Flower Animation

This short animation is an example of an interaction between a character and an object.
It has a similar concept as our own animation and shows how something can be quite quick and simple yet effective. 

Within our own animation we will have to try and draw on this by thinking about our characters mannerisms, body movement and facial expressions. We want to think of a situation which is unexpected by the audience in order to create an coherand storyline as well as a fun animation to watch for viewers.

Storyline ideas

After we received our feedback we developed our storyline and drew up new sketches of our story board inducing adapted and new scenes.

Here are sketches of storyline ideas for the interactions between the blob and flower.

Questions

There are key things and questions that we need to ask ourselves from the feed back:
-Will the animation be blob and flower or will we still include door scenarios?
-Will we use the whole page and set up as background?
-How will we develop our character?
-How will we include perspective?

Feedback

When doing the Animatic look at how long it will take to animate characters to do specific actions.

Think about if you want you work centred or to take up the whole space

Manipulate cartoon animation 

Think about shooting outside of the paper?

Drawing animation test 

Try not to cut to another scene/frame

Focus on the speed when editing

It is best to use Final cut pro 7 rather than Final cut pro X

If we uses cuts make sure we film scenes separately

In the introduction scene the character isn't seen for long enough, there is no sense of character. make frames longer

The audience needs to feel like they know the character, focus on engagement with the character

NEW TECHNIQUES

Consider making a (Hold) Some pictures over and over again it will shimmer, have a life .

When you make the (Hold) loop it and copy the drawing [5] times. Write down a note telling you what scene it is so that you do not get confused. When you shoot it make sure that you write the frames then you will need to mix it [50] times

MAKE SURE YOU SHOOT THE SAME DRAWING TWICE

IDEAS FOR LEGS

The legs that we have done aren't convincing and they don't seem to have much relevance. Much like the beginning scenes with the head it may be a good idea to give the body/legs some character and build up to the development stage so that the audience can feel like they are on the journey of self development  with the character.

Think about how long it would take to animate the legs.

Attempting to move, Rocking, Bouncing or swaying. Then he could possibly grow legs in each frame. 

possibility of using fabrics/materials 

TECHNIQUES FOR MOVEMENT 

close ups to wide shots

the character could come in from a far 

DEVELOPMENT OF FLOWER 

Create a story between the flower and the Blob to add details

e.g. The relationship between children and something new. Our blob is in a child-like state everything he sees on his journey is new to him.He is curious and what to get an understanding of the objects he finds.This curiosity could be viewed to the audience as 

 sweet,harmful, playful or cruel. Not only will we try to look at how the Blob acts towards the object but also how the object will respond to his actions.

Animation test

ANIMATION TEST

This is our animation test that we produced which consists of the introduction. (Not all parts included)

Door sketch

Rough sketch of door scenario, including key elements and events that will take place:
-Floor turns green
-Tennis racket
-Blob and tennis racket play tennis
-Tennis racket slices through him turning him into cubes

Door Scenarios

Scenarios behind each door leading to different ways the character will die.

Doors

As we developed our idea, we thought it would be more interesting if all the doors in our animation were different. This will add a different dimension, giving the doors a life of their own with individual stories and situations associated with them. It will add surprising and mysterious elements for the audience who will try and figure out what they could represent. 

This is just like Monsters inc where the monsters are faced with different situations behind each one.

Storyboard for Introduction

This is our initial, rough storyboard documenting our idea for the introduction to our animation, including the main stages helping the story progress.

 

Introducing the character to the audience, as elements making up his whole body slowly appear one by one.

As the character comes to life he begins his journey and comes across a flower. As he gets closer to the flower a hand comes out and takes him in.

He is sucked through the stem of the flower he is then thrown out.

As he stands up, all of a sudden doors start appearing surrounding him.

Planning

Schedule outlining, what tasks we need to complete each week.

After effects workshop

When producing an animation if after effects you have to check that you have the right settings to begin with, once you have set up your project you can then import your sequence footage.

If you are producing images and objects within after effects whatever you create and anything you do to this will appear in its properties (Mask-Trabsform-Properties).

Within this menu bar anything that has a 'stopwatch' button is animatable, you have to activate this property by clicking the stopwatch so your effect to apply. When you alter or animate you need to drag your line along the timeline to where you want this action to take place and a key frame will appear once you have done so.

Here is the short animation i produced

Statement of Intent-CHOSEN

Metaphoric narrative about an object or based on an object

A journey escaping death 'Death In His Shadow'

Concept
With this idea we are exploring death as a metaphor, and we are going to bring this metaphor to life within our animation. Our initial thought to communicate this idea was to show a 'soul' leaving someones body and the animation will follow this figure trying to escape death. 

Aesthetics

We like the idea of combining both black and white and colour, with most of the animation being black and white with one thing/object that is in colour. This will allow us to set the mood for the animation whilst helping us bring the metaphor of death to life.

We also think that simple and minimalistic line drawing animations would allow us to effectively communicate our idea.

Technique
We plan on using after effects with 2D drawings.

Inspiration and references

Statement of intent

Alternative metaphoric ideas

Luck-Comical

Creating a central character and everything that could go wrong for him/her does.

Sad romance

Tale of two people, where the audience are made to think that the two characters are together when in fact its all in his head and is revealed as a stalker.

Experimental film that innovates, pushing technical and aesthetic boundaries towards making new meanings.
'In Your Head'

Concept

Our idea for experimental film is to have our character and in the animation the 'camera' travels into this persons brain.

So the animation will be based inside someones head, the animation will show different events that are occurring (like a funfair environment) which will represent the persons thoughts.

Documentary can be personal or about an issue or aspect of social reality.

Cyber bullying

A point of view animation showing messages, facial expressions and reactions.

Xbox Clay stop motion

This animation for Xbox was made entirely from clay and took about 3 years to complete, they had to use structures to support the spiderweb as it was so delicate. Each shot took around 30 minutes to perfect and capture.

Talk Talk advert animations

Animation are used for all kinds of things in different ways, and they can be found all around us. Here are a few examples of animations used in advertising that i like...

In this animation there is a central character to follow,it flows nicely from one scene to the next.

These two animations both cleverly incorporate animations within the real world, turning the shapes and lines of the objects into something new for the characters creating something fun and exciting.

 

This animation is a miniature world, i like the aesthetics as it look like toys, whilst still throwing in real sized things like leaves and a squirrel, transforming them from normal, small everyday things to giant and disproportionate.

3D Stop Motion

Using Puppets
Using puppets can be very effective in creating a character and bringing it to life, making it seem real and life like.

When making a puppet you can be very creative and produce anything you like, but you have to think about how it will move, making sure the core and the joints are strong and not likely to break easily.

We produced our puppets with wire, twisting two pieces together so it was strong and durable, we then secured the  limbs, head and feet with masking tape, leaving the joints free it will be easy to move. 

 


















When our puppets were ready we began to create our stop motion.
When making a stop motion with human like puppets you have to consider:
- Body language
- Add in pauses
- Move at the right pace
- Slight movements
- Staging/positioning
- Camera positioning
- Lighting

When we created this stop motion we found that it was quite difficult to control all the factors, whilst creating a seamless sequence.We had to watch the animation back to see if the it looked smooth. 
We found that sometimes the narrative developed too quickly and adding pauses helped to show the emotions of the puppets.We also had to make sure the puppets stayed in position and that we only moved them slightly for sooth transitions.

2D Stop Motion

Stop motion is a technique in animation making a physically manipulated object appear to move on its own. Objects are manipulated using slight movements between frames, this creates the illusion of movement when the frames are played continuously.

Stop motion can be achieved in 2D or 3D using drawings or puppets/objects, and we produced two short animations using both these techniques.


We produced our 2D animation by starting off with two different drawings, by the end we will need 25 images to produce a 2 second clip (shooting on twos).
We used a light box to help us produce the images starting with number 12 using 1 and 25 as a guide, then developed the whole sequence from here.
When we had all 25 pictures we placed each under the camera and took two photos of each picture, and ended up with this.

 

This short animation shows the flower morphing into the man, although this technique is quite time consuming i liked the end result.

An Introduction to animation

This week was our introduction to animation, we were shows various types of animations including documentary, narrative, and experimental. 

All of the animations we looked at used different techniques and had their own individual styles, some were done with drawing and others used stop motion and puppets. The techniques and styles used worked well with each animation to emphasise the theme and subject that was being explored.

This is one animation we saw called 'Flowerpots', this animation uses simple line drawings to communicate a narrative. Although this looks simple it is effective as the narrative appears to flow from one scene to the next making it easy for the viewer to follow.


The animation shows how sound is important and highly effective for the viewer, telling us where is he standing, what he is standing on, when its raining and when he is in water, and all the slight movements.This keeps our attention and allows us to clearly know what is happening.