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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
