Dogme 95 For the five obstructions brief I found it really challenging because of all the restrictions and I started off really stuck with what to do. With one of the rules being you have to be able to understand the film without an explanation, I wanted to keep it to something very simple. My initial idea was to go up London and travel around, exploring for inspiration and hopefully capturing some interesting footage of everyday goings on. When I thought about it I realised I couldn’t just go with out having a clue of what I was aiming to shoot, as I wasn’t sure if anything good was going to happen. I heard about a few exhibitions that were on, which sounded really interesting and I thought maybe I could shoot some footage at them. For the beginning of the film I wanted to start off with the journey to take the viewer from my starting point to the end, so there was a slight build up to where I was going. I could then take them through the exhibition, but looking back I realised it doesn’t really make much sense because the beginning is very different to the end. I think it would have been better if I was to have carried on filming from the train leading to the buildings so it went together a bit better, but I still feel the shots and mood are really different. When I started putting the film together I realised the back ground noise was very ruffled and uncomfortable to listen to, but having it silent was quite dull so I decided to break the rule on adding in music to give the film more of an edge. I’ve never really done any filming before so I wanted to use this brief to explore filming techniques and the editing side of it, so although I think my final piece came out quite unsuccessful I did learn quite a bit from the technical side and to put a lot more consideration into the story line so it has a clear beginning, middle and end.
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For my independent practice I decided I wanted to start getting more into animation because it’s an area I enjoy working in and when I reflected back over my work I realised it was something I seemed to do quite a bit. I haven’t gone to in to depth with it yet, so I still feel there’s a lot of technical skills and techniques I need to learn but as it’s an area I enjoy I want to explore it further. I thought for this semester I could use the time carrying out a series of experiments, so I could plan out a rough idea of how long they take to create, what is involved in making them and what equipment I need. I wanted to focus on stop motion because it’s a form of animation I really like so I started by researching the different methods of stop motion.
A Brief History of Stop-Motion Animation Persistence of Vision You have a series of frames with each one being slightly different than the next, and when you display them at a steady rate of speed, the human eye perceives this as being in fluid motion due to the phenomenon known as persistence of vision.
Object Animation Object manipulation is the earliest form of stop-motion animation, and involves photographing an object and moving it a tiny bit, and then photographing it again. The first example of object manipulation was the 1898 short film by Albert E. Smith and J. Stuart Blackton called The Humpty Dumpty Circus.
Puppet Animation Not long after object animation appearted, filmmakers began experimenting with using different forms of objects that were easier to manipulate. Puppets were one solution, which led to the popular rise of stop-motion animation known as puppet animation.
Direct Manipulation Animation This is a process similar to standard animation, but rather than changing each image entirely, only a portion of the image is erased or added to in-between each frame. One of the earliest examples of this form of animation is also from J. Stuart Blackton. Humorous Phases of Funny Faces was put out by the Edison company in 1906, and it features chalk faces being animated frame by frame.
Pixilation This is a live-action form of stop motion, which uses actual people being posed frame by frame instead of inanimate objects or drawings.
Claymation Clay animation is where you make something out of clay and move it so it is slightly different in every frame and take a picture, a lot like regular animation. Unlike regular animation, in clay animation, instead of drawing a figure in different positions, you make the clay figure in different positions. One of the most popular clay animations we see are from Aardman Animations, such as Wallace and Grommit.
I decided that clay animation was one of my favourite forms of stop motion because I like how you can get really creative with the characters and scenery and I think it’s more fun compared to some of the other forms. Also compared to things like drawing I like that it is 3d and you can experiment with moving and manipulating the characters physically. As this is the stop motion I wanted to focus on I did a bit of research into it to find out what is involved in creating them.
Clay Animation
The first thing you need to know about clay animation is how to use the clay tools. The best, most widely used tool should be your hands. Your hands shape, squish, smooth, flatten, pinch, and poke the clay the best. However, the other tools also serve important functions too. They can to detail too small for your hands.
Here’s what you’ll need: Concept • Story or conflict (as a beginner, you may want to keep it short & simple - maybe something that may be fleshed out in no longer than a minute.) • Script • Characters (sketch them out first--make them original) • Storyboard difficult shots (if any) • Plan special shots: close ups, zooms, etc. • Sketch a plan of the set (if you want to use clay and/ or objects)
Character
Equipment/ Software:
Now you need to build your character. The first step to making you character is to make armature. The armature is a skeleton for your clay figure that gives it support and allows you to move it properly for animation. You will want aluminum wire, and some hardening clay. Make a stick-figure frame for your character using the aluminum wire. Then, where the figure will NOT need to move, put hardening clay on. For example, if you were doing the arm. Have clay everywhere except the shoulder, elbow, and wrist. Allow the hardening clay to dry before moving on. Next, you want find out what body parts you won’t be moving. For example, the eyeballs themselves do not vary. They move around, but the actual ball doesn’t change shape. All body parts similar to this should be made using hardening clay, to save them from accidentally getting ruined, since clay figures wear easily and will need to be restored in the process of the making of animation. Once the clay dries, paint it. Other things that needs to be done like this are teeth, neckties, stomach, and any props. After that, make the figure. make sure you use non-hardening, oilbased clay. It should be in colors, you won’t be painting it. Put the clay around the armatures and use your fingers and tools to shape your figure.
• Digital or Video camera with a firewire port • Tripod • Firewire cable (e.g. 4 pin (connected to camera/ 6 pin connected to computer) • Computer & monitor • Lights (you may want to set up a 3-point lighting system: key light, fill light, and backlight) • Capture software (such as Stopmotion Pro or Framebyframe (freeware)) (for stop motion you’ll need at least 10 fps. Capture software will enable you to control your shutter speed from the • software’s capture controls, so you won’t even have to touch the camera!) Make absolutely • positive your camera will be recognized by the software program!
I started by creating a very basic animation just to get an idea of how to put it together and how the movement works. I wasn’t thinking about things like story or setting it was a very quick test. I made the character, which only took about 40 minutes and just had him walking along the desk and jumping off a book. To put the animation together took another 30 minutes. From creating this animation I was starting to get an idea of putting it together and the pace. Although I wasn’t focusing on lighting and background I can see how much the lighting flickers and that there are other distractions going on in the back. These where things I wasn’t fully aware of when taking the pictures because I was so focused on the character they didn’t occur to me. I could also see how he looks really stiff when he walks because there was not a lot of movement in his legs. I think this was because I made him to short and stumpy. So movement and character are also other aspects I’m going have to think more carefully about.
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I then wanted to start experimenting with interaction and trying to move two objects at the same time. I created two more characters with a very basic human form, that way you could understand their movements but as they’re very basic it wouldn’t matter too much if the movement weren’t perfect. I thought about having the characters dancing because it’s a simple story that involves a lot of interaction and is simple to understand. From the previous animation where there were distractions in the back I decided to start thinking about the background. Not necessarily setting up a scene but making sure there were no other distractions going on. I created a bit of space on a desk and put a black sheet on the back wall to make it all one colour. I then set up the camera and began to animate. Creating the animation and putting it together took again 30 minutes.
For putting the animation together I only used imovie, which is very basic software but it’s the only software I really know how to use at the moment. I do find it very restricting with editing and duration because there’s not a lot of options but it allows me to put the animation together into a viewing form. I also added in some music to enhance the movement of the characters. I am planning on developing my skills in Premiere and After Effects.
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Looking back at it I thought the characters moving together came out much better than I thought and I liked that it was a clear storyline but the movements are still very stiff and clumpy. Also the desk is right next to a big window, which caused the lighting to flicker in the background so for my next animation I need to do a lot more planning on movement and lighting.
For my next experiment I created another basic character but I made him a bit more detailed and bigger than before. This made him more flexible for movements and expression. I played around with interacting him with props and a range of motions to try other ways of making him move, he’s movements aren’t perfect but he seems much more versatile than the previous characters. I still went for the basic background but this one was shoot at night so I set up a light and was hoping it would come out much better as I had more control over it. But one mistake I made was turning the flash on, on the camera. As I only had one light I needed to make it a bit brighter and thought that would be a good way to do it, but I didn’t realise how much each flash creates a different brightness. This actually made the flickering much worse and I think the wooden desk and orange character didn’t reflect the artificial lights very well because even with setting the camera to tunsten lighting it came out very orangey.
I wanted to push my animations further so I started to learn Premiere, which gave me much more flexibility on editing and effects. I started basic by learning to set up my video, import all my pictures and make the movie. I found Premiere much easier to put the animation together because with imovie you had to set the duration for each image, where as in Premiere I could set up the time ratio and image per frame and it did it all for me. This made the motions a lot smoother. One of my main focus’s for this animation was length of film because I wanted to start working out how many photos I would need to different time ratio’s so it would flow as smoothly as it could. Working it out at 25 frames per second I realised to do just 30 seconds I would need 750 photos. So I decided to make this one a 20 second animation and build up. Overall I took about 585 images, which I felt worked really well because parts of the animation such as him on the skateboard I feel went really smooth. But I realised I must have knocked the camera quite a bit because it was very jumpy. This is something I need to be more aware of. Overall time it took to create was 2 hours and 50 minutes.
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Character Development Now I’ve started thinking about the ways I can improve my animations, I was thinking about my characters and maybe trying to add some more detail to them. I was reading this book that talked you through how to create a clay character by making a frame for the inside and I thought this was a method I could try out.
First Attempt It took me 1 hour and 25 minutes creating the frame and a further hour and a half putting the clay around it, but when I was getting nearer to finishing I realised with the wood and wire underneath I was actually finding it more restricting with the movement. I’m not sure if this was because I made the wood a bit to big but I was finding it harder bending him in certain ways and getting him to stand up. I also found the clay was not sticking to the wire very well so I decided to scrap this and start again.
Attempt 2 I then went for a second attempt but I decided as I was finding the frame so unsuccessful I’d go back to making them purely out of clay. I started by creating a body out off one colour to create a kind of base and then I could work off of that. Sometimes it was quite hard trying to push the clay together because when you try and smooth out one section you ended up messing up another one, but I think this was a much more succesful attempt. This charachter took 1 hour and a half to make.
For my next animation I wanted try to think of a quick story line rather than creating on a whim. This helped me plan out the timing a bit better and find other ways to interact the character with props. When I was looking at other characters for inspiration I came across a guy with a flower next to him. This gave me a really quick idea of having a guy walk along, pick up a flower to smell it, which would cause him to sneeze and the petals fall off. This was a really simple idea but gave me a way of planning a rough beginning, middle and end. I tried adding in the skateboard idea again because I found it quite successful in the previous attempt, but it didn’t come out as well this time I think I made the movements to big.
Thinking back to how I was finding the lighting so unsuccessful I wanted to try another approach to tackle the flickering issue. I waited for it to be night again so I had no interference from the sunlight. I then set up a white background thinking it might reflect the lighting and make it brighter. I also got a second light to try and soften the shadows. It still flickers but I think the white background worked much better than before.
The images came out a little darker than I liked so I took them into Photoshop and adjusted the brightness. I learnt to do batch process, where I could record any changes made to one image and get Photoshop to repeat it to the whole batch. Increasing the brightness made the images look a lot crisper which improved the overall effect of the animation.
When I was putting the animation together in Premiere I realised I did the movements way to fast and I didn’t take enough photos because when I played it back the animation just flew by to a point where it was unwatchable. So I tried slowing it down to one image per two frames, which looked much better, but it would have been better if I did smaller movements and took double the amount of photo’s. I then started experimenting with sound effects to go with the storyline to make it a bit more interesting. I downloaded some free sounds off the Internet and started playing around with cutting and placing them along with the animation to see where they fit best. This animation took about 2 hours to create.
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Character Development 2
I wanted to try and improve further on interaction and animating two characters at the same time. As I liked the simplicity of the dancing storyline I thought I’d go for a second attempt but this time with my more advanced characters. I wanted to have a bit of a different ending so it wasn’t completely the same and I felt the ending in the first one stopped quite suddenly so I wanted to try and play this one off a bit more gradually.
I played around with the position of the lights to try and make it a bit brighter than before and it created quite a nice shadow effect. I think the lighting came out much better this time but I still took them into Photoshop to increase the brightness. Still flickering a little bit I started playing around with the lighting effects in Premiere to try and solve the issue. As it was a dance animation I thought it would be nice to try and put a spot light effect on which I think complimented the shadows really well and it created quite a nice atmosphere. I then added in some music.
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I now wanted to start thinking more about the story line because at the moment mine have been very basic. So I started looking into some other clay animations for inspiration, looking at the different elements to what makes them up and what I like about them. I’ve put below a few examples of some of the ones I was looking at.
Morph
Trap door
Angry Kid
Morph is quite often set on a desk, which you can see from the things in the background such as stationary and cotton reels. They’re very quick, comical story lines, which use a good combination of props and sounds. I like how they’ve mixed the characters with some real objects and scenery, I think it’s a good approach to setting up a scene a lot quicker because you haven’t got to make lots of things out of clay. It also gives us a sense of scale. I really like how they’ve created really quick, simple narratives but there’s still a whole story line to them. It makes them very easy to understand and they don’t drag on to long. I like how the characters don’t really talk instead they use sound effects so the audience can get an understanding of what they’re thinking. This is a good approach because they haven’t had to worry too much about dialogue and the sounds add to the humour.
Trap door is about a blue character called berk who lives in a castle working as a servant for the mysterious guy up stairs. It’s based around this trap door that you never get to see down but you always get odd creatures come out. I think having this mysterious trap door and guy up stairs can add a bit of excitement and curiosity to the animation because you want to know more about them. Trap door is a mixture of illustrated scenes with a few clay props, which I think is another good approach to creating a setting. Unlike Morph these are slightly longer animations and do have dialogue and a narrator. I think this is a good way of telling the story as it’s easier for people to understand, especially children, but I don’t think it’s as funny.
Angry Kid is about a teenager from hell, stuck at that awkward age between childhood and adolescence. These animations have a very good use of scenery and props. I think they’ve created a wide range of creative settings, which make the animation look more realistic and really help to tell the story. They are very short hilarious story lines, which are a bit more adult themed compared to the others, but with it’s comical use of dialogue, facial expression and stories it engages the audience really well. This animation isn’t made from clay instead it uses pixilation and live action while masks are replaced to give the effect of speech.
Jan Svankmajer
Purple and Brown
Flat World
Jan Svankmajer has created a series of films which really play around with different methods of stop motion such as object manipulation, live action, clay animation, illustration, puppets and cut out to create a range of interesting narratives. He has also used some really interesting camera shots to create some really surreal and experimental imagery adding an unsettling feel. He also made really good use of combining objects, music and scenery to create some quite intense, abstract footage. I thought he’s films were really quirky and obscure and you can tell there’s a lot of depth to each one.
Purple and Brown is a series of short animations based on the two characters Purple and Brown. They are very simplistic and they have very basic characters. The only real details to the characters are their faces, but they do go into great detail with their facial expressions. This along with the sound effects gives an insight to the viewer of how they feel and what they’re trying to communicate, which really adds to the humour. I love the simplicity to these animations, they’re always shot on a plain white background, making the characters and props the focus point. They made really good use of character and prop interaction to create simple, but really funny films, that are very easy for everyone to understand. They’re all very short story lines ranging from about 30 seconds to 2 minutes. I think this is a very effective approach.
Flat world is a thirty-minute animation about a guy who is working on road construction when he accidentally cuts through an electricity wire opening him to a portal to a flipside world. It is quite slow at some parts but other parts it is quite fast past as it flips us between Flat World and Flipside. I found this quite engaging because you didn’t get bored as the scenes were constantly changing. This animation is made up of purely 2d images, which is really well constructed, as some of it looks very 3d. They do sometimes purposely use the 2d elements such as on their characters and objects so you can see their paper-thin. I think this is a really nice effect because we’re able to see the contrast between the 2d and 3d. They have also created a lot of really imaginative scenes and made a really good use of sound effects and music to inflict a mood for example adding excitement, intensity, suspense and fun.
I realised working with people was a lot harder to do because we know there motions and how they move, making it clearer to see when the characters were moving stiffly. So I started creating some of my own little characters, that way I could decide how they moved, interacted and the sounds they made. With inspiration from Purple and Brown I wanted to keep my characters very simple.
Thinking back to timing, I wanted to try and create a 30 second animation. I created a quick story board so I could break it down in to 6 main frames, that way I could work out roughly how long I would need each frame to be and how many photo’s I would have to do. Working it out at 5 seconds per frame I would need to do 125 photos each. From looking through the other animations I found the shorter, simplistic storylines the most effective, such as Purple and Brown and Morph. So I wanted to use this approach to create my next animation. I came up with a really quick idea for a story, which I thought up quite randomly using just my characters, some cheerio’s and sound effects.
Characters find a pile of cheerio’s and the guy on the right picks one up.
He then throws it to the other guy to catch in his mouth.
Close up of him eating.
On third the throw it accidently hits him in the eye.
He Starts to cry and the other guy looks bit shocked and feels bad.
He then throws a cheerio up in his own eye to make the other one feel better. Other guys starts chuckling.
In some parts of my animation I wanted to have objects moving across in the air such as the cheerio and tears, but I couldn’t do this by moving them physically so I had to do it in Photoshop. I realised after that where I moved the objects across in Photoshop you could see where the characters stop moving. I tried to solve this by making part of it a close up, but as I zoomed in it became quite pixelated. This showed me another technical issue I needed to consider. Once I finished putting the video together I brightened the whole thing up in Premiere to give it a crisper look and it worked out much better because it got rid of the flickering shadows behind the characters.
After I finished making the animation, I didn’t manage to reach my 30 second aim because I realised there wasn’t enough going on in each frame to take up 125 photos, or maybe I was still doing the movements to big. It took me just over 7 hours to make it and I only ended up with 12 seconds of film. The problem I had with this was because I had to take some of the process into Photoshop it became really time consuming but it’s making me more aware of just how much time it can take to create an animation.
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Although I wanted to move away from animating people, I found out you could create 3d rooms in after effects, which I thought would be really interesting to try. Thinking back to my dance animations I thought I could create a stage or dance studio setting, have the curtains open and the characters perform, so I decided to do one more dance animation. I started by making another quick storyboard to plan out my timings and scenes.
I then started creating my 3d room. I started looking at some tutorials on Youtube to learn how to do it. I had to create a few 2d images for the walls, floor and ceiling and import them into after effects. I then had to set them to 3d layers and play around with angle, sizing, positioning, and an effect called motion tile to put the images together.
I did the animation on a black background because I heard it’s easier to edit out, which I learnt to do through an effect called keying. But I stupidly created characters with black trousers, shoes and hair so when it came to getting rid of the background I also lost half of my characters. I decided not to put this one into a room as I was going to have to reshoot the whole thing but I still added in the curtain effect and played around with the lighting to create a spot light.
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I decided to have a second attempt at putting an animation into a 3d room but this time I thought more carefully about the choice of colours. I went back to animating my little characters on a white background because I realised you could key out white as well and I thought the white background reflected the lighting better. The story line was once again thought up quite randomly but I was thinking about little whitty sketches like Laurel and Hardy when planning it, so this is where I got some of my inspiration from. I started by creating another storyboard to plan out the animation.
Guy walks on and goes over to the pictures.
Puts up the first picture.
Goes back to ge the second picture.
Puts the second one up.
When he finishes putting the second one up the first one falls. He grunts and has little strop.
Goes back over to the first one.
Puts the first one back up.
Really happy with the results he starts clapping and is really happy.
The second one then falls down. He starts grunting and gets rally annoyed.
In a strop he throws the hammer and then the first one falls back down.
Once I had finish creating the animation I recreated another room. I used the same method as last time, but I changed the walls to a lighter colour because I thought the characters would stand out better against white rather than black. I then put the character into the room and went for a second attempt at keying. One problem I did have was I forgot I gave him white eyes which became a bit of a problem and there are still a few little black lines from the frame edges but it was much more successful than my previous attempt. I also learnt to put cameras in through After Effects so you could experiment with different views and compositions. I tried creating one zoom in shot as he went to the back of the room, but I realised after as you zoom in you need to increase the character size which is something I didn’t do, but this is a skill I can now develop. It took me a couple of days to create this animation so I’m realising as the skills are getting more technical it’s also becoming a lot more time consuming.
The top animation is the one before I put the character into the room and below is with him in the room. I wanted to show the before and after effect because although I really like him being in the 3d room, the character was a bit better quality before and I did quite like the effect of him on the white back ground.
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I then wanted to start experimenting with putting a composition within a composition so I could learn to combine a number of moving images. This would make it much easier if I wanted to have a few things going on at the same time as I could animate them separately and then use After Effects to put them together. To create this animation I had to do it in quite a few stages. I started by trying to think of a quick story. With inspiration from one of my tutorials I was given the idea of having my character dancing along to some music videos on a TV. I thought this would be a really good idea because I could then get some already made videos to play rather than me having to create extra footage. I could then animate my character separately to make it look like he was dancing along, interacting with the TV.
Going with this idea I started deciding what videos I want to have play. I decided on Lady Gaga - Just Dance and Beyonce - Single Ladies because there both quite upbeat songs so I thought they’d be easier to dance along to. I then took the music video into premiere and started playing around with cutting them to take out the particular parts I wanted. I went for the chorus’s because it’s the most recognisable part of the song so I thought it would be more engaging to the audience. I then combined both the music video clips together to create the final footage.
I then needed to create my TV, I went on Google to get some inspiration and in illustrator I created my image. I then took it into After Effects and combined it with the music video footage. This was now my first composition. I reused the same room from my previous animation because I felt it worked really well, but I played around with the camera angling so it wasn’t so square on. I could now take my TV composition in to the room. I also played around with the angle of the TV because I realised in my previous animation the objects I put into the room looked very flat to the wall.
I then started nothing down some rough movements that happen in the music videos so I could try to get my character to imitate it. That way he would look more engaged with the TV. When I was putting the animation together I realised at some points I was a few movements short, so I played around with duplicating parts of the animation and mixing it in to prolong the footage to fit with the music. I brightened the animation up in Premiere to try and define clearer points between the background and character to make it easier for keying. When I came to putting the character into the room there was some really annoying shadows I couldn’t key out between his legs. I learnt to use masks to get rid of them but I found them very complicated to use because when I put the mask on one frame it went on to all the other ones. I then kept having trouble with my masks
moving between my key frames and cutting into the character because I didn’t realise After Effects moved them automatically from one key frame to the next. So to make it easier I broke down the animation into sections and masked a couple of seconds at a time and then exported that section. As I was doing it more and more I started learning new techniques and slightly quicker ways to do it but it was still a very time consuming task, which took about 2 days to do. There are still some black marks which I wanted to key out but because all my masks were getting messed up as I was going along I had to leave it otherwise I would have had to go back over the whole thing. But this is now a technique I will develop and I think I’ll be better at it next time. I then took all the exported footage into Premiere to put it back together and I added in the music. Overall this animation took about a week to complete.
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Evaluation I have found this semester really beneficial because before I was really confused with what I wanted to do and I found all my work being really varied and just touching on different topics but never really getting into anything. But through out this semester I feel I have really identified the area I want to focus my work and have been able to carry out a range of experiments allowing me to build up an understanding of my subject and learn new skills within it. I decided I wanted to focus on animation because it’s an area I enjoyed working in and feel I had the potential to take further. This semester has been about really experimenting and understanding the technicalities of creating an animation and how long they can take to create, rather than trying to create a final piece. So at the moment I haven’t created any final pieces but I’ve built up a collection of test animations in which I feel I’ve learnt and developed a lot of technical skills such as After Effects and Premiere. I’ve also become more aware of the methods you can use for creating an animation. My next challenge now would be to develop on my narratives to give them more meaning. Some of the main things I’ve learnt through the process are how important it is to get the lighting right as I had a lot of trouble with my animations flickering. Although through this I did learn a lot of new techniques to solve it. Also how important it is to make your movements very miniscule each time because if you move the object to much it can make the animation look quite jolty and you won’t end up with enough pictures to fill your time frame, and how long they can take to create. I’ve realised as my technical skills have started improving the animations were starting to take much longer to put together. I know with our final major projects we only have about 12 weeks to complete it so timing is going to be very tight which means I’m going to have to try and make minimal mistakes as possible and plan well ahead. Through doing some research and looking into other clay animations such as Aardman, it has given me some inspiration of how it can be used in a bigger context. Most of the clay animations I have been looking at have been created for entertainment purposes, weathers it’s short series, films, or clips for children’s TV, but it’s showed me entertainment is one area I could aim to position my work. Also looking online I could see they have been used for advertising purposes with clients such as Cadburys and Land Rover, so this is another area my work could be associated. But I don’t want to restrict myself to just clay animation, as I am aware that with the developed and moving technologies there are much more cost productive and less time consuming methods so I will aim to develop in more areas. For my final major I need to start developing on narrative and giving my animations more meaning and context. I think the best way to do this would be to pin point the area I want to aim them giving me a target audience and a focus. I can then carry out some research with in my more focused area and use it for inspiration for story lines. I could use the beginning of the semester to explore other methods of animation to build on the skills I’ve already learnt so I don’t just restrict myself to clay. I can then apply all my skills into creating a final piece. I was thinking my final piece could either be a series of shorter animations or a longer animation such as 5 minutes. From having a tutorial with Mike we was talking about ideas and one suggetion was I could try and record some conversations going on around me. Hopefully with this I will capture some interesting stories or funny situations that I can animate my little characters to. That way I will be bringing dialogue into my animations which might be more effective, and the stories will write themselves. If I aimed to do two animations a week I would build up a good collection of work, which I could turn into a small series. If I was to create a series I could also create an intro screen that could play at the beginning of each one so it would make them more into a set.
Bibliography Patmore, Chris (2003) The Complete animation course, London, Accessed 27th October Webster, Chris (2005) Animation The Mechanics Of Motion, Oxford, Accessed 31st October Tate Gallery Design Museum
– Gerhard Ritcher, Panorama, 17th October 2011 - Tacita Dean, 17th October 2011 - Kenneth Grange, Making Britain Modern, 18th October 2011 - This Is Design, 18th October 2011 - Designers In Residence, 18th October 2011
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