With little time remaining between my work and the deadline, I made a small checklist of things to complete. The first was changing the colours to better fit the Museum’s brand identity: I edited the green and orange to be the exact same shades found in their brand manual. I was afraid doing so would worsen the look of my animation, but I eventually warmed up to the new colour scheme.

Next, I tried enhancing the background, following the client’s feedback. I added one more product on the left (An OXO tin), a full moon (believing it to be both spooky and cool imagery), and a jack-o-lantern and tombstones on the floor (with a skeleton’s arm sticking out from under one). I also made the museum’s title colours switch intermittently, just because I thought it’d be fun, and maybe add a bit of movement to the whole thing.

This specific layout took a few tries to reach, as my first attempts ended up looking too cluttered for my tastes. I’m fairly satisfied with what I ended up going with.

Next came finishing the white ghost’s animation: it overall took less time than the orange ghost’s, as this one’s movement was a lot simpler and straight-forward. The hardest challenge was getting its mouth to open up in a smooth and pleasing way, but I eventually got it down in a way I was happy with.

With the white ghost quickly done, I went back and finished the last few pieces needed for the orange ghost: the eyes, mouth, and the coke flowing out of the bottle and into its mouth (which was tough but fun to pull off). I made it swallow the tap too for efficiency, and changed its tongue colour from green to white, to keep its colour scheme as simple as possible.

In the end, I got the final product to look almost exactly like the test picture I presented to the clients, which I’m quite proud of.

Next came the sound, which I always struggle with. I began by using freesound.org, but Cai Pritchard from the Sound Design course advised me to use Soundly instead. His advice ended up being extremely correct, as its selection ended up being much better than anything I could find on freesound, even only using the free version.

The only sound I had to look elsewhere from was the background music. As with my Blink Industries project, I knew I needed some kind of tune to go along with the sound effects, or else the scene would feel really quiet and weird. I found a few tracks on Pixabay that could fit, and eventually settled on “Fright Night Fun”. It’s very light-hearted but with a cute spooky melody that fits well with the imagery.

And finally, with little time to spare, I was able to upload my finished piece and send it in.

My time management was definitely worse than on the Blink Industries project: there was more I wanted to do with the project, such as improving the start/ending transition, or having one of the ghosts peep through the window before everything going back to normal, but I had to cut them out when it became clear I wouldn’t be able to finish them in time.

I’m happy with my final result: the ghosts’ animation is really charming, and the limited color palette gives it a distinctive look to it that I’m glad worked out in the end. One thing that bothers me is a “focusing issue”: since there are two subjects moving at the same time, it’s hard to pay attention to both, so I don’t think the video works as a single-viewing experience. Granted, I made it this way for a reason (in case they wanted to cut the video to fit social media resolutions), but I wish I could’ve found a better way of pulling it off.

Regardless, this project ended up being a lot of fun, and I think its challenge has helped me develop my skills. I’m still disappointed in how DPS has turned out for me, but this project was still an enjoyable way to pass the time and improve myself.