Sunset

For this assignment, we had to show time passing through an animation. Examples such as: A character aging, an object rusting or decaying, or seasons changing. 

I decided to animated a 2-Dimentional sun setting. I originally came up with this idea when in the process of developing a story for a different animation I'm working on- The Artist, coming soon. 

I made this animation using the two programs Photoshop and After Effects. I first drew the landscape of my sun set. I made every level of the land a new layer. I wanted to make my animation with a variety of colors and nature. The image shows purple mountains, glistening waters, pink flowers, and a mixture of orange, pink, and purple clouds. 

One feature that was important to me was the sky. I personally love the sky and wanted to show its beauty through this animation. When I look up at the sky, I see a painting full of rich warm colors that blend with one-another. One minute the sky is orange and purple; the next it's cotton candy colors. I wanted to capture these transformations in my animation. As the sun sets, the sky color changes colors in the background. When working in Affect Effects, I had to manipulate the opacity of each sky layer to blend them together and create a beautiful transformation from day to night. 

To make the scene look as if time of passing, I had to animate the clouds to move across the sky. If you watched the sky closely, you would find that the clouds move across in slow motion. Another trick I used to show time in my video is ridging the sun's rays to fade away as it continues to set. As soon as the sun is hidden behind the mountains, the stars come out and the picture slowly fades to black.  

I had a lot of fun creating this animation and bringing this drawing to life. Hopefully you will see it again in my new animation The Artist that I am currently working on. 

Just a heads up! This animation is supposed to look as if it was a recording of a sunset sped up. It is only 10 seconds long.