claiming Of Things to animate my images I cut out all the elements from each image in Photoshop from a selection of my favourite weird images and created single element images for my animation. Doing this in photoshop allows you to have more control over the selection and is for me faster as I am more familiar with the program.
A learning that I was yet to realise, was that I should have cut out the elements that I intended to move in the animation and place them in a separate file. An example of this is the dogs’ mouth, as I have him barking in the animation, but the jaw had not been created into a separate file, so the movement was restricted.
This however I realised was a blessing as I could lean further into the weirdness and use effects such as CC Bender, CC Bend It and Bezier Warp to create these movements in an unnatural way.
After a few false starts which included my son pulling out the power cord when trouble shooting his own problem, which should have been fine if my auto save had worked. I guarantee that it does now ha.
At the beginning I was too gung-ho adding all the elements to the comp at once. After the restart I really focused on a few things I hadn’t done. Firstly, editing in stages.
1) Adding a pre-comp to each image and bedding down the effects for that element until I was happy with the overall effect
2) Going back to the full scene comp and adjusting the position, orientation and rotation until I was happy with the movement over the timeline.
3) Locking the layer.
4) Rinse and repeat for each new layer.
5) Unlock any required layers and adjust to allow for a better relationship between each element.
6) Lock the layer.
7) After I was happy with all the elements both individually and as a whole, I started adding any scene affects as a whole
8) Then change the camera angles.
Unfortunately, I wasn't able to master the camera as I would have liked so I decided to keep it simpler and focus solely on the animation.
The music was an interesting decision for me one of which I didn't take lightly. Initially I thought of using "Absent Minded by Gabriel Olafs, it is such a beautiful melancholy piece but i wasn't sure if it was the right fit, enter "The Haunted Victorian Pencil by A Winged Victory for the Sullen" yet another gorgeous piece, the flow of this piece really caught me for the underwater movement that i created in the animation. Both so beautiful but I realised I wanted it to be a little more eclectic..
So I started to look to the artist Liminal Drifter. Such tracks as: Angels of the Sea, A Love Song for Ghosts and Choir on Mars.. they had the more eclectic vibe that I liked but I lost a bit of the underwater feeling. Randomly I let Spotify to keep playing after listening to these tracks and I came across a track from Bonobo I hadn't heard before Polyghost, which was nearly the track I used but then I remembered Black Sands and this was the track that I chose. the right elements of eclectic, melancholy and underwater vibes with a sense of beauty.
