Underwater OSTN

I worked on this project with Ben and I think it worked out ok.  From our initial ideas we chose to turn the letters O, S, T and N into characters, using the letter in each case to form the nose of a face.  Ben had an idea which involved our characters floating out to sea and being rescued by a sofa.  However, after we had created the storyboard and animatic we decided that it was too complicated an idea for the 10 second time limit.  

By this stage we had already created a water effect, made by Ben adapting a couple of Miro paintings which I put into After Effects and animated using an adjustment layer.  We therefore decided to stick with a watery theme, but simplify it down to just having our characters float down through the water and then transform into the OSTN logo.  Ben and I had each created a version of the characters and – although I think Ben’s designs are beautiful – it was decided that the simpler characters that I had drawn would work better on the sea background.  (Ben’s characters really were wonderful but they needed a plain white background to show them at there best and we both wanted to keep the background we had already made.)

I drew up the characters using Illustrator and Photoshop, while Ben created arms and legs in Flash.  We were then able to bring the characters to life in After Effects.  To add depth to the water scene Ben used Flash to create a shoal of fish.  I created bubbles in After Effects and layered them so they went both in front and behind our characters.   

The final stage was the sound; Ben recorded his friend playing the mandolin (?) and gurgling!  From the 30 seconds or so of sound, I edited out 10 seconds using Audition and added an echo and water effects. 

Sadly I was unsuccessful in getting the video to play on this page, so here is a still image instead...