ocean waves

I've changed the movement of the waves, I'm happier with them because it now looks like the ship is moving forward, but still I'm not too keen on it. They could maybe be slower, but I think it does add some kind of movements that makes the whole thing work, I'm just not 100% happy with it. I might come back to it, when I've finished and try to make it better.

For some frames I could copy and paste the character which made things slightly easier for me, I now need to add some blinking to the character so that he doesn't look like some kind of robot and also finish drawing in his hair and shoulders.

scene 5 - paper areoplane

This is what I've done so far in this scene, I do think the head movement could be more fluent but then I am working in 12 fps so it's not going to be flowing perfectly. Another think I'm not happy with is the waves, I think either the waves need to move slower or have the horizon waves move also. I'll first of all so how the animation looks when I slow down the wave movement, and if I'm still not happy, add some movement along the horizon too.

Travel speed

I had created my paper aeroplane traveling from left to right, but when I played it it was too slow to go with the characters head that would be turning his head to look at the plane. I got rid of some frames to speed it up and spaced them out so that the speed would be constant, I now just need to add in my background and character.  

Exporting fixed

I was having trouble with exporting, it would only play for a second or so and cut off the last few frames in the animation. 

I contacted my tutor who helped me get the right frame rate, I followed these steps he sent me and my animation now plays fine. 

Paper plane test

Gifs work

After trying out things, I figured, I'll get my frames done and try and export it right when I can get help. I've managed to save it as a gif and it lasts the correct amount of time.

Back to the original storyboard

Animation story board

I started another animation, I'm confident will be easier for me to animate. And yes I've already found it easier, but I still have the same problem with exporting. For some reason when I export, it's missing off the end frames, causing the animation to be shorter. When ever I export an animation no matter how many frames, it's limit is 1 second, and I don't know how to change this.

Screen recording

exported

Not getting anywhere

I've done 48 frames in Photoshop layers, when I play it back it all looks fine but when I open it in Premier to check to see if it fits with the audio, it plays too fast and only last a second or so. The frame rate is definitely 12fps in Premier, and I can't seem to check the frame rate in Photoshop. 

I'm finding it difficult to move on because I can't figure out where I've gone wrong, and don't fancy starting it all again following a tutorial for guidance. 

This is how it's looking at the moment, the audio doesn't match up, it's not got a lot of qualities to it, and I'm just not happy with anything about it right now.

Starting my animation

I've started my animation with simple character design and plan to use the simplest of movements because this is my first time animating digitally using photoshop, so I know it's not going to be the best piece of animation I can do.

In the first video, the mouth movement is too fast so I needed to slow that down, also make the character look less like a robot and make him blink.

I first of all focused on the mouth shapes of the character that are speaking and added arm movements to emphasise the expression. I wan't happy with the way it turned out and decided I needed more facial movement so, I made my character blink and I've animated the eyebrows to emphasise this. 

Fire design

Visual language comments

These are the comments I received from peers when we looked at each others work. 

The main comments was that there could be more colour in my drawing, which yeah would make them look more appealing.  

Also more media could have been used, I thought I did use a range of media to find one i liked working in, but I suppose there are more materials I could have used for a wider use of media. 

Overall I received good comments, but from looking at others sketchbooks, I could have done more drawings of different perspectives (of the same object) and used more colour and media when doing my 8 drawings. 

12 image sequence

My 12 image sequence tells the story of a girl writing a letter, folding it into a paper aeroplane and flying it across the world to a boy who is away on ship. 

I had this story idea for the elements project, but decided not to use it, so when I picked the paper plane image to do my 12 image sequence I thought, why not use this story because I do really like it. I tweaked bits from the original story and did a refined storyboard in pen,  because I thought this was the most clear media to get the story across to the audience. 

Character design

Character influences and designs

Rooster Teeth

Netty Scribble

Tim Burton

I picked the animations that have this kind of style of animation because, I like the line quality, the simplicity of the drawing and because in some ways, they are similar to my style of drawing. The limbs of my characters are just lines really, in a way similar to Tim Burton, with his tall and slim characters and similar to Rooster Teeth's character's arms. 

So the style I have gone for is simple and I need to now consider whether the whole animation will be black and white or have a limited colour pallet. I think it will need some colour, I could maybe draw in a different colour than black and use different tones to add shading, like Rooster Teeth have, or use block colour for the character's faces, hair and t-shirts, so that they are the main focus of the animation.  

Chris Of The Dead - Minecraft Minimations

Here's an example of how I'm not going to animate for this project, it's way too advanced for me; but looking at the camera shots and the environmental design, the shots don't change to close ups or anything, they're mostly wide shots and the characters don't move around as much, they just kind of stay centre. I like that it's all very well done with the 3d characters and everything, but again, I was looking at the simplicity of the camera angles and how it was animated along with the audio.    

Phineas and Ferb

One thing I like about Phineas and Ferb, is that the head only really has two view points, the characters are either stood facing left or right and the head changes direction when they do. I don't think I've ever really seen them face forward for a long period of time they are always stood as they are above.

It's the same with the other two animations I've blogged about, the head doesn't move a lot, it's mainly just the expression that changes. You don't see the characters turn their heads from left to right, it's they're looking left, now right. And I'm going to use this style in my animation, because I think it goes with the fast paced audio.   

Scribble Netty

Scribble Netty creates animations from gameplay audio, I like this style because even though the characters are quite detailed, she doesn't have the characters prancing about a lot as the shots change quickly to be in time with the audio. Similar to the Animated Adventures, the majority of movements comes from the mouth and arms/hands. 

I'll use this to help me with animating with a fast paces audio and also look at how the characters are framed and how they move if they are coming into the scene. 

I also like the sketchy kind of style she has going on, I like the fact that the lines aren't all neat, it gives it more character.     

Rooster Teeth - Animated adventures

I like these Animated Adventures because, they animate audio taken from a podcast and while the speech is pretty funny on it's own, animating it gives the audience a visual which adds more humour. These newer episodes in the series, have more colour and are more detailed than previous episodes, I prefer the earlier episodes because of the simplicity of the style and colours 

An earlier video of the series has limited colours and a very simple style, this is a look I want to go with, but I don't want it to be too similar because, the audio I have from the Minecraft gameplay is from the same company, so I don't want it to seem like I'm copying them. I'm going to look at other animations to try and create a style that is different.   

8 Mixed media

I picked the paper aeroplane to draw for my mixed media because, I liked the biro sketches I had done and could work from observation. I made a paper aeroplane (the pink plane above) and drew it from different perspectives. I used some media I would normally use to draw with such as the oil pastel and charcoal. But I like that they gave a different texture and feel to them. The charcoal drawing looks very dark like it belongs in something with a horror theme compared to the pen ones where the lines are clean and has colour to them.

Visual language - 32 sketches for flight

I picked the word flight because I thought I would be able to get a range or different things drawn. I did a mind map to write down words that came into my head which I thought of flight, then used a dictionary and thesaurus to find other words I may not have thought of. 

I tried to draw from observation as much as I could or used photos I had taken previously to work from. I drew the stairs, bullet and birds from observation and drew, I mainly drew the insects from photos and had to resort to Google to help me get reference for the other drawings. 

I drew in biro because I am comfortable drawing in this media, so I was able to draw, especially from observation, a lot quicker to catch movement if there was any.

Interim Crit

For today's interim crit, we got into out little groups and presented our powerpoints, I know it's not the usual way we do powerpoints, but I did feel like i could comment on others work more than I would have in a larger group. I also felt more confident about presenting my own ideas too.

I presented both my ideas, the paper aeroplane and the Minecraft audio ideas, and my group like the idea with the Minecraft gameplay audio because it's humorous and fit within the 20 second time limit. 

The comments I received were pretty predicable as I knew I needed to think more about character and environmental design. Emma suggested that I look at other animation where they have worked from existing audio, to get a feel for the fast paced movements and cuts. 

I wanted to work on paper but my group suggested digital because, it's easier and to get me to work with different materials.

So for the next bit of the project I'm going to focus on my character design, and environmental design. Also improve on the depth of the environmental design so my animation isn't flat. I'm going to look at others work for influence and try out creating characters with different media; so digial, pencil, marker pens etc...    

Animatic

Character design

I first of all started looking at what other people had done involving the people I am and with Minecraft. They were al fairly similar, so to make mine look different, I looked at other character from films and games I liked to get some different character styles. 

I like the one's with limited colours and that aren't as neat as, say, Disney's characters are. If I were to use colour it would be very limited and just block fills to give the characters more character. 

I'm not going to make my characters too detailed, because I think I'd like to draw my animation instead of doing ti digitally. I thought about doing a stop motion, but I think it would take too long to do, making the characters and settings. So I'm sticking to drawing. 

Visual referencing

I collected some imagery from the internet and that I had taken to help  me understand more about how the elements look in different environments. 

New storyboard

Okay so for this, I've avoided watching the gameplay I've taken the audio from so I come up with my own visual story and character.

In this story, Ryan acusses Gavin of killing his wolf, which Gavin denies. Ryan chases Gavin with a flamed torch resulting in setting himself on fire. But he still continues to try and burn Gavin. Gavin jumps into a pond and challenges Ryan to try burning him in there.

This is just a rough storyboard for now as I need to think about camera movements as well as camera angles.

Change of idea.

I felt like the idea with the paper aeroplane didn't really show much or the air element, and the story I had would be a lot longer than the 20 we were set to animate, I did try to cut down the story but I didn't think it made any sence any more when I did. 

Then after watching A Let's play Minecraft video, I found a bit that I wanted to animate using the audio. This bit includes both fire and water elements and I think would be a lot more interesting as it would have proper audio. 

I cut the audio down to get the parts of speech I wanted.

Paperman

When I had the idea for my story then first think that came into my mind, as a source of research, was Pixar's Paperman. This could be seen that my idea is too similar, because it involves a paper aeroplane and is a kind of love story. So I need to make sure it's different to this. I'm going to use Paperman as a source of reference to how the paper plane is animated,

I like the use of colour in Paper man. Everything is in black and white apart from the lip stick mark, this is effect as it's then the main focus as you and the characters easily identify the piece of paper. The woman recognises the lip stick mark and follows the paper plane. The story itself is quite beautiful and romantic and the use of colour reminds you of one of those old silent films.

Storyboard

Generating ideas - The classical elements

To help get me started with the project, I did some word generating to get a range of words relating to each of the elements so that I could then pick out some of the words I liked and could get a story out of.

After picking some words, I then thought of a story for each element. I then decided to go with my idea for air, I think I'll enjoy creating this animation as it's based off something personal. 

Magic water - Guldies

I've been watching this guy's video for a while and I find them really entertaining. I don't think there's a specific audience, apart from those who are interested in stop motion. He does create small stories I suppose, and sometimes gives the little play-doh shapes characteristics, to make them seem alive. he's purely created these stop motion because he enjoys dong them, and people enjoy watching them. 

Morph

Morph is still around, with new episodes on YouTube. Morph is a show aimed at children, but I'd say adults enjoy it just as much. Morph was on tv as part of a kids art program when I was younger. 

It's simple characters who have there own little language if you like, are always getting up to mischief, which makes the show humorous which appeals to kids.

Gulp. The world's largest stop-motion animation

Not only is this awesome because it's the world largest stop motion, but because it was shot on a Nokia N8. This isn't an advertisements as such, but a creative way to show off how good the camera and storage on the phone is. It's communicating that you can be really creative with a phone, some space and a number of people, but on an exaggerated level. 

It appeals to creative people and those who have a love of technology. I know my first thought when I watched this was 'no way was is shot on a phone'. 

Lloyds TSB

This advertisement effectively uses animation to make their bank seem a lot less confusing and simpler than other banks. It's got a happy little tune, with happy little characters and everything just looks nice. They describe all the things they do to help people in hope that people will choose to bank with them. I think the animation does help a bit, because people like their advert and I've heard people talk about it, but whether it would make them choose their bank, I don't know. It doesn't make me want to switch banks.   

Nike Football: The Last Game

I picked this animated advertisement because it's aimed at a male audience, there' the slogan throughout the entire advert, whether that being written or spoken, encouraging it's audience to 'risk everything' and after you've watched the whole story it's telling you to buy 'the latest gear to risk everything'. I do think the advertisement does its job, you get intrigued by the whole story and it makes you want to have same boots as the professionals. Nike always have great, make you want to go out and do something, adverts, but I like this because there's a whole story to it and the caricatures of the footballers are quite humorous too.     

Evaluation

Over this project we have explored a number of animation techniques: storyboarding, flip books, pixilation, pose to pose.

I think my skills, to say this is the first real practice of animation, have improved. I’ve learnt how to refine and do a storyboard and I now know how to create a storyboard that I, and the people I’d be working with, will understand. I also got better at working in thirds and staging and also tried to make each scene have different view point and include camera action so that the shots in the animation wouldn’t be the same. My drawing skill may need to improve more, but I think I just need to get back into drawing more often which the OUAN404 will help me with.

I enjoyed the flip book task, I think for them to be better I need to work on my arching, I think I got the hang of easing in and out, the more frames you have the slower the animation will be. Also got the hang of squashing and stretching, I think I should have explored further with other shapes rather than just with the ball, But I understand to exaggerated the squash and stretch to make it look good and give it some character.

We also did pose to pose, which was kind of carrying on from the flip books but working on punch paper and planning out the key frames before we started. This was more effective as when doing the flip books, I did a quick plan then jumped straight into it, with pose to pose, I planned out the key frames then those in between, and used punch paper to trace over and it was a lot more accurate. I think my pendulum worked well, it had an arc, it had easing in and out and it was planned.

Next we did pixilation, as much as I love doing this, I need to plan out what I’m doing a lot better. I always end up with less frames than I had planned, so in future I’m going to plan, plan, plan. I thought I planned well in the Apply pixilation, as I tested the whole thing first, then went back knowing I needed more frames. For some parts especially in the beginning of the pixilation and end, it worked well, but in the middle it all goes too fast to understand. I also think I just need to plan my time better and do more testing. Even though I spend a morning testing and an afternoon doing the final thing, this still wasn’t enough time for me, as I wanted to go back and refine things, but my actor had gone home and it was now dark so the lighting will have changed, making the pixilation a bit mixed matched. I’m going to sick will it though, because I do like the process of stop motion, I just think I need to learn from my mistakes and practice more.

We also had a number of tutorials I was already familiar with illustrator, after effects and Photoshop. But learning how to actually animate was new, but I feel like I picked it up all pretty quick and can use it in the future. Flash was something new and I didn’t think I really got the hang of using it, but if I want to work mainly with stop motion, I may not even need to use it again.

Overall, I learnt a lot about the basics of animation, and feel confident abut creating future animations using the techniques I have used.

Apply - Pixilation

I tested my pixilation to see how it would work and to see if I need to change anything about. As you can see this video runs really fast and I think it was due to the lack of frames I had. So I'm going to go back and do it again, have Katie move in smaller steps, so I get a nice fluid motion, and so you can actually see what the hell is going on.  

I used card to add the faces and arms onto the lamp, these were quick to make so I had more time to do the pixilation and simple taped them to the lamp the change and add them onto the lamp

Okay, so I did the pixilation again, this video is a lot better than the above. There's still some bits that need more frames to make it slower. I'm still not entirely happy with and I want to go back and redo the part where the lamp grows arms, because I think that that bit went way too quickly. The only problem I have now, is that it's got dark outside and therefore the lighting will be different. Also the video is only 11 second when the brief said 20-30 seconds for a pixilation. 

A I has picked 'surprise' and 'fear' to based my animation off, the story for my pixilation was that, a girl would go and turn on her lamp, the lamp would have a face, to which she was surprised at. The lamp then turned evil and would chase after her, so for that she would fear the lamp.

The pixilation had to be at 12fps, which my pixilation is, but the target of making a 20-30 second pixilation didm't quite work as my end pixilation is only 11 seconds.

I'd really like to go back and amend my pixilation but I don't really have the time. I think for some bits I just need to plan better at how long I want each scene and make sure I take the right amount of photos for it. I think I got the effect of Katie gliding across the floor done okay and the time for this turned out how I'd planned, but the bits I wanted as faster motion, are too fast to understand what's going on really.

Also there could have been more of the principles of animation in there. I had planned to include arcs, with the reaching to the lamp, but I don't like that had come across in the pixilation. I think that the facial expressions were over exaggerated, but there could have included obvious easing in and out, which I don't think I did very well.