FINAL Stings - Macbeth

Macbeth FINAL STING from Isaac Smith on Vimeo.

While being a simple idea, I'm overall happy with the way this sting came out. My main aim for all three of my animations was to not overcomplicate things and force my concepts down the viewers throat. My aim for this Macbeth sting was to highlight the visual metaphor of Lady Macbeth's duality as an unassuming woman, and lover of murder, with her shadow resembling a dagger when it is fully revealed. As that's already quite a lot going on, I didn't want to have loads more things distracting the viewer from that, like I was initially going to have horses riding up to the castle to signify the King coming to Castle Macbeth (to be later sheesh-kabab'd in his guest room).
I toyed with the idea of outside elements entering the frame but visually there was just too much going on for the ten second time limit, and what I was trying to get across was lost in the "whos riding up, is that the road, what's happening why aren't that horses legs moving in unison" haze.
I also tried to have rain falling from the viewers perspective down onto the frame, but mainly because I couldn't animate it well enough for it to be convincing, I thought the background noise of a thunderstorm would be a strong enough signifier to the ominous tone of the sting.
What I've learned here is that it's best to familiarise yourself with a method like After Effects by experimenting with simple solid ideas, rather than trying to visualise vague complicated ones. This is a valuable timesaving lesson that I'll definitely be taking into consideration in future animation work.