For the animation once the main poses were added I tried to apply a little life elements to his movement and behaviour, tiny detail that could after be appreciated on a bigger scale contributing to the overall animation such and breathing (moving the shoulder, the pelvis and the spine up and down from time to time) and adding some offset animation to the hands.
once the animation were completed i tried to export and render the animation scenes. in the render settings I have used this file path:
<Scene>\<RenderLayer>\<RenderPass>\<RenderPass>_<Scene>
to save the different render layers and paths. I have also added some motion blur. I have separated the render layers in the following way: depending on what the character was interacting with in the scene I would always have one background layer, a layer with the character by itself (since I would add a gaussian blur and saturation to make it faint a bit to give him a spirit vibe), a layer with the character and the objects he would interact with (so that when compositing in after effects it would not appear as the character is on top of these objects) and a layer with the objects by themselves so to not make them appear glowy.
render layers in after effects
to get rid of the black background in the render with the character or a n asset by itself I have applied the luma key effect with the key out darker option and feather the edges so that the character would not appear with a black border.
For some transition since the only two layers were the character, which I would place on top and the background in this particular scene he enters the adjacent room and in doing so the arm would appear o top of the wall: what I did was masking the character arm key by key to subtract that particular part and make the wall appear instead.
To make the character glow and give him a ghost like appearance I have included two layers of the character render: the one on top with a slight saturation and the opacity set to 77, the one beneath with a high brightness and the opacity set to 61.
Sounds
For the sounds I have used Adobe stock to find the right soundtrack that fitted the mood and vibe of the overall animation which is happy, serene and lighthearted.
For the sound effects such as the door opening or the window opening I have looked for some sound on Freemusic.
Regarding the character I have thought to use the “wisp”sound from “Brave” the Pixar film since it evokes a spirit and ghost vibe which fit perfectly with the character.