48-60 frames of animation task (TO BE Continued)

I changed my author book at M for Magic by Neil Gaiman and its contains various short stories by him.

These are some of ideas and my story boards for my 48-60 frames of animation.

1st ideas - Fingers Pie.

'His finger in most of the crooked pied in town' 

-This quote gives me an idea of a fingers pie.

2nd idea - A box.

'It was a box, carved and painted in gold and red'

'The Jack-in-the-Box was buried beneath doll and trains, clowns and paper stars and old conjuring tricks, and crippled marionettes with their strings irrevocable tangles, with dressing-up clothes.'

- A box that full of toys and they are moving/come to life 

3rd idea - A door and spiders.

'The door .. with the big red on it was unlock' 

'.. A team of spiders to scare little girls..'

- I had an idea which someone open a wood door and when its open, there are some spiders hanging on  the wall to scare him.

4th idea - Birds and a Humpty Dumpty.

'Four and twenty blackbirds'

'Dumpty's death. Oe minute he was sitting on a wall, the next he was in pieces at the bottom' 

- Some black birds try to push Humpty Dumpty from a wall.

I start of with  A door and spiders but I found it was difficult to draw the door especially the handles (to make it align and sam size) so I decided to animated the Fingers Pie that is  based on one of my drawn in my journal. (below)

I wanted my animation to be a finger pie but after I don't the animation, it looks like a fingers that came out from the ground. I think this is because the surface that the fingers are surrounding is too big to represent pie. After I had a long thought, I decided to start again with my other idea. I choose the Birds and Humpty Dumpty

--

These are some references of my birds.

I did some of my frames at the studio and at my room. Because I don't have a light box, I had to use the sun by sticking my frames on the window using a masking tape. That was helpful. 

After I don't my frames, I scanned each one of them named it by 001 to 050. Then in After Effects, I transport the frames and edited the 'frames per seconds' from 30 to 5 frames per seconds because 30 frames is too quick for my animation. FInally I rendered it.

The animation's speed is perfect but the frame is not in a static position. I got an idea of cropping each one of the frame in Photoshop.

So in Photoshop, I edited every single frame as some of them are wonky in a document. 

I tried to save my 50 images in one go by go to File> Scripts> Export Layers to Files.

I just learnt this trick few seconds ago and it was and will be very helpful.

When I tried to import my image sequence in Ae, it came out with 'Multiple Sequences' I think this is because when I saved my cropped animation frame, the Ps changed the name into something else ( I cannot remember). To overcome this, I had to change the frames'  name to 001-050.

If i click at the Multiple Sequences, the frames will came out individually. I want my frames to came out in one file in Ae. 

Image above was my what happened when I click at the 'Multiple Sequence'

After I changed the name, the TIFF Sequence option came out and I ticked at that box.

And I came out with this ^ where all the image sequence in one folder and in order .  

I changed the Frame Per Second to 5 from 30 > Render.

I am happy with my outcome. For my final animation I am planning to use different ideas and mix medias technique.

After I done this animation, I realised that my animation need to be promoting the author's work or book. I was like 'oh well'. It is okay, because this animation above are my experimentations anyway.