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.