modes of animation

For my final project I will animate a story about two struggling street musicians. Most likely the street musicians will be guitarists. One will have an acoustic guitar and the other will have an electric guitar. I will start out with one of them playing for bystanders on the street looking for spare change. Then I will have the other guitarist move onto his turf and start playing his guitar and drowning the other guitarist out. The first guitarist will get angry and start to play something louder and more complex than the other guitarist. Then, the second guitarist will try to trump the first one with some “face-melting” guitar licks. This trend of trying to top the other one will go back and forth until it hits a climax. I don’t really know what I’m going to do for the climax, but it will most likely be awesome. In order to achieve this scene I will create my own original characters using Photoshop; most likely using the paintbrush to create a cartoony feel to the piece. I will also use Photoshop to create original backgrounds (street corner) and props. I will put the characters and backgrounds on separate layers and then animate them. To animate the scene I will use After Effects. Most likely I will use the parenting method to move the characters and also use 3-D camera movements to create additional movements. I plan to use zero dialogue. The actions and movements between the characters will be the focus of my piece. I will record guitar tracks for the character dueling parts and use small sound effects, but beside that I don’t expect to add a lot of sound.