All Roads
Well, here's my submission for the NATA Novice Round! The theme was "The Elephant in the Room." There are no literal elephants here, of course. I went with the metaphor about having a large, overwhelming issue at hand (or something along the lines of that.) As far as the storyline goes, I guess this is sort of a bit of a sequel to Masquerade because it discusses another chapter in life, sort of. It is hopefully less depressing, though. The happy ending was intended from the start.
In terms of the animation style, I experimented a lot with this (probably more than is initially evident.) I did a lot more frame-by-frame than usual, and although it's still pretty shaky, I think it's getting better, so that's nice. I also started using the same sort of very limited colour scheme that I did in my last video for NATA, but I quickly found that using just blues and purples looked visually boring, so I branched out a bit. Each object or character only has two or three shades of a colour, but entire scenes are now more colourful. I also went a little overboard with vignettes and colour effects overtop of the final product, but I think they help make things look less flat and more appealing. Hopefully.
I also did a bunch of little 3D things in this to test out how well it could be integrated. Some things (i.e. backgrounds) fit in better than objects that move in the foreground, but it's still a learning experience.
As far as music goes, as usual, I did all the music. The tracks in this are just bits and pieces of things I'm working on, so I'm not uploading them to the Newgrounds Audio Portal yet, but whenever I work them into standalone songs, I will. Also I got a sweet condenser microphone for my birthday so for my next video I will have no excuse to not do voices.
Anyway, that's all I have to say for now. I need a weeks' break so I don't go mad from exams/finals/my job/life. Good luck to all the other competitors! Can't wait to see your stuff!