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.
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