Charlie's Angells 2: Full Throttle

Transition time brotha…

As a class we have officially begun work with Adobe After effects and are now required to Blog about after effects related compositions.

I chose the film main title Charlie’s Angels 2: Full Throttle from the website Imaginary Forces. The film is a favorite of mine and I always loved the title excerpt, so now to have the chance to closely analyze it is exciting.

This excerpt is a combination of drawn in elements, film clips, and fire. It isn’t very long, but very effective. However, I know that in the movie the title movie is slightly longer with a few more movie scenes for each angel.

Anyways, the movie incorporates three images of each angel, basically an outline and shadow of each girl; it would appear as though the image was cut right out of the layer and that was left is its outline (this is basically towards the end of the excerpt). The movie goes like this: There is a small audio introduction to the three angels, while this is playing three drawn in elements of each girl is moving through the background. Then for each individual angel a certain type of music plays to fit their portrayed personalities, so with the music alone one gets a sense of who these characters are.

Many of the transitions between scenes either involves fire brushing through or some other image moving in; usually moving over and covering the previous image. The way the fire is used is not in a typical fashion, it doesn’t appear as though it is burning the images around it, rather it is moving with them and encompassing the entire frame. The fire is enclosing and revealing images around or from within it; it also seems to move other images or that these images are following it, like a vacuum. For example, the ending of the excerpt involves each letter of the movie (in a metallic form) moving into the scene scattered about. The letters are twisting and turning but as the fire movies from the foreground to the background the letters all seem to be following its direction and they settle in the middle on a drawn in stripe, which appeared slightly behind the fire in the beginning of this particular scene.

The color pallet is basic when it comes to the drawn in elements, the colors aren’t dark per say and they aren’t bright either; the colors seem to be more in the middle. For example, there is basically maroon, blue, tan, and black. So the color pallet is very limited, but with the addition of the fire element and way in which the colors are used, combines to create a very fascinating and exciting effect.

Every element and every frame, scene etc… works very well together; I especially enjoy the shots from drawn in or unreal images to real human video. There is no jumpy transitions everything is full and the video goes very well with the feel of the music from the beginning to the end.

With practice and dedication I know I can only improve myself and with time I will be able to do similar compositions and perhaps even better ones than what I saw here.

Nims Winter Story

On my previous blog I spoke about the incredible website Goober Productions, well this time I chose to blog about one of the movies featured on the site by Sweedish animator Ola Bergner.

The movie is narrated in sweedish but had enlgish subtitles, the title of the story is Nims Winter Story and is about a Pixie named Nim who lives among the forrest. The setting of the movie takes place in the winter and for the most part seems to be at night.

To begin the storyline, an animator speaks about the forrest, a few passages on the loneliness and those who inhabit it. There is a camera pan in which the forrest and hills are shown, all the while the "camera" is zooming closer and closer to trees. Eventually a small creature pops out of its home while avoiding snowballs from other small creatures. It whipes off the sine to its house and this is where you learn the name Nim.

Nim packs up all of its stuff (I am not sure which sex this pixie is, it isn't easy to tell) and begins a walk through the woods with its sled, lantern and a small bag. On Nims was to whatever location, it passes by a sleeping creature, one that doesn't look like anything one would find in the "real" world. Anyways, Nim's destination seems to be a barn where a horse is in its stall. Nim feeds the horse and then reparis a part of the stall (*one thing I must mention is that Nim couldn't be more than a few inches tall). Nim then falls alseep, dreams of camels and is awoken when it hears a girl saying she wants to give her food to the pixies. The father of the girl says to give it to the dog because pixies do not exist. The girl then puts the food onto the ground where she believes the pixies will find it and goes inside to eat dinner.

The movie ends with Nim smelling the food. I would suppose this movie is about believing and that is simply was a fantasy of its creator. However, this is just my speculation of why the film was created.

Moving into the more technical side of this movie, Nims Winter Story seems to be close to a 3D environment. I know this movie was made in flash because its creator claims so. Shadows and gradients are put into every element of the movie, which gives the illusion of a three dimensional environment.

The color pallet is mostly dark pastel like tones, even the pixies outfit, although green, is in a darker tone. Much of the movie elements are also given a siny look, it seems as though the moon in the video is shining on the trees and into the forrest onto the floor and all of its creatures including Nim.

I love how this animator put this movie together, it takes a long time to load but it is worth it. There is constant movement, down to the little snow flakes that never stop falling even at the end of the movie when the option of watching it over again appears.

The characters that you see while watching are not human like and when there are humans, you only seem the girls feet and part of her lower legs. So this makes me thing, this animator doesn't know how to draw humans very well either.

So to end this blog, I strongly recomend one taking the time to watch this small flash movie. It is highly creative, very interesting, and the music which goes along with it it amazing.