There were a few last minute changes to do time allowances, this namely being the absence of the 'wife discovering the internet' parts (also because I didn't want to let those sexy map scenes go to waste). This actually works in the animation's favour, as it makes it look less like some cheesy advert and more like a general animation, taking away some of the guilt. So yeah, basically, it's not so much an ad anymore rather than your standard animation with a few flagrant uses of brand names.
My penguin guy, Martin Tierney, delivered on his 3D cyber penguins, delivering his animation on a shiny disk. However, one slight issue I had to work around was the fact the animations used their own backgrounds, which clashed with the snowy background I had gotten from Kieran. To compensate for this, I used some colour keying on one of the opening clips so that I could show the background behind it, and adjusted the colour on the others so that they managed the colour scheme. Once that hurdle was crossed, I managed to take advantage of the scenes to get creative with the story. I also got him to send me some alpha stills of the penguins that I could use for comic flinging. I also threw in some laser sights, which I made by making a long glowy solid and then moving it around in 3D space, which looks pretty badass.
The ninja octopus scene came out lovely, thanks to a combination of rainy stuff, and rocky waves drawn by Kieran. There was quite a bit of After Effects use in this, mainly for moments when I needed some epic effects or such. For simple animations mind, I just stuck to animating it in Flash.
One lil aspect I threw in was a reference to the Avatar DVD Beardyman was questing for. In leu of wasting time doing some gay drawing, I instead took a quick webcam video of me being a twat (I do not know any 'university' alternatives to the word 'twat' so forgive me), and altered it to give me Avatar blue skin. If I had remembered to take my shirt off I bet you wouldn't be able to tell the difference from the real thing!
Post production was gonna be a tricky matter given how painstakingly last minute it was, but it came out really well. Editing the video came out nicely with some little fades in and out of the map scenes that were pulled off nicely IMO. As for sound, Deven had given me a health supply of 'Aarrrghs' to accompany Beardyman's battles. Hunting for sound effects was a little trickier, but a quick hunt through FindSounds and SoundDogs turned up some decent clips. Since I clearly had no time to make a worthwhile soundtrack in Fruityloops, I turned to that ever so loveable source of royalty free music, Newgrounds. After going through all the relevant keywords 'epic, quest, journey, etc.) and hit and missing through the iffy techno tracks, I eventually found 'Our Epic Journey' by Zero123Music, which not only sounded great, but synced PERFECTLY with the video!
The end result looks absolutely magical. A combination of smooth animation, high res visuals, top notch voice acting and well layered sound effects. It gives off a level of sheen that's expected of most professional animations (well, in the advertising field at least). For me personally, it's given me that chance to actually take my tutor's advice and animate something that isn't just the same bog standard flash stuff I do all the time.
Without further ado, here is Tales of Beardyman!
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