Project 6 - Pix-elated Animation

Pix-elated Animation - CLICK HERE

For our fifth project we were given the task of creating a pix-elated animation. This excited me as I've worked on animations using this technique before, and know the fun and endless possibilities this type of animation hold.This project also marked the first time we were given any form of brief, in this case it was to base the animation on a recent or current news story, which proved moderately difficult as I hadn't watched news, or any form of television, since moving to Leeds (As far as my knowledge on recent global events goes, we could be at war with North Korea and I wouldn't have a clue). I was happy with this as I felt we as a class were becoming more adept at animating,and making progress, as well as understanding there would be requirements our work would need in the future.

To improve our historical and general understanding of this technique, we were shown different examples such as Neighbours, Animated in Bed, and an old PES advert. Since this technique is so open and possible to create nearly anything you want, it was difficult to give a detailed explanation of what the technique is other that 'making something move in a way it wouldn't normally' , and so the best way was to show different examples of animations using this technique, both old, and new. Once at home I spent a considerable time watching stop motion animation to gain ideas on what I could do, some notable examples I found were deadline, and Transformers Battle.

From the get go, my head started to fill with dozens of ideas for the animation. And after coming to an agreement that 4 of us from Opal would work together on one animation, I thought we would be able to create an impressive piece of animation, perhaps even a cardboard box race, that I've seen on YouTube a few times, and been itching to make for a while. But we quickly found our schedules differed greatly and there was no way we could all work on it at the same time, so we went back to working on individual animations as we had done with the previous projects.

Plot wise I chose a news story about a trawler sinking off the Irish coast.I wanted a fairly straightforward story, that I'd be able to animate without needing too advanced audio or movements for the viewers to understand the story. I decided I would create the necessary pieces out of cardboard and cartoons, as it would have been unnecessary to go out and buy material when I have some at home waiting to be thrown in the bin. Overall I'm pleased with the story I chose, even though I had to explain which story it is. Then again I don't expect the viewers to be informed of every boat sinking in Britain.

From a technical aspect I am pleased with the outcome. I decided to make all the necessary pieces out of cardboard, and use blu tac to hold them together. I'm happy with this decision as it saved me some cost, and was easier to work with. The FPS for it is high enough to give a smooth movement of the boat sailing and the sharks swimming (as great whites and makos infest the Irish seas, as we all know). Although the helicopter is a completely different story. It was an absolute ordeal shooting the frames for every scene showing the helicopter. The frames for the helicopter flying into the room and towards the half sunken boat was annoying, but fairly easy, but the scene of the helicopter hovering above the boat took a bit more time and imagination.

I went all Gilligan Island and made this set up using things lying around my room. I made it in order to make the helicopter appear as if it hovers. I'm satisfied with what I created to get the scene done, and although it had its problems (Most notably trying to keep the helicopter from rotating from left to right, which was a pain as I lowered the helicopter closer) . But considering the difficulty and complexity of the scene, I am happy with what I accomplished.

As for the audio, this is the first project were I have used it, and I believe it benefits it greatly. I downloaded the sound effect from a free sound bite website and then just cut them down to fit the scenes in windows movie maker. It adds to the feel of the animations, and greatly improves its quality, it also helps the viwere understand what I am trying to visually interpret, for example the carpet as the sea, and the cartoon as the helicopter. Which without the audio, would have been fairy difficult to realise.

If I could improve anything, I would like to add more scenes of the helicopter, which at the time felt there were enough of, but once put together and speed up, were too quick and easy to miss.

Project 5 - Silhouette/Paper Cut Out Animation

The project given was to create a short silhouette animation, a thought that put me on a nervous edge at first, seeing as I had never tried this technique before, nor knew what equipment I'd need. Fortunately we focused on silhouette animations for that session, which included looking at various examples of silhouette animation from past years, as well as listing the equipment we would require in order to shoot the animation, which the film school had available for us to use. We were also shown how to properly set up the camera, stand, light etc, to take the frames while also able to reach the paper cut outs without accidentally hitting the light or trip over a cable.

To improve our historical understanding of this technique, we looked at Lotte Reiniger's work. We discussed Lotte's history and work, as well as watching a few examples at home, such as Cinderella and Papageno, to gain a further understanding of the technique. We were also instructed to watch the documentary 'The Art of Lotte Reiniger' to further prepare us for our own attempt. By today, the technique is still used in short films, such as this, and this. and met with positive criticism. But uncommonly seen in big budget, feature length films, but recently it has been used in a independent video game. Which I personally played after seeing the spectacular visuals and atmosphere of the game.

Due to the list of equipment necessary (and the financial standing of me and my fellow students) most of the class decided to use the school's equipment to shoot. Which meant that we would be paired up and given a time slot (90 minutes) during friday to set up and get to work. Luckily though we found on the day that there was enough equipment for both of us to film at the same time, although I still had my doubts about completing my animation in 90 minutes, but fortunately I was able to finish without eating into the another students time slot.

One important note to make is that I misunderstood the projects goal, although I was still able to create the silhouette, I was (for some reason that only Cthulhu can explain) under the impression we would also be making a Paper Cut Out animation, perhaps because I read a section on it in the pamphlet handed to us. Regardless of the reason, the end result was that I had created 2 seperate animations by the end of the day made with the same cut out paper sections, but in 2 different animating techniques. Which is a benefit as I had learned the basics of making a Paper Cut Out Animation, which wasnt too different from that of a silhouette.

I wanted to have two characters on screen at the same time, but understood that the time it would take two move each limb of both characters in unison would be too much for the time I had, and so I wanted one that did not have any moving parts, this is where I came up with the idea of making one a spaceship with an alien inside, as all I'd need to do would be to move the spaceship along the slide, and it would appear to be hovering/flying. I based the design of the ship on the oldest and most common image of an alien 'disk' spaceship with the dome cockpit directly on top.

I arrived friday morning with tired eyes and a stomach full of red bull, with my cut outs and pins (To hold the cut outs together) in hand, and set up the equipment in the class. I felt that I set up the equipment well, I knew where to get the equipment from and how to piece it together, so there was no real difficulty or problem, and managed to finish in a few minutes.

I decided to shoot the Silhouette animations first (as it was more straightforward than the paper cut out).

Silhouette Animation - CLICK HERE

I feel that my animation is unsatisfactory. From a technical point of view there are many faults visible while watching. One of which is that the character appears to be running 'up', into the sky, and then move back down again before being hit by the laser. The reason for this was the paper sticking to my finger after I moved it, which wasn't initially obvious, but after a few more frames, it was clear that from looking back at the first frame that the character seemed to now levitate. Another problem was the bulb from the light source breaking (Which I can only assume was an act of god), therefore when it was replaced with a new bulb that was much brighter, the amount of light in the animation suddenly changes towards the end. I could also have made it longer, by adding more frames in between, which would also have made the animation run smoother. I would have liked to basically redo all the frames for the animation, but unfortunately I still had the Paper Cut Out animation to do, and was nearly half way into my 90 minute time slot. 

Paper Cut Out Animation - CLICK HERE

I believe I had more success with the paper cut out animation. Set up wise there was not much I needed to do, aside from move the light source from underneath to above the camera, which took less than a minute. Technical-wise I had much more success compared to the silhouette. The movements are smoother compared to the other, as well as the details being visible. Although I still had difficulty with moving all of the limbs at the same time to make the character appear as if he was running, the moving background on the secondary makes the scene more realistic, even though the characters were just moving on the spot. One problem I felt I resolved to a satisfactory level, is the shadowing from the characters being displayed on the background, which shows that the background is on the secondary panel. To resolve this I placed books underneath the background so the background was closer to the characters, and the shadow smaller. This problem actually become somewhat of a benefit, as the shadow looks intended and realistic.

I pieced both animation together using Windows Movie Maker, as I am still new to using flash, and a stranger to other editing software. Although it did the job, there are obvious flaws, such as black frames and some in the wrong order. In the next few weeks I hope to find a more suitable software than movie maker to install on my personal laptop, while still able to feed myself for the rest of the month.

Project 3 - Anticipation Animation

Anticipation Animation - CLICK HERE

For our 3rd project we were given the task of making a running animation. Nothing as complicating as it sounds, rather just animating the character moving into the position to begin running, and then leaving a trail of dust or cloud in his place.

Unfortunately I was working on the finishing details of the morphing animations upstairs on one of the newer macs as it had the latest version of Flash CS 5.5 on them (while the macs nearest the animation room ran on CS 4), and so I did not hear Tony explain the task directly, rather from fellow students. But I do not believe that handicapped my understanding of the project, nor the quality of the final animation. Aside from the fact I did not have a a printer at home to scan the images in, and so had to use take picture of the frames and then upload them to my laptop.

Plot wise I am happy with the animation. I think the character I drew was humorous and appropriate, although I believe I could have made it a bit bigger to fill the screen. I also believe I should have made the characters torso smaller and more proportionate to the rest of the body, at the time I thought the larger torso would make the character look more stereotypical of an aristocrat, but when it came time to rotate the character a little bit, I found it just looked odd compared to size of his limbs.

Technical wise I am happy with the outcome. I scanned the images in from home, then converted them from PDF format into JPEG. The process of converting them into a JPEG was an unexpected chore, but was simple. I downloaded a free file converter from an online source, and then put all the frames through it, I was then able to put them into the editing software. I believe the final piece is effective, although one thing that'd improve the animation would be the cloud at the end. If I had drawn the cloud to show the vacuum made with the characters absence, and its direction following the characters, it would have looked more realistic.

Project 8 - Jump Key Frame Animation

Jump Animation - CLICK HERE

Our 7th Project was given by Elroy (an amazing name, if I may say so myself) who came in for 2 weeks to do a workshop for the animation students. Process wise, there was not much difference from that used in the morphing animation, we set up the light-boxes and traced previous frames to create a traditional animation. So this projects goal wasn't really to let us practice a completely new animating technique or process, but rather to look at a characters movements and shape, and how it changes with the momentum and when getting into the position of jumping, and landing.

Plot wise...well, there is no plot, or even a detailed character. The goal of this project was to study the realistic change in the shape of a body when it jumps, therefore I did not want create extra work for myself by creating a story board and a character design, and went with a plain, slightly overweight (To better show the body's changes and momentum).

Overall I was...content with what I had created. The characters shape and movements are realistic to some extent, but there is definitely room for improvement with this piece, for example I could have added more frames at the beginning to show the character preparing to jump, as well as the characters landing, as it doesn't show the force of the landing, and how the body would actually react.

Project 9 - Push Key Frame Animation

Push Animation - CLICK HERE

Our 9th project was the 2nd task given to us by visiting guest Elroy, which was to create another key frame animation, but this time of a character pushing against a wall or an object. The process in how we used to create the animation was the same as for the previous Jump animation, which was to create key frames, and then fill the spaces in between to create a smooth animation. Plot wise I decided I would have my character push against a wall on the spot, I also went with the same body shape as the previous animation, and decided I would put more detail into the character, such as clothes, hair, facial features etc.

One slight problem I encountered was the lack of space and light boxes during the lecture, therefore I had to wait until I could start on the animation at home. I thought that it would be rather difficult to create the animation, and so made a makeshift one by placing my phone with flash on, underneath a see through plastic box, and then turned all the lights off. It worked surprisingly well, granted not as well as a real light box, but still good enough for the job.

Project 4 - Scratch Animation

Scratch Animation - CLICK HERE

With the departure of Tony from our lectures, came Rozzi to broaden our horizon, with a brand new set of challenges for us to conquer. The third project was to create a line animation drawn straight onto film. Unfortunately the Tuesday on which the class began to look at this kind of technique, and set the project, I was away in Cardiff accepting the Best CAD/CAM work award for my A Level D&T work, from a Carwyn Jones, who's the prime minister of wales or something...I'm not a man for politics. Due to this I came in the next week not knowing about the project and having to create and draw on a piece of film with another student who'd been absent.

To improve our historical understanding of this technique, we learned about Len Lye, who created the first direct film shown to a general audience, aswell as his second. We also observed Norman McLaren's work, who created Hen Hop and Blinkity Blank. By today, this technique is rarely seen in, but still around, for example Steven Woloshen still uses this technique.

We listened to Rozzi's advice on what we should draw onto the film, and we agreed to make lines and shapes in various colours, as well as making them change size and shape. We didn't really think of a plot, just to draw lines, sguiggles , marks and shapes to flash on the screen in bright, contrasting colours to draw the viewers away to it. I also drew some more complicated images onto the film, such as a dragons head for example, unfortunately I did not stretch the image out, and so the design was only on 2 frames, and were only on screen for a less than half of a second, and easy to miss. Which is unfortunate, but from this I learned what I'd need to do in order to make more complicated images.

Once we had finished the film, we connected our individual film reels together to form one 2 minute long line animation, which we showed on an old film projector the film school had. Initially the projector slightly scared all of us (Since it looked like an antique and about to break at any moment). But Rozzi demonstrated how to load the film reel in, and how to operate it. It was an interesting and curious process to use, which I'm happy we did.

But I do not believe this particular project had any great benefit to 'honing' in on my favorite animating technique, but it was an excellent opportunity too see what it was like to work on an animation back in the 20th century, and gave us all a feeling of going back in time, especially when the projector was turned on, and you heard the flickering of the film reel and the gears within grinding.

Project 10 - Stop Motion Animation

Stop Motion Animation - CLICK HERE

Our tenth project was to create a stop motion animation, the goal of the project was to create a set, along with moving characters. We were also given the brief of the 'girl meets boy' scenario, which the plot must revolve around. My first thought about this project was that it would be similar to creating the pixilation animation. But after beginning to design a character in the lecture, I realised this project would be more complex to create, but also has the potential to create a nice piece of animation that expresses the plot well.

To improve our historical understanding of this technique, we watched a collection of old clay animations, I also watched other examples, for example Gumbasia and Creature Comforts to gain a further understanding about the visual advantages and disadvantages of this technique.

Plot wise I needed to create a plot that fulfilled the brief, but I did not want to create a typical girl finds boy cheesy story. After seeing the stop motion animation shown in the lecture of the love triangle I decided I would create a set involving an 'exotic dancers club', and uncommon setting for a traditional 'girl meets boy' and create an interesting animation. I was inspired to do this after watching an episode of the US TV series 'Dexter' in which one of the main characters falls in love with a dancer, but make it more lighthearted and positive, a similar atmosphere felt at the beginning of this. Overall I am happy with plot I created. It fills the brief, while at the same time a plot that will keep the audience interested ( Who doesn't like a good ol' fashioned dance performance) and entertained. I also believe the use of music helps the audience understand the story and what I am trying to express in my animation. It was also the first time I experimented with the audio volumes to make the animation more realistic (In the animation the music is louder after the character goes into the club). I did mull over the thought of having the characters and audience speak and be given some dialogue. But after realising I sound like a welsh hillbilly in voice recordings, and 15 minute search for appropriate soundbites online, it was to impossible to find the dialogue I wanted unless I would cut lines out of a film or tv clip, and then inserting them as audio files into my animation on movie maker. I would have liked to have them speak, but I still think the animation works well with just the songs I picked.

Process wise it was fairly straight forward to create. The most time consuming part was designing and creating the set and characters. I created the characters out of clay and wire I received from the school. From the amount of clay and wire I had I knew it would not be enough for more than 2 characters, a fact I would have to take into consideration when creating a story.I created the set out of spare materials in my room. I used an old moving box, with 2 sides cut off, as the walls and floor, and glued normal printing & writing paper. I also used an empty cardboard box to create the stage and entrance, then used water colours to paint it all. I used movie maker version 6 & 7 for this project, as version 6 doesn't crash as much when putting the frames together, and version 7 is better for editing and inserting audio files. I used 2 boxes for my camera stand as I still cannot afford a new one, which wasnt too much of a disadvantage, but I wont argue that this cheap alternative caused the camera to move at some points during the video. Another Problem I discovered after putting the video together was that my thumb is visible in around 3-4 frames of the video, I did consider editing these frames out, but I felt they were too important, and I could not set up everything in the exact same way to re shoot the frames.

I am happy with the final outcome of this project. The animation I created was 28 seconds long, over double the duration of my previous works, which is long enough to effectively use audio and have a more complex story. I'm also pleased with the camera movements and different angles I shot from. This project also gave me the chance to work on and develop my set designing/creating, which I feel more confident in doing now.

Project 2 - Morphing Animation

Morph Animation - CLICK HERE

Our second project marked our first proper lecture with Tony (a brilliant animator who has worked on Danger Mouse, a cartoon my fellow student and I keep close to our hearts), which was for the entire class to collaborate on a morphing animation. For a 2nd project this was a good decision, since the student were still getting to know each other, this would allow us to become more acquainted with one another, while also testing and improving some basic interaction and co operating skills, vital in professional animating.

The process itself was straightforward enough. Create an image of anything we wanted, duplicate it, and hand the copy to the student to your right. Once we had our original drawing, and the duplicate of the students drawing, we were told to morph the other students image into our own in no more that 17 frames. These steps were done in the Tuesday morning lecture, which meant we also had the benefit of having Tony on hand to give us advice and answer our questions, which proved useful throughout the day. We also had access to the film school's light-boxes (and the windows when all the boxes were in use) which made this traditional process give higher quality duplicates.

For my image, I chose a simple design of a cat sitting down, nothing to complex and relatively easy to morph into something else, and the duplicate I received was one of a cupcake. I saw that most of the other student were changing the entire shape to create the new image, which was exactly was was expected out of our morphing animation, but I wanted mine to have some variation from the others. I decided that in the 17 frames, I would zoom in on the cherry on top of the cupcake, and then have the cherry turn and morph into the Cat, then fall and sit down. There was no real 'inspiration' for this particular project, the stem of cherry on top reminded me of a cats tail, which then lead to my choice of morphing it this way.

As for the technical aspect of this project, there were a few mishaps and confusion, this was primarily due to no one knowing what we were suppose to do with our frames after creating them. We were only given instructions to bring them in on the following Friday (which my brain processed as 'sleep in, and drop them off at the school in the afternoon, which should only take a few minutes'...how wrong I was), and not to work on them at home. When I arrived Friday, I discovered that we were meant to scan them in, and then colour and put it together in Flash. Unfortunately both scanners were already in use, and Tony was occupied with the second year, which meant I couldn't ask him to instruct me on using flash. Due to these reason I decided to do the scanning and editing work on Tuesday, I did feel bad about not doing the animation that day, but only a handful had shown up on the Friday to do it, so the absence of my animation on the mac went unnoticed. It was rather intimidating working solely on Flash for the first time, but after being shown how to create the animation, I found it wasn't as hard as I had imagined, and even rather fun. Some of the processes on flash were similar to that on Photoshop, and so it wasn't a complete stranger to me/

I was very happy with the result. After working with basic editing software for so long it was great to work on flash and knowing how to get the job done. It was the first time I truly felt that I was creating a good quality animation.

Project 7 - Smudge & Click

Smudge & Click Animation - CLICK HERE

For our 7th project we were given the task of creating an animation using the smudge and click technique. To prepare us for creating this project we were shown famous examples from past animation festivals, and a car advertisement. After learning how to use this technique, I had a feeling it would be more complicated and 'awkward' to do compared to the projects before, luckily we were given 3 weeks to create this animation, due to workshops with Elroy (a visiting lecturer from London  and the Bradford Animation festival taking place during our Tuesday sessions with Rozzi. We were also given the brief of basing our animations plot on the horror/ halloween theme, as we were set the project on the 29th of October.

To improve out historical understanding of tgis technique, we watched a MUTO by Blu, which gave us a clearer understanding of watch exactly we would need to to. After the lecture I also watched another of Blu's animations, as well as an old car advertisement which is similar to Blu's art style. We also watched older examples of the technique is use, such as Humorous Phases of Funny Faces, and The Enchanted Drawing by J.Stuart Blackton.

Technical wise, I initially thought this technique would be the most challenging, and I believe it was. I decided I would create the animation on black craft card using white chalk and my phones camera, as I felt it would be the easiest in terms of getting the material, and the least messy. Seeing as the only camera I had was my phone, which is good in terms of image quality, but does not have a stand for, therefore I had to create my own stand.

From the image I''ll admit it just looks like a storage box with food boxes on the top...which it technically is, but it did serve as a practical make shift stand, and kept the camera in place for the entire time I shot it. I also stuck the black card to the wall with white tac, and did not move it when I smudged and re drew the images. As for software wise I used an older version of windows movie maker, and it had less problems (Movie Maker 2012 has a tendency to crash every few minutes), and I wished to add to visual effects to help the story, but decided against it in the end, as it was not the goal of the project and removed any evidence of it being a smudge and click technique.

I was happy with the brief were given. I enjoy horror films, and dark fantasy themes, so this brief appealed to me straight away. I would have liked to create a truly dark and creepy animation, with tall, thin characters to go with it, similar to Corpse Bride, but after sketching out some character designs with chalk I found the tip would wear down rather quickly, and eventually Id lose the fine line and it became harder to judge where to place the chalk in order to get a line that wasn't too fat or out of place, all in all an annoyance I could not find an answer for. So I decided I would create simpler character design...much, much simpler character designs, and with with my characters looking like they did, there was no way to create a scary animation with them, so I decided I would create a cute/funny story instead, but still with the halloween theme. I was inspired by two pieces of work, Casper for the happy cute atmosphere and simple design for the ghost, and a clip from Family Guy for the dark irony and humour.

Overall, I am happy with the piece I have created, as for my personally thoughts about this particular technique, I think it is effective in some ways, and can be used to create impressive and stunning animation on a large scale, but not a technique I would use if given the choice. Perhaps if I used different materials, my feeling about it would change, but I found the chalk awkward when needing to put detail into smaller drawing.

Project 1 - Autobiographical Animation

Autobiographical Animation - CLICK HERE 

The first project given to us was to create an autobiographical animation around a minute long, to express ourselves as individuals and give a little bit of information about our background and hobbies to our fellow students, as this was the first time we had all technically been in the same room at the same time, due to problems in induction week. Therefore I wanted to give the rest of the class an idea of what kind of person I am, without creating a run of the mill autobiography were I simply stated my likes and dislikes, how I spent my free time, etc.

The secondary goal of this project was to display what animating skills we were bringing to the course, and so I felt the best course of action was to create an animation using the same process and software I had become accustomed to using at college, which was to use a drawing tablet into Photoshop  and then piece the frames together into windows movie maker. Not the best nor the most efficient process in the world, but the one I had used with the limited resources available back home, and hopefully not one I will use exclusively throughout the year.

The inspiration for this project came from old cartoon I watched as a child, here is an example of one cartoon I drew inspiration from, I cannot remember every cartoon that gave me the ideas I had for the plot, as I have forgotten most and only remember small clips from watching them as a child.

Overall, I am pleased with the final animation. From a technical point of view, there are a few things I wish I had the time to correct. I could have had more frames per second to make it run smoother from one scene to another, but with the small time frame left for me to work with (The initial drawing of the character in various positions and backgrounds took longer than anticipated) I began to panic, and want to finish the scenes as fast as possible in order to begin work on another. Although there are some scenes where I am happy with the timing and rate of frames, for example the curtain pull mid way through, and the subsequent reaction from the sun, all of which added to a humorous moment. Another small improvement I could have done was to add sound to the animation. At the time I was focused on simply getting the basic movements and timing completed, and ignored the benefits audio could have done. Even simply adding a song, such as 'Uh! - Fujiya & Miyagi' ( A song I have used in a previous animation with great success) would have given the animation a sense of being more...alive.

Plot wise I am happy with it. I wanted it to be filled with my sense of humour, in order to keep the viewers entertained and fixed on the screen, and is something I believe I accomplished, while at the same time giving them some information on how I enjoy spending some of my days at home (Which doesn't usually involve me playing xbox with a miniature angel and demon resting on my shoulders...obviously). The only problem I found after feedback from the viewers was my drawing of a bin bag, which some misinterpreted for a stomach, although I personally do not see it, I will be sure to make a bin bag look less like a human organ in the future, perhaps making rubbish fall out of the bag and lying around it.