Experimental Animation

We've had a project for a few weeks based on experimental animation :3 We don't have much of a brief for this project other than, 1. we have to animate to one of six, 40 second sound clips and 2. We cannot use a computer other than for post production purposes oh and 3. It has to actually be animated of course c:

We've been told to conduct experiments into different types of animation before actually animating the 40 seconds, so this is what I've been doing the last few days c: 

So anyways, what a cool project :D I've been having a whale of a time just experimenting with whatever I have lying around the place c: My digital camera is such a battery gobbler though >.< I've gone through like £6 worth of batteries and only done a few experiments so far ^-^; Should probably invest in some rechargeable ones or something 'cause I'm pretty sure the environment hates me right now...

BUT ANYWAYS ~

I started off in a small group, experimenting with a style of animation called Pixilation, this is, in basic terms, stop motion animation but using humans instead of puppets. Norman Mclaren's animation 'Neighbours' was a very popular example of this form of animation.
 I worked with a few others in my animation group to practice with pixilation animation and we came out with the two animations below.



and

 
 
This was actually SO much fun to do xDD I really, really enjoyed it, especially the table race :3 I think they both came out really well ^-^ and small animations done with a group of friends? what isn't to love? :D

okay, then I went home and practiced with some stuff around the flat :3 I bought a mini octopus tripod so I could set up wherever I wanted and have a stable workspace. I started out using plactercine and just playing about with shapes and ripples and such with that. Plastercine was something I really enjoyed working with ^_^ But I think a few more frames for this animation could've benefited it a lot, especially at the beginning. That and I found it really difficult to get my camera to be consistent, sometimes it'd flash, sometimes it wouldn't, sometimes it was out of focus and other times the frames were crisp and clear. I think if I do choose to work in plastercine as my final Experimental medium, I'll need to work on my camera a bit >.< But for a first try, I guess it wasn't bad c: 




My second, I used mostly myself and a ring I tend to wear. I experimented with pastel pens and giving the illusion that my ring was drawing :3 There's a slight jump in it unfortunately because my camera ran out of batteries half way though and I had to replace them, taking the camera off the tripod and changing the frame a bit D: I'm still pretty pleased with this though, and would love to work on a similar technique soon, when I have batteries xD



and finally, my latest one :D I bought a cheap whiteboard and messed around with morphing animation using it c: I actually really enjoyed this, but it ended up being quite painful on my wrist, seeing as the only way I could find to photograph it properly was when it was on a vertical surface :3 I think it'd be nice to use this as my final experimental animation, but I'd like to find a way to have it on a desk or something (similar to a line tester) if I was to animate 40 seconds worth of animation in this technique :3




But yes, that's pretty much all I had to say so far c: Ima continue experimenting with different techniques ^_^ One thing I'd quite like to try again would be animation using seeds and lentils, during A level art I had to do a project advertising a healthy fast food company and did it using lentils and such on a lightbox. Unfortunately though, this lightbox was A5 in size, so was difficult to work with and I had no idea what I was doing editing wise, so it isn't at a particular frame per second 'cause I imported everything at once an painstakingly resized every frame itself instead of importing frame selection >.< So yeah, a bit jumpy, but it was a pretty fun project c:



Interestingly, I'm still using the same camera for my current experimental stuff xD Hopefully the editing will be much better now I've learned how to do time saving stuffs though x__x

Oh and finally, just as a teeny update, even though it's not relevant to Experimental Animation c: I've been practicing with digital painting a bit more, and painted my cat this morning c:

I'm not such a fan of backgrounds yet though, so I did leave that a little plain >.< but yeshh, I worked from this picture

I'm quite pleased with it c: But I can see quite a few places where improvement can be made on it c: Especially on the front paws and the back :3 But ima leave it for now and get on with other things, like my group project and experimental ^_^

but yush, this is all for now :D I'll post some of my test shots for the Sea project at some point c: I'm currently working out the best ways to get them done in flash, because Flicker/Animation Boiling is driving me crazy right now :3 But I guess this is part of the learning process ^-^

Until next timeeee