Making the animation! - Part 1

Now that all of the set up is complete (the scene, textures etc.), it was time to finally start making the animation. I based my animation off of my storyboard, changing only the model for the phoenix home to the dreadnaught.

Scene 1

This scene was an establishing shot, it showed a wide shot of the ship with x-wings flying around it to emphasise the emptiness of space and build a little tension (whats going to happen, why is the ship there, it seems quiet, too quiet maybe?).

Some of the techniques used in this shot were simple keyframe editing for the transformation of the big ship and motion pathing for the X-Wings following the dreadnaught. One difficulty I had with this was drawing motion paths outside of the starting grid, in the end I decided to create the path, move it to the ship and edit the vertex when it was near the ship to create a smoothe line, I also found that the tangent spline was a good way to smooth out movement.

Scene 2

This next shot was a mid range shot showing the ship, x-wings and at the end an emerging TIE fighter from behind an asteroid. This generates tension and shows the audience more detail on the scene, what will happen next?

This scene used more motion pathing and transformation keyframing.

Scene 3

This next shot is an over the shoulder shot of the TIE fighter spying on the alliance ships, this shows the audience the perspective from the TIE fighter and builds up more tension in the scene.

This scene used the same techniques as above.

Scene 4

The next scene shows a wide shot of the TIE fighter rejoining his friends with the camera following its movement. This adds more to the story of the scene and lets the user imagine whats going to happen next.

More of the same techniques were used.