Final

The better quality version is on the class server!

I had to transfer the project to vimeo in a lower quality because the Quicktime format was too large.  So here it is the beginning of the penguin war.  I've decided to cut it in to parts because the project was taking a lot longer to weave together than what I expected.  So this is the first section - the Cold War.  Moving the camera around proved to be quite challenging, but the segment moved pretty quickly.  

I drew all of the background, settings, and newspapers in photoshop then constructed them in After Effects.  All of the penguins I drew and animated in flash.  I think they turned out better than I expected. I like the newspaper effect though I wish it would transition in to the scene better. It was really hard to perfectly match up the scene picture to the newspaper still.  I had to get it as close as I could.  It looks good but I am a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to things like that.   I made the text in After Effects and added animators to it so that it would scale up as it left the penguin's mouths.  I think the text is sort of hard to read because you read the letters backwards as the appear but it works. I had to use a mask to hide the word before the left their mouths.  I added a snow simulation to a solid (I left it as a 2D layer) so it would snow throughout the piece.  

I'm going to continue working on this project so that I can eventually put up the final product.  Below are some of the penguin animations that are from later in the movie and some of the newspapers that haven't shown up yet.

The current newspaper will transition to this newspaper (ignore the picture that is what I put on there as a sample)

Then a camera move to this newspaper and zoom in to picture:

After a newspaper change we come back to the grey penguins attacking the blue penguins with snowball bombs.  The snowball bombs are going to be made in photoshop and after effects so they aren't in this flash clip.

-The camera follows the bombs to the other fort where they make contact..few simulated explosions.  

The blue penguin leader ducks out of the way of the incoming bombs and gives the signal to fire their giant ice blocks.



Blue Penguin solider nods back to the captain and pushes the lever on the catapult that is holding giant ice blocks.  I drew the catapult and the ice blocks in Photoshop and built it in After Effects.  It is behind the ice fort so you can't really see it in that first scene.  The ice blocks are launched to the grey camp, a few penguins go down. Newspaper:

  The Headline says: Santa Clause is coming to WAR! Peace and Good Tidings hope to follow. Picture is the battle field from the silhouette of a plane's POV

  On the battle field the two head penguins are meeting on the battle field for flipper to flipper combat. 

Slap fight! woot! Then the plane (which will be more of a shadow) will fly over.  Both of them will look up and fall over on their backs...then wiggle around a little unsuccessfully. Cut to :