Planning
My main annoyance with my previous piece was that it didn’t capture the kind of wonder I wanted. Instead it went far more down the route of pure horror than charming, hopefully I will be able to achieve the wonder that comes with a enchanted forest with this piece. I plan to use a picture I took of a nearby forest and cut out the trees to make additional layers, then animate creatures to be moving through the forest.
My background image 
My monster image
Firstly, I needed to get the images I would be using for this project. I had the forest image I would use as the setting already and found a fascinating fish in my local fish shop which I thought I could turn into a magical creature without the result becoming creepy.
Production
Many things went wrong with this production, and ultimately, I am dissapointed with the result. I started by separating the trees in the foreground of my photograph in photoshop. This then gave me many layers so I could simulate having the creatures move between the trees (fig.1)
fig.1 
fig.2 
fig.3
As my background is a real image and not drawn the way my other animations are I wanted to use a real image for the creature. I found a interesting, shaped fish which didn’t follow the standard structure which I thought would help make them look okay in the scene (fig.2). However, I really didn’t like how they looked when moved onto the forest background (fig.3) as such I decided to draw them as I had before (fig.4).
While I liked the drawing I made, I do think having hand drawn elements on a live background does look a little strange (fig.5). If I had more time I would have tried to find a more appropriate real image creature such as a reptile, which I think would have worked better than the animation I ended with.
fig.4 
fig.5 
fig.6
Next I animated the creatures so that they would move and rotate their legs to give the impression of walking (Fig.6). It was at this point it became clear that my plan didn’t translate well, and the end result looked very plain when watched back. I felt like I needed something to add to the foreground to add depth and intrigue to the animation.
fig.7 
fig.8 
fig.9
I found a very useful tutorial video on creating a smoke effect which I thought would add something sophisticated to what was otherwise a very basic scene. This worked well and gave me a nice puff of procedurally generated smoke (fig.7). However I faced issues once I had this puff in place.
I made the smoke in a new composition as per the tutorial, and even something as simple as moving the smoke across to my first composition was tricky. However, the big issue I found was that the smoke was not movable once placed (fig.8). I thought this was because the transformation options were frozen however even when turned to keyframes the asset wouldn’t be moved. Instead if I moved the layer to the right or left the smoke disappeared instead, this meant I was left with one small puff of smoke as opposed to having the entire forest floor covered in smoke as I intended (fig.9)
With the video done I turned my attention to the audio. Again, I used freesound as my source of copyright free audio sources as I found a good range on their previously. I found some background forest noises which I could just leave to play over the video, this gave the impression of more life to the forest than what the viewer can see.
Next I wanted to add an ethereal element to my composition. I originally looked for siren calls however couldn’t find one that fit the scene as much as I wanted. In the end, I used wind chimes much like I did with my previous animation. Though this sound cli is far less intimidating then the previous.
The final sound clip I used was of a snake hissing. I wanted to add some kind of threat as I had attempted to make the creatures look more reptilian than fish and I thought this clip would add a welcomed sense of danger to the viewer.
Final Thoughts
As said, I am ultimately dissapointed with this animation. Honestly, I feel like my third animation is the most accomplished of my four. The piece would have benefitted from some kind of movement in the sky. Perhaps if I had added a purple overlay which I could have imposed on top with a transparency I can change.
Also, it is annoying that while I do have this nice smoke effect I can not duplicate and move it. I had intended to litter the forest floor with this ethereal smoke and can’t help but feel annoyed that I could only get this one animated puff.
References:
InspectorJ (2017) [Freesound.org] ‘Ambience, Day Wildlife, A.wav.’ Available online: https://freesound.org/people/InspectorJ/sounds/398980/ [Accessed 20/04/2021]
digilusion (2020) ‘Create Procedural Smoke Effect In After Effects – No Plugins – Smoke Tutorial 100% After Effects‘ [Video] Available online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjC_Kvhlps8&ab_channel=digilusion [Accessed 20/04/2021]
AaronGNP (2007) [Freesound.org] ‘Padaddict I » Hissing Snakes.wav‘. Available online: https://freesound.org/people/AaronGNP/sounds/44022/ [Accessed 20/04/2021]
newagesoup (2016) [Freesound.org] ‘CHIMES-02.wav‘. Available online: https://freesound.org/people/newagesoup/sounds/350361/ [Accessed 20/04/2021]