Stop Motion, Deadlines, Idents and more!

Heyo everyone :D

I know it's been a while since the last time I posted >.< So I figured I'd come here to update you on everything I've been up to these last week or so :D

Currently, deadlines are hitting down hard, with everything due in either on the 24th May or the 31st May.....So yeah, things have been rather stressful lately, but at the same time, very, very productive :D

First I'll fill you all in on what projects I'm actually in progress with, what is due and when it's due, I guess I could use this blog as kind of a check list for myself at the same time as showing everyone my work in progress and how I'm getting on with things.

My Checklist is as follows -

• DGA130 Design for Animation Experimental - Handed In
• DGA130 Design for Animation 3D Modelling Project 24^th May Academic Office time by 2pm
• DGA130 Design for Animation Background Project 24^th May Academic Office time by 2pm + 12.00 hrs Online
• DGA140 Digital Animation Practice 2 Individual Adaptation Project (layout test shot) 24^th May Academic Office time by 2pm + 23.55hrs Online
• DGA 120 Motion Studies Showreel 31^st May 2pm in Academic Office + 23.55 hrs Online
• DGA 120 Motion Studies Portfolio 31^st May 2pm in Academic Office + 17.00 hrs Online
• DGA130 Design for Animation Ident Project 31^st May by 2pm in Academic Office + 23.55 hrs Online
• DGA140 Digital Animation Practice 2 Group Project (Sea Tales) 31^st May Academic Office time by 2pm + Presentation on 30^th May 2013
• DGA140 Digital Animation Practice 2 Blog 31/5/13 23.55 Online

...So yes, quite the handful xD I'll probably be putting this list up on the bottom of my blog posts between now and the deadline, colouring the complete pieces purple and the handed in pieces green, just so I can let you guys know where I'm at with everything :3

Currently, I've not actually gotten to completion on any of the projects (except Experimental) as my current technique of managing my work has been to pick away at each project, each day (I'm near completion on both my ident and background projects and have picked away at everything else) Hopefully soon, I'll have the completed ident and both backgrounds to show you c:

Last week, I had a stop motion workshop with one of our lecturers that used to work on Bob the Builder. We got to use specifically made puppets for this, which was a pretty new and exciting experience c:



These puppets had chunky armatures in and it was our task to animate them all touching their toes. I was in a group with two others, Beverly and Katie from my group project :D We had a puppet each to animate touching their toes and coming back up. Each puppet was attached to our workspace by their feet, done using powerful magnets.
My puppet was named Eimer and is the blonde one on the left hand side c: We used easing techniques, moving them small amounts at the beginning of the animation, then larger amounts as they sped up, before moving them gradually again as they reached the end. Eimer was tough to work with at first due to her hair, but we were given tips to 'mold' the clothing and hair before we started, so our thumbprints were already in the area's we were going to touching regularly when posing the armatures. This helped a lot and overall, I am quite pleased with the outcome of this test :D

Experimental Animation - A Production Report

So, the past couple of weeks, I've been working on my experimental animation project, due at 12pm today (It's currently 3am here).

This project involved making an animation timed to one of 6 sound clips given to us. Our rules for this work were only, that it had to be done without the aid of a computer (other than post production) and that it had to be imaginative, in terms of technique. (My final piece is below)



I began by experimenting using lots of different techniques, some of these were Pixilation, Plastercine, Drawing with pastels, moving objects and using a whiteboard. I made 5 or  6 second test animations with all of these techniques and really enjoyed trying out all of these new ways of animating, but I needed to choose one that I really, really enjoyed, for my final piece, as I was going to be animating about 40 seconds of it, and didn't want to get bored with it.

During A Levels, I got given a lot of plastercine by the art department. In my first few years of College I attended a small stop-motion animation club, which sadly ended when the teacher running it moved departments, they had little use for all this plastercine, so my A level art teacher gave it to me a few years later, knowing I intended to go into the field of Animation. I really enjoyed all of the techniques I tried but I felt plastercine was my favorite out of all of them, mostly because how easy it is to deform and play around with - I felt I could make my animation seem more fluid and free that way. :3

I started planning on paper, coming up with ideas, whilst listening to my chosen track (a 40 second piece named Ruta and Daita which I chose due to the obvious beats in it, that I could use to time the animation efficiently) and jotted down some small storyboard-like frames. Once I was happy with my idea, I made a Dope sheet, deciding how many frames I would need for each part of the sequence and deciding what would be going on in said parts. When practicing with the plastercine, during my trial animations I loved how smooth some of the dot parts of the animation turned out, and I really liked the idea of using dots in this animation, to help with the timing of the beats in the song.

I had quite a surplus of blue plastercine and decided, unlike my practice animation, I was going to do this animation inverted, using a glass panel covered in blue plactercine and animating by using a craft knife to cut out shapes, revealing the glass below. I set up a makeshift line tester, using a jam box with a rectangle and a square cut out of it. I attached this to the shelf on my room-mates desk and weighed the back down with a heavy book. When the camera was on, the lense would pop through the square, allowing me to animate underneath it, on the plastercine, without need for a tripod. I chose to use a powerful desk lamp to keep the light consistent, seeing as I was to be animating this piece over several days and didn't want it to give the appearance of flickering. 
A picture of my final setup is below.

When animating this, I tried to stick closely to the dope sheet (especially at the zigzag line parts, as this was essential for my piece to work properly) Capturing this project took me 3 evenings to do, I really enjoyed working with the plastercine even though I found it a little bit fiddly (especially with the 'flute' spikes in the music, that were very difficult to animate and work in time with, and quite fiddly to cut out).

For the most part, the animation comprises of different sized circles, being used to portray the beats in the music, the spikes along the bottom (kind of symbolizing audio spikes in recordings) were used for the 'flute' sound in this music, and finally, the zig zag lines were used for the 'coohing' sounds made. One of the things I found particularly difficult about this project was the timing of the zig zags, I wanted them to be played at a higher frame rate than the spikes and the circles (which were following a beat) so my task was trying to keep the circles to the beat, whilst allowing myself to speed up the movement of the lines. This ended with me animating one circle for every 3 frames of the line and although it may have worked in some ways, I feel it didn't work as well as it could've or as well as I'd have liked it to.

Once I had taken all of the photos I needed for the film, I imported them into vegas where I pieced them together in time to the music (of as best as I could in time...the zigzag scenes sometimes show opposite) The only real editing I did to this scene other than that was to flip the video (like a normal line tester would do, so that your work is the right way up) and to zoom in a little bit, so less of the table was showing, something that I couldn't do during the production due to the height of the shelf.

The things I like most about this project was how free the plastercine looks and the timing of the circle scene. Some things I think should be improved on is the steadiness of the camera (due to me taking it in several shots and having to re-position the camera, it does seem a little shakey in parts) and  the tidyness of the piece itself, plastercine is quite rough around the edges and I think I could've worked harder to ensure that it didn't look so rough.

Overall  I am moderately pleased with the final outcome, although it wasn't what I was expecting from it. I really enjoyed this project, trying out new techniques and working with different forms of animation and feel it has helped me a lot when studying movement and learning how to match it to music. 

-Char

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