25 Second Animation - Opening Shots

I am pleased with my opening shots so far. Let me go over them in order:

I’m really pleased with my opening shot. I used Adobe After Effects for the 3D camera which makes the crossing signal in the foreground stand out. This way, it’s the focal point of the shot. The pan is pretty bog standard. Now I’m wondering, though, what was the purpose of the pan shot in the first place? Did I even need to put it in? On one hand, I guess it gives a sense of the world outside the frame, although one does not always need a pan to do this. It’s not like I’m tracking anything across the screen. Perhaps I was a little wasteful in the way I used the pan. The zoom, I would say, is necessary.

I'm struggling to find a good way to use the second shot. At first I used a zoom, but that led to the crossing signal being too close to the camera for when it cuts to the third shot, an extreme close up. I would like have the shot zoom in from further away, which is why I wish I had made the canvas larger than it needed to be so I'd have more room to play with this kind of thing.

I ended up removing the zoom altogether. There is no purpose to it.

I like the third shot. I’m pleased with the way the background becomes more muted and loses some colour contrast as it brings the focus entirely to the two crossing light characters. Also, using a slightly altered colour scheme helps to differentiate between the regular world and the world inside the brains of the crossing signal guys.

The hardest part about the dancing shots is making sure that the characters’ movements are clear. Since there are no overlapping lines, the silhouette of each character must convey their dancing. I can only draw really exaggerated motions and I’m slightly limited in the amount of moves I can animate. Nothing too complex. I’ll check out the dancing scene in “The Millionaire” for inspiration.