Tree Through The Seasons – Repeating Animation

Today's project is inspired by my induction day at college, where we looked at animation. I got really inspired by the topic and wanted to recreate what I did in college! My original animation was about leaves falling and building up over time. I took the same idea but expanded it to create a full seasonal tree. I wanted to show each season through the visuals and sounds so it felt like you were experiencing every season in just 5 seconds.

I started with a green tree to represent summer and then changed the colour of it with each frame to show the change in season. Here I chose to use a light wind sound to represent the autumn coming.

Then I moved on to the fiddly part of the animation. I had to make sure to edit the tree so it looked like the leaves were disappearing from it and I also had to remember to add more falling leaves with each frame and increase the amount of leaf build up on the ground. By focusing hard I managed to make no mistakes with any of my screenshots! It was probably the hardest and most time consuming part of my project.

To match the leaves I wanted to use a crunchy sound. In one of my past projects I had a go at sound design in which I made my own crunchy leaf sound. I thought of that and I wanted to use it. I felt excited about the fact that I was using my own homemade sound within the animation as, in my opinion, it makes it a tiny bit more impressive!

Showing Winter was simple as I took a screenshot of the tree in a bare state and and I used a harsh wind sound to show the cold and bitter feel of Winter.

While building up from Winter to Spring to Summer, I took the same tree leaf shape and changed the colour to green. I started at a high transparency and then reduced it with each frame to demonstrate the leaves coming back on the tree. Since Spring and Summer are about warmth and enjoying the outdoors I used a bird/ambiance sound during that part of the animation.

As I started the animation with a plain green tree and ended it in the same way, repeating the animation over and over again looks seamless. Check out my video here: