Making Your First Digital Project

So I mentioned earlier that I was going to write a more detailed post about my experience with making my first solo animation - and here it is!  I typed the majority of it on the nine hour flight to Paris ('lotta time to kill).  This post is basically something I wanted to write in retrospect of my trials and errors to be used as a guide for my next digital project, or for anyone else interested in blindly making a video.  I'm obviously not a professional, but I thought I'd share my experience.

For starters, my project involved a bunch of things, including illustrating, animating, audio and video recording, and editing.  So depending on how many aspects you're getting involved with, some of this might not matter to you.  Here's a list of the stuff and thangs I used to make my project:

• Adobe Illustrator - illustrating
• Adobe Flash - animating
• Adobe Premiere Pro - editing
• iMovie - editing
• Audacity - audio editing
• AnyVideoConverter - converting file types
• a Powershot s100 Canon - video taping
• Windows Sound Recorder + a Guitar Hero mic - audio recording

some Illustrator drawings from my video - The Wingmachine

1. Start It

•  Finding a place to start was one of the most challenging parts for me. When you feel like you have no idea where to begin, just start with the simplest parts. Answering these questions first might help:

                   - What is the basic idea behind my video?
                   - What is the most efficient way to express this idea?
                   - What do I want to accomplish with my video? 

                   - Audience - who will be watching my video?

•  Most importantly, don't be afraid to just do things.  For me, I got caught up in the fear that I wasn't doing things professionally, like Pixar was sitting there telling me everything I did was dumb.  I was a little harsh on myself, yes.  Basically, don't feel self-conscious about things you don't know. You will make mistakes (a lot of them), but you'll learn from them.

2. Plan

• Once you've got the ball rolling, make schedules. Even if you don't know how long something will take you to do, make a timeline for yourself and try to follow it.  Not thinking ahead is the easiest way to fall behind on your project.  So think of how long you have to finish it.  Even if you don't have an actual deadline, make one up.  In my case, I would work on my project hard core for a couple days, get extremely frustrated with a problem, and wouldn't come back to it for weeks.  Don't do this!  Take a little break, but push yourself to follow a schedule.  If you are a computer-inept person like myself, problems will pop up, and it will be annoying.  But don't let it deter you from finishing.

• Make storyboards of everything. Think about the order and flow of your movie. 

• Consider all of the methods you will use to make your movie and do a little bit of research on them.  This includes thinking of what you'll be doing - animation, audio recording, editing, video taping, photo editing, etc.  Knowing every step of the process will make it easier to gather resources, decide what programs you should use, and determine in what order you will do everything.

• Never trust a single program - have a back-up plan.  Cost and accessibility of programs are big factors too, so think about what you can use for the duration of your project before you fully commit to one program.  In my case, I stuck with iMovie as my main editing program because I was most familiar with.  But since I don't personally have an Apple computer (I know, why did I chose iMovie), it wound up being very difficult to find computers I could use.  Apparently not all library Macs have iMovie on them.

• Make sketches/digital drawings of characters and objects in your video.  Since I used Adobe Illustrator and Flash for my animation, I had to be very conscious of the layers in my illustrations.  Layers allow you to move or manipulate a specific part of an object separately from the rest.  So, for example, if you want a character to walk at some point, you will need to make each of its legs in a separate layer.  This is where planning comes in handy.  Think about all the actions you want your characters/objects to do, and make all the appropriate accommodations BEFORE you start making the animation.  This will prevent a lot of wasted time going back into Illustrator to fix things.

my video shown in Flash

layers of a my video shown through different color outlines in Flash

• Think about your file format - This is an extremely important thing to consider when making digital art, because the world of computers is a convoluted sea of code, and not all codes like every file type.  Before you start exporting videos, think about what file formats all of your programs will support, and what formats most people will be able to view if you decide to share it.  Your video will reduce in quality every time you convert it, so try to convert it as few times as possible.  This is especially important if you are trying to work with both PC and Apple products.  My advice is to just stick with either PC or Apple, don't try to use both. 

• Finally, if you are recording audio, try to write up every bit of your dialog FIRST and record it all in one session.  If you wind up adding lines to your script, write down every detail of how you set up your recording station the first time and try to replicate that.  I wound up having noticeable differences in my audio because of this, and now it is pretty easy to pick out the segment I quickly added in at the end.  Not ideal.  You don't want your video to look or sound like it was cut and pasted together.

4. Organize

• As you make bits and pieces of your video, think about how you're going to organize the information. If you are creating a video with many different materials, you will wind up with a mess of files very quickly. Separate things into program folders or categories like "animation," "audio," "photos," etc., and put a date on everything.  You will thank yourself when you need to find a random file later.

• On top of organizing and naming your files neatly, save every edit of a file you make.  Don't ever save over a previous version of a video (especially an original recording or video), unless you absolutely don't need that older version.  Even then, don't do it.  You never know, you might find a program that performs a task better than the one you've been using and want to redo some things.

5. Ask for Help

• If you have any access to digital artists or teachers (i.e. at a University), don't hesitate to ask questions.  Talking to a person is way easier than sifting through pages of forums and trying to find videos that actual address your question.
• If you don't know anyone like that, get used to reading forums.
• And having YouTube and Google become your best friends.
• Also, this nifty digital art tutorial website that I just now discovered...
• On top of asking for help, write notes and bookmark everything!  I was too forgetful to do this throughout my project, which led to a lot of re-researching things when I couldn't find the awesome tutorial I discovered a month ago.  Trust me, you will forget how to do things, so write it down.

6. Finish It

• No matter how frustrated you get, finish what you started.  Transitioning from the traditional art world to the digital art world was a big challenge for me, and it initially left me feeling not-so-confident in my ability (or really, my desire) to continue in this genre.  But challenging is good, and in the end I'm glad I completed it.  Plus every time I see amazing digital art (like this) I realize it's something I need to endeavor more.