Final Submission

               
So after 14 weeks, 11,714 frames of animation and 34 shots of just under 8 minutes of unedited footage, I'm done. I enjoyed the module and I really liked working on this kind of style (I plan on developing it further and using it for either a class next term, a personal project, or my 4th year project). The final video is too big to upload to blogger, but here's a link:
              
https://vimeo.com/306883537
         

Week 13/14

                     
These last two weeks have been pretty uneventful, I've mostly just been adding a few final touches - things like additional fog layers, foreground ash fall, and the last few stills. These were made from pictures of Pompeii edited to be duetone (black and white initially, with a gradual fade to black and red):
               

                                   

Week 12

                             

I've pretty much finished everything now, and am in the final stages of editing. Here's an update on where I am with each shot:

                          

                            

As per Ryan's suggestion I've also made a short animation sequence for the horse's breath. each frame is semi-transparent and alligned with one another so that I can scale each short sequence down and position it to be exhaled by the horse to the beat of its gallop. The first and last few frames I also made more transparent in editing in order to create a dispersal effect.

                        

                                 

While I like the result (screenshot below) when used regularly I worry that it makes it look like the horse is running in the cold (a possible misconception that isn't helped by my intentional switching of what the viewer first assumes is snow to ash, the realisation of which dawns as the music first starts getting darker). To avoid confusion I've reduced the usage of the breath clouds and concentrated them around the time when the rider is galloping out from a cloud of ash, and there's all sorts of debris and ash streaming from him anyway that could explain it.

              

                     

Week 11

             
As you can see from this shot plan update, I'm all done with the actual animation. All sequences are either finished or in the editing stage:
           

                   

Here's a short clip (without sound) from the main sequence:

           

                   

Week 10

                 

I've put together the final forground layers with a white background to give and idea of how it'll flow:

              

             

I also cut out a segment of the final animation. I know it doesn't make much sence without any context, but you can see get an idea of how it flows with the music:

             

                 

I've finished all the foreground group loops I'll be using. Long grass:

                    

       
Shorter grass:
            

               
Cobbled stones for when we get into the town (not very visually interesting I know, but I thought I should include everything):
                    

             
And the surface of a pier for the end:
             

                     
Each ground loop I've made is 12 frames long and the distance travelled in each frame matches the horse's stride. I also made a stand of amphora for the foreground of the dock area:
                 

                                  
Most of the animation is done and I'm into editing the final animation. I've highlighted the shot plan to give an idea of how far along I am (green being parts that are totally finished, yellow meaning that these shots are either in a late stage of animation or are in editing, and red meaning shots that are still being animated):
                

                     

Week 9

          
This week I made main animation loop for the character:
          

              
As well as loops for other civilians running through the town. These were all pretty easy to make as I already had the rig I used for the rider, and I won't bother making new ones for women or children. I started with a normal run loop:
                      

             
Then a guy holding a box
             

                 
Then a sequence for someone falling:
                 

             
Many shots have pieces of debris shooting through the sky overhead. To make these I started by drawing a flame curl on a curved plane, then copied it to form a loop:
                         

             
I then copied and rotated these loops, stretching as I went, and ended up with this:
                          

         
I then rounded off the front and added textures to each part (starting bright and red, gradually getting more translucent and darker as I went along). This is the final result:
                        

                 
This isn't really relevant, but I liked the view from below:
                           

                   
I also made several layers of fog to be used in the main animation, which move at different speeds to gradually obscure the different mountains as the sequence progresses:
                          

       
I also used particle effects to have it rain ash. The particles in each one are smaller and more transparent the further from the camera the cloud is:
                    

                 
I also made a few nearly transparent circular planes that I've animated to roll across the screen in the foreground to simulate fog (since they're so front and centre I wanted a little more abstraction than basic fog effects, and I felt this style goes better with what I've done for the flaming debris, lava bursts, etc.
                            

                        
For the clouds of smoke coming from the volcano I made a series of tubes, molded them, textured them with some noise and transparency, and set them to slowly grow and rotate out of the volcano. In each shot the eruption is further along, so I made three iterations:
                           

                           
Here's how the scene turned out for the first shot:
                        

                     
And here it is later on:
                            

                      
I also made a full Roman style ship model and animated the oars for one of the final shots:
                       

               

Week 6-8

I've now made the environment that will appear in the intro shot and later in the animation from a low angle. I started by making the volcano and coastline nearby:

I then made some very basic buildings, boats, and docks for the town (they'll be shown so far away that any detail beyond their use as a light source is unnecessary.

Here the town is with the volcano in the background.

I then made a lower poly environment for the surrounding area along with a flat plane for the surface of the sea:

 

I added a sky dome and layers of semi-transparent fog to fade the distance out and replicate the look of the main animation sequence:

 

Here's a render of the result - I'll play with the lighting once I know the exact appearance of the sky in the main sequence (it'll probably be a bit brighter):

There are also several quick lava closeups in the plan (shot 2 and shot 6 on the plan). For these I made a small set with multiple background layers and some fog:

 

The lava surface is a plane with darker textured shapes for rock chunks.

There's also a 2D tree in the background (I made a few of these which I'll use in the main sequence). Here's one of the frames from one of the two final sequences:

I made a little lava spew too which is just a few 2D shapes which i then morphed and animated, to keep in style with the style of the rest of the animation:

I've also made the character and horse rigs in 2D, excuse the dots they're the pivot points:

While the horse is a single asset the man is split up into limbs (I wanted to get as much detail as I could):

I based his head on the design of ancient Greek and Roman coins. His mouth can open and he can blink too, but I doubt I'll need to use these as I've really gone into more detail here than I needed to.

Here the final figure is:

Finally, I've started editing the video. I've imported the song and inserted placeholder frames that fit in with the beat. The red ones represent frames where the horse's hooves are on the ground, the green where they'll be in the air. The start of each 12 frame loop happens with each beat (necessitating a frame length of ~0.385 seconds for the rider animation loop), so the final gallop will happen to the music.

I'm basing the animation itself on Muybridge's 1878 horse gallop frame study, though I'm augmenting it a little to have the horse in the air for a slightly longer period. This will distance it from strict realism and will be in keeping with the rest of the animation, as well as fitting better to the beat and being more pleasing to the viewer (while real horses are in the air for about 35% of each sequence when moving at full speed, my horse will be in the air 50% of the time).