E4 E Sting Production Log

Week beginning 04/11/2013

During this first week I concentrated on the research for my E4 E sting, by looking at the E4 website, the E4 E sting competition itself and the previous year’s winners and runner up’s E stings. This gave me a much better insight on what E4 are looking for in an E-sting.

Week beginning 11/11/2013

During this week I concentrated on my ideas generation, I created two mind maps consisting of a variety of different ideas all of which were random and weird which is what I found E4 were looking for when I conducted my research the previous week and all featured the E4 logo. By the end of this week I had decided to go with the idea of an animation where a man walking through a field, a space ship flying in, beaming down the E4 logo, attracting the man and as a result he gets sucked up into the spaceship.

Week beginning the 18/11/13

During this of this week I concentrated on the planning for my E-sting. This week I created a detailed story board for my E-sting.

Week beginning 25/11/13

This week I continued working on the planning for my E4 E-sting. , I created a legal and ethical checklist, an asset list consisting of everything I needed in order to create my E-sting and where I would get these from.

Week beginning 02/12/13

Although my working schedule said that I would begin the production stage for my E-sting last week, i found that the planning stage was more time consuming than I had planned it to be, therefore this week I started the production stage.

Firstly I created the background for my E-sting, I did this by using illustrator. I set the background to blue so that this could be the sky, I then used the shape tool to create the moon and finally used the pen tool to draw the grass and added colour.

I then created a new layer and used the shape tool to create the stars. And finally on a new layer I used the shape layer again to draw the space ship.

Week beginning 09/12/13

This week I continued to work on the production for my sting. Although I felt the background and space ship I drew in illustrator was suitable for my E-sting, I decided that I would start again and do a more improved version, to do this I found an image off Google, then used illustrator to draw over this using a combination of tools such as the shape tool to create the moon, the symbols tool ‘Grass 3’ to create the grass and a vertical gradient fill from black to blue through purple to create the background and the shape tool, horizontal gradient fill from dark blue to dark blue through light blue and a texture effect.

I also decided to create a more improved space ship to go with the improved background, again in order to do this I took an image from Google and drew over it using illustrator and the shape tool.

Week beginning 16/12/13

Again i focused on the production stage of my E-sting this week, focusing specifically on the animated man for my E-sting. I found that I had to create 3 versions of the animated man all with different facial expressions. In order to do this i used the pen tool to create the men’s body and created 3 copies of this, after which I made 3 heads with different facial expressions, using a combination of the shape and pen tool, I then grouped each head to a body.

I then took the E4 logo from Moodle and inserted it into the same illustrator document as the 3 men.

Week beginning 06/01/14

After finishing all drawing all the elements needed to create my E-sting in illustrator, this week I focused on putting the actual E-sting together in after effects. Firstly I created a new project and inserted all of my illustrator images.

I created a shape layer and inserted the cc practical world effect in order to create the stars for the background for my E-sting. After which I had to have the spaceship fly into the animation from the right hand side of the screen and stopping at the left hand side of the screen, therefore I added a key frame at the beginning of the animation, changed the position and scale of the space ship layer and then added another key frame 2 seconds into the animation.

Whilst the space ship was entering the screen, I also needed the first animated man to come on the screen from the right hand side, therefore on the “man01” layer I added a key frame at the beginning of the sting, changed the position and scale and then added a second key frame at approximately 1.5 seconds. I then needed the man’s facial expression to change therefore I removed the layer “Man01” at approximately 1.5 seconds and inserted the layer “Man02” at the same time.

Week beginning 13/01/14

I needed the e4 logo to fall down from the space ship, therefore I inserted the e4 logo behind the spaceship and added a key fame at 2 seconds, changed the position and scale and then added a second key frame at 6 seconds.

I then needed the man’s facial expression to chance again; therefore I removed the layer “Man02” at 6 seconds and inserted the “Man03” layer. After which I needed the man to walk over to the E4 logo, therefore I added a key frame at 6 seconds, changed the position and then added a second key frame at 8 seconds.

Week beginning 20/01/14

The production stage took longer than expected and therefore I have run over my scheduled time.

Now I needed the man to be sucked up into the spaceship. Firstly I had to add a key frame to the layer “Man03” at 8 seconds, changed the position so that the man moved up the screen towards the space ship, and then added the second key frame. Also I wanted the man to fade out so that It looked like he had gone into the space ship. Therefore at approximately 8.5 seconds I added a key frame to the layer “Man03” with the opacity 100% and then added a second key frame to the layer at 9 seconds with the opacity at 0%.

I then needed the space ship to fly off up the screen; therefore I added a key frame to the layer “Spaceship” at 8.5 seconds, changed the position and then added the second key frame at 9 seconds.

I needed the E4 logo to move into the middle of the screen and increase in size, therefore I added a key frame to the “E4 logo layer” at 9.5 seconds changed the position and scale and then added the second key frame at 10 seconds.

Finally I imported my E4 sting to premier pro and added the soundtrack.