Tuesday 24 March 2015

Animation Project: Plan for Shooting

Jess
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Story bases

Each character will slowly rise into the shot walk along and fall back down again. Then the backdrop will instantly change to the next character and the routine would continue to repeat itself to the point it reachs the robots (The Final Stage).

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Movement

First shoot we moved the character along aswell as their movable body parts. After though we changed our minds to having them like hover back and forth infront of the camera instead of the body parts moving about crazily on the screen.

Once each character had finished moving one of us would change the background to the next one suited for the next character.
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Camera Set-up

The camera was set up to be level with the bottom of the stage. This helps us on the second shoot as it removed the site of seeing the brown cardboard when the stage is black. The camera was also on a tripod to allow for us to keep the shot still rather than jerky.
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Roles

Jess - Working the camera & taking the photos & keeping them inline with each other.
Jo - Backdrop changing & helping with camera technicalities (Focus, lighting...) & moving the characters
Vicki - Moving the characters

Animation Project: Solving Issues

Jo & Jess
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Throughout our group animation we have had many problems like
  • Losing our work (people stole it)
  • Having to figure out how we're going to approach our idea
  • Making character 
  • Thinking we wouldn't have enough time to shoot
  • Re-Shooting out animation
Even though we lost some of our characters, we managed to improve some of our testers and use them instead. It took us about a week to actually figure out how we could approach our idea. Going from just drawing a character to actually having multiple characters and a backdrop. In the end we got it together and actually built a stage and did all our backgrounds. Then after that we was ready to go. 

(Jo) When it came to making characters, it took me a whole day to make loads of different media ones. I wanted to see which glue and paper would be better to use. Luckily i made loads so that i could use the back ups.  This was a problem, because it took a while to figure out how the characters would move, which in all honestly i stressed about.

Thinking that we wouldn't have enough time to shoot and everything else being a challenge at the start, it started playing around in our minds. Therefore we all became stressed.

We all didn't mind re-shooting the animation because it looked so much better in the end, plus we all had a laugh with it. The first time we shot the animation it took a whole day and went really slow because we had the backdrops moving instead of just appearing. The second shoot went pleasantly well and quick because we knew what to do.

Our ideas have changed an awful lot over the course of this project. We changed our timeframe. Then we changed our story line and switched characters. When it came to using media we did try doing some sand and plaster-scene, which we knew we would fail in completely... Vicky was pretty good at it and so was Jess, but we thought it would take to long for us, as our characters needed quite a bit of detail.

Whenever we changed an idea, it would always be for the better and not just because we thought it would be the easiest thing to do.


Animation Project: Feed Back

Jo & Jess
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The feedback that we got for our evolution idea was, 'the idea is good, but think about how each character is going to change from one to another'. This has been the most popular feedback, we got their in the end though. We found an easy way to change the characters and how they would move. The characters would just slowly drop out of scene and the back drop would instantly swap to the next one.

Other feedback that we got was, 'use psychedelic colours'. Although we already knew that we wanted/ should use those type of colours to add to the surreal effect. We responded to this by making some of our backgrounds the opposite colours to what they would normally be. Like for our human backgrounds, we made buildings bright pink and green.

We ended up re-shooting our animation (Advice given to us from our peer) because there was too much going on in the background, and the stage had messy white specs in the foreground. When we re-shot the animation, we changed the focus and we moved the camera upwards as it was pointing slightly downwards, showing off the brown parts of the cardboard we used for our stage. We kept changing small elements to make it more technically excellent.

'Do sketches, but in different media'. I responded to this by other than drawing out characters in pencil and giving them simple shapes. I gave them more detail and used pen on them. Also this lead me to do different media, for example i made my characters out of chard and built them up with layers of paper and card.








Animation Project: Evolution

Jo
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What is evolution?

Evolution means the changes that occur in a population over time like how we supposedly evolved from apes. Evolutionary changes always occur on the genetic level. In other words evolution is a process that results in changes that are passed on or inherited from generation to generation. 

"Generation to generation" this quote was a huge part of putting our backgrounds together. Where we was thinking about how we would change the background slowly, or just appearing. We went with the background just appearing as it was more effective. The backgrounds are changing through time, so from an ape background to, caveman to, human to, cyborg and then to a robot. 

Here are some images of different forms of evolution-





Monday 23 March 2015

Animation Project: Character Design Inspiration - Last Scene

Character Design Inspiration
Vicki

Robot: To start of with the robot character for the last scene, Jess and Jo decided that I would be able to produce a appropriate character for this scene. I was inspired by 2K's concept design of the Big Daddies from Bioshock 2.

I felt that a similar design to these iron diver-suits would work, because of my personal interests with this character. As a gamer and fan of the Bioshock series, the Big Daddies have always appeared to me as robotic monsters of the underwater city of Rapture (More info about the game http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BioShock) They were designed by a group of scientists to protect the Little Sisters that crave the ADAM that lay in dead splicers, as the whole art-deco city fights its own civil war. Big Daddies are distinctive of the other enemies in Bioshock and are a important aspect to Rapture, wearing heavy armour, oxygen tanks and the massive drills the wield. 

As the Big Daddies wear more leather/cloth compared to the metal tanks, I designed the character so it was vice-versa, to add a better robotic effect rather than to make it the same. I also decided to remove any weapons, making it appear less life-threatening.



Cyborg: 

Animation Project: Jan Švankmajer

Jo
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Jan Švankmajer is a Czech filmmaker and artist. He is a self-labeled surrealist known for his animations. I looked more in to some still images from his work, i found that he does 'surreal evolution'. I found some images that link in to evolution, they're very surreal but are very inspiring.


Here is a piece by Jan. I found this very inspiring because the crow has been skinned down to the bone, but Jan has left the head. I find this very effective because it breaks down 'evolution'. The bird has changed, but still processes a living feature.


Also where there is a egg, it's like Jan wanted the crow to have a final look at it's creation and to see the change going around. The crow is seeing what his baby is going to end up living in when he has gone. 

This inspired me to think about the atmosphere. For example, how backgrounds will change in our group animation like will they slowly change or will change fast. 



 In this image Jan has used different types of bone and historical features, like old shells.

These features build up a dinosaur. This fits in with evolution because the creature has changing bones and parts. Where evolution is one thing changing to another, this has that element, but the creature is basically a collage of different creatures.

Because of the composition of the objects, it's easy to tell that it's a dinosaur, some may have to look twice though.

This image inspired me think to about composition and how we could place our characters.



Animation Project: Health & Safety

Jess
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When using the Tripod to hold the camera on:
      - Make sure it's out of someones walking path
      - Don't mess around with the Tripod

When using the Camera:
      - Don't mess around with the camera
      - If using flash, don't look where the flash will come from

When using Paints:
      - Don't eat it
      - Clear up after using it
      - Don't play around with it
      - Wear an apron
      - wear gloves (If elegiac)
      - Wash hands after use (Especially if you're going to eat afterwards)

When using Playdo:
      - Don't eat it
      - Clear up after use
      - Wear gloves (If elegiac)
      - Wash hands after use (especially if you're going to eat afterwards)

General Health & Safety
      - Place bags under the table
      - Don't eat or drink in the class room
      - When using equipment always put long hair up
      - Don't play around with the equipment