My contribution so far...

I have been focusing mainly on my portfolio for the first few weeks of the course and am happy to say i am only about 10 pages away from completion. i have filled sketch pad with designs and research and it is very close to the standard that i hope it to be. i put all my effort into this as 1) i was waiting for Ali to complete the logo so i could begin work on the animated intro and 2) because i intend on doing a lot of work on the flash file in the later stages - as this was the key skill that i was chosen to bring to the group.

The picture on the right is "Canny" our 3d animated company representative. After sketching out ideas for Canny and discussing him in our meetings, I created the 3D character in the 3DS Max. I then began to animate him using squash and stretch techniques, until i had enough animation to edit with later on. I next placed a green-plane behind Canny, so that i could extract him from it in a picture editing software later on.

After greenscreening all every key-frame in 3DS Max, i then imported the sequence into AfterEffects. Here i chroma-keyed out the green from my image sequence, and then replaced the background with an image-based stage; a pavement and a brick wall. I needed to do the animation this way because its impossible to synchronise an AVI in 3DS max with moving objects - as i plan on making my character spray onto a brick wall.

I then made a very flexible mask layer with lots of points on the frame so that i could easily manouver it with the actions of my spray can. In the next screenshot you can see me editing the pictures into sequence.

Finally, below you can see the finished AVI file of my animated introduction. The sounds on it are copyright-free samples from www.freesamples.net - as I have a lot more work to do and don't have the equipment or time to record my own samples for this project. I would have prefered to use my own stuff but time is a factor here, and i must press on with storyboarding my debate video.