Rationale

My animation aimed to create a dramatic horror recreation of Big (1988)'s iconic keyboard scene under a different genre, the one I chose being drama/horror.
I wanted to use the classic screeching strings music, or echoing organ music similar to Dracula. For this idea I wanted to use a makeshift keyboard using wineglasses like the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy  featured on Youtube, only with blood instead of water to fulfill my 'horror' theme.

However, when I tracked down Darren Curtis' royalty free music channel featuring Creepy Horror Bell Music Halloween #2 2013 I changed my idea to a keyboard made from reverberating knives, like rows of tuning forks, as bells and knives are both made of metal and make a more plausibly similar sound.








The animation I planned used animated lights to increase the 'drama' of my shots and add to the loud, dramatic notes of the song, as well as accentuate the accuracy of the 'notes' my character hits.

.My chosen music have a slow dramatic beginning that builds to a dramatic crescendo at the end, thus I imitated this build in my storyboard and shots, starting with simply a hand, building to two hands, the reveal of the character, reveal of the scene, to the final shocking stab of the knife to finish of my character's 'bow'

 This worked very well to accomplish a dramatic feel.

Things I notice now in my final animation that I wish I had time to do better is the cape animation. Since the cape was trailing behind the exaggerated hand movements that moved very fast, it became difficult for me to decide what action the cape should be doing at a certain point of time, and with limited time I was not able to create in my opinion satisfactory animation for these secondary actions. The cape glitched in places that were visible, in some instances in attempt to fix the glitching there were too many keyframes creating a juttering effect, and in some scenes I forgot to keep the pole vector for it still until the next shot, creating awkward background gliding/floating.

I also wished I had thought to add painted shadows and blood splatters to my character and prop's textures to create a better illusion of depth, reality, and 'horror'. The initial background I had planned would have hanging pig carcasses and blood splatters on the wall, like a highly unhygienic Hannibal, Thus the character and prop would have looked out of place if they weren't covered in blood stains. However I did not have the time to add these details.