My 5 chosen sounds

These were the 5 sounds that stood out to me the most, I picked ones that sounded different from each other and would therefore allow me to experiment with different shapes and colours. I picked one that has quick sharp sounds which will have a contrasting look to another sound I picked that is long and blunt. I wanted to have a range of sounds so that each sound would be a new task and not just follow on from another idea or style I had for another similar sounding track.

I'll need to select some parts of longer sound tracks as the time set for our animations are 1-5 second. 

Sound 035

This sound reminds me of someone sawing. It sounds very rough and so I picked materials this represented this. I used pencil and an ink pen so that the lines would be rough and broken in some places, a contrast to other draws I've done where the sound was harp and I needed a pen that looked fluid in motion. 

The motion I drew in was the motion of which you saw in. Back and forth, to create the look that the sound is repetitive but not as constant in tone.

 
This is what the sound looks like as an image in Premier. 

Sound 023

This to me sounds like bubbles popping or water dripping from a tap. 

I started by pressing dots onto the page to create repetition. I then started adding flicks to represent a more high pitched sound. and then I filled my dip pen and let the ink drop onto the page. I had to move the pen to try and get the ink to drop faster, but it didn't really work. I also imagine the shapes to be quite bright in colour to go with the popping noise of the sound. 

 This is what the sound looks like as an image in Premier.

Sound 020

This to me is very cartoon like, like a character has set off to run or has just bumped into a wall. I also thought of a balloon when listening to this, some of the sounds sound like a balloon is being squashed and stretched in places.

I picked a bold marker pen to draw with, then I get a tick like for the low tones and a thinner line for a faster higher note. With this sound I imagine lots of squash and stretch actions.

This is what the sound looks like as an image in Premier.

Sound 018

This sound to me sounded like a washing machine or extractor fan. I imagined the sound to look wavey or have circular movements. I just let my hand move with the audio and this is the result. I kind of just imagine somthing spinning slowly and or gradually getting bigger and small as the tone gets quiet or louder in some parts. I also think of a calming colour like blue, but in a darker environment. 

Here I drew lines that I thought were either wobbling or vibration as that's what I image the sound to be doing. It's quite a constant sound so I'd animated something simple that just repeats. 

This is what the sound looks like as an image in Premier.

Sound 014

This sound again is very high pitched but is a constant noise. The sound reminded me on an alarm and I picked up red media because when you think of alarms you often think of danger. I used a fine liner, an ink pen and a crayon. The cray just looked like a child's scribble and I didn't think it represents a constant alarming sound. The pens worked good, I drew a spiral and imagined it also spinning like you see for hypnosis stuff, so I though that would work well animated with the sound. 

I think the line quality could be a lot bolder to give that overall effect of danger, I also think it would look better on a darker background to help with the same effect.

This is what the sound looks like as an image in Premier.

Sound 010

This sounded a lot like breaking glass, or something smashing. Visually I wanted it to look like quite explosive.

I dropped a thick marker pen onto the paper, like a vase had just dropped, to create that quick mark of pen hitting paper. I then though ink may work better to create some slash as it hit the page. It did look better but didn't create the look I wanted, it just dropped onto the page and the ink didn't drop in the way I would want it to with the sound. 

This is what the sound looks like as an image in Premier

Sound 008

This sound is very high pitched, so I picked a number of thin nib pens to crate a sharp look. I also picked the colours I did (red, purple and black) because even though the sounds were high pitched and the image of a thin fastly drawn thin line came to mind, the sound is strong, so I picked bold colours to represent the sound.

My drawing are very similar here, but there is some difference in the way the sound is draw. I listen to the time between each tone and started leaving gaps between my lines to represent the pauses. I also did continuous lines, taking the line up the page when the high pitched noise is played and back down and horizontal when it was quiet.  I then thought about size and did smaller lines, dots with flicks to again represent the fast high pitched tone. I also used a dip pen and ink to try and create that bold look and flick it out to create a point for the high pitched part. 

This is what the sound looks like as an image in Premier.

Norman McLaren - Visual language

Here's another way of hearing shapes that I really like as it's very unique. By drawing directly on to film, he is creating sound, then only when he puts it through a Moviola, then he can hear it. 

Oskar Fischinger - Visual language

After looking at Oskar Fischinger's work here, it influence me to work in stop motion, I enjoy woking with stop motion as it is, but after watching this I definitely knew I wanted to work in this method. Fischinger used paper he had cut into shapes and hung then with invisible wire. I can appreciate the time and effort that went into this piece, and as I'm woking with smaller sound times, I think I can accomplish something decent. 

Drawing with records - Visual language

http://vimeo.com/68768487

This is something I find quite fascinating. By attaching some apparatus to records and playing them , they create their own visual representation of what the music looks like, creating some beautiful shapes and patterns.  

Anne Douglas - Visual language

http://ontheedgeresearch.org/anne-douglas-drawing-sound-1-workshop-2/

Anne Douglas' work stood out to me because she's building up a landscape from listen to sound. She's used a one media, to create a simplest look. This makes me think about composition, she's not only drawn lines but drawn them so they create a further visual of the sounds she was listening to. The sound she could have be listening to could have been something relaxing or even the sounds of the environment she was sat in.   

No paper, no problem

On this rare ocasions when I didn't have a sketchbook handy, I felt like drawing the guy busy working, so i drew onto my cup. I liked drawing on a different textured, shaped and coloured paper to what I would usually work on. It made me want to experimant more with working on different marials which i'll hopefullt do in the futre.

One think I need to work on with my drawing is the line quality. I like drawing really sketchy, but i need to make my lines more confident I think.

Visual Language - Unfamiliar places

Wheatsheaf Inn- Burn

Hornsea

Visual Language - Unfamiliar place

Richmond, North Yorkshire

Here it was quite difficult to sit and draw the view in some places, because it was freezing! So I did quick sketches, took photos and made some notes as to what colours and material I wanted to draw in. 

For this drawing we were able to park the car up and I drew from there where it was warm I was able to draw a quite detailed pencil outline. I decided to use red and black to see how dark and dangerous colours would change what kind of feel the image gave. To me it looks quite spooky, like the town is a bit of a ghost town and has an evil look to it. 

Visual Language - A familiar place

The Roger's household 

I decided to draw the interior and exterior of a place I spent most of my Christmas, somewhere that is familiar to me. I chose to draw here because I love the old furniture within the house and the fact that it gives it character.

In my first drawing I used ink because it's a material I enjoy using and I'll use blue and gold to create tones. The gold worked well here to create the different tones within the wood furniture and the blue worked nice for outlining without it being too dark and unable for it to blend well with the gold.  

I liked that my glass is in the foreground because it shows some depth. I also tried to work with the rule of thirds, so that if we're looking at this as a storyboard, the camera can pan across to the character or zoom in towards him. 

Because this drawing took me a while to do, I decide to choose different materials for my next drawings to get the done quicker and also to see how using a different drawing materials would effect what was communicated in the drawing. 

I then moved on to drawing digitally as I also feel comfortable with this material, I drew them on my iPad so I could sit in the corner of the room and draw straight on the screen. 

The line quality on these aren't as great as hand drawing them, because I find drawing straighter lines in a quick motion not as easy as hand drawn. 
I stuck to basic line drawings for these to keep them simple and used a dark grey to keep the image looking soft.

I then decided to draw from looking out windows. I did a drawing from each floor to get a different perspective of the same view. 

I wanted to draw from a really odd point of view so I sat in the wardrobe and drew from there. The finished imaged made me think of Monsters inc where monsters would look out of the wardrobe into a bedroom. I think this image could have used some colour as it's difficult to tell what is drawn on either side. 

Zoetrope

In 1834, a man named William George invented the Zoetrope, an invention that displayed image sequences in a circular metal container, and when spun it illustrated the illusion of motion.

To interact and watch the animation you'd have to spin it to make it move and keep doing this for as long as you'd want to watch it. Today, everything is pretty much digital, we still use flips books which is similar as you flip the pages of illustrations to again, create motion. With digital animation now, we draw and using layers in photoshop for example and can export the sequence in a number of ways; as a movie which will play once through, or as a gif that will play on loop. Instead of viewing the image sequence through slots in a metal ring, we view it digitally.  

Finished Animation

This is my finished animation for OUAN405. I really enjoyed this project as it was all completely up to as as of which element we chose and how our story went.

I did have problems at the start, where my animations would not export and this slowed my down a bit. I sorted everything out after I got in contact with my tutor and ask if there was another way to export, which there was. I exported the images sequences, and I found this to be very effective as I could set the correct frame rate without it effecting my animation in any way. 

I changed my idea as I struggled to animate to a voice over, and I decided to do something simpler where no speech was needed to be animated. I used the storyboard I had created in a previous project because I really wanted to use it at some point, and I used it because it involved two elements, wind and water.

Although I have got it completed to a standard I am pretty happy with, there are parts that I and my peers said could be improved. The throw at the beginning, people don't throw like that, so in future I will use more references from videos or images of human movement, to get a more accurate movements. 

I managed my time pretty well considering I had a few days where I was struggling to export, and I've got my animation finished on time. I could mange it a bit better so that I could have spent more time doing tests to see if things worked well. Like with the throw, I planned to go back to it to make it more exaggerated but I ran out of time. 

I think I also I could have included more of the principles of animation. I had easing in with the pull back of the arm, and exaggerations in the expression of the boy's face when the plane flew by. But I know I'd like to and have to include more to improve my animation. 

To conclude, for future work, I need to do more small tests to make sure things look better if it doesn't quite work the first time. I need to plan for more of the principles of animation and to use more reference to make the movements flow better.    

Animation Audio

I went onto YouTube's audio library where you can download music for free. It was easy to find a few piece of music that I wanted for my animation as I could select what kind of mood I wanted. I choose a calming mood to go with the relaxing journey the plane is making. 

I picked 3 I thought would work the best to give off this effect:

Sunday Drive - Silent Partner

Backpacking - Silent Partner

Soul Search - Silent Partner

I like the soundtrack Backpacking the best as there is more variety in tones within the piece and itself tells a story. The other two tracks had a lot or repetition, which would work okay of the plane flying through different cites, but Backpacking starts of slow in the title and as soon as she throws the plane, the music picks up and then slows back down for a relaxing journey then picks back up when he's running after it, when there's more movement and eagerness to catch it. 

Aardman - Early bird

Early Bird is an early stop motion animated to a recording or a radio show. They've made something that could have been quite boring to listen to at such an early time in the day, into a quite humorous piece. 

I like that the radio presenter is just getting on with day to day stuff, he wakes up and immediately starts presenting. He's getting ready for the day, using equipment from around the studio to make his breakfast and I find it quite clever and funny how they put it together.  I like this piece, because it's the early style of claymation, things aren't perfectly smooth and that adds to the whole style.

Disney reference

Disney brought in actors to help them with their animations. Here they were working on Peter Pan and needed references for how a person would fly and how a small fairy would interact with a giant pair of scissors. They created the scenes and would either film or draw as the actors were performing. 

Working from observation is a great way of making your animations more realistic or to get a better idea of how things move. 

Snow White animation cel process

Early Disney animation involved hand painting on clear sheets and layering frames upon each other to create movement, this is the process of cel animation. 

Snow white was the first feature film Disney created in 1937, and cel animation was the technique used to create it. A background would be painted and used as the bottom layer. In the video above, you can see how still it is, compared to animation now where you could see trees or clouds moving. here a scene has been painted and the main focus then is on the more vibrantly painted characters. I do admire this technique as it would have been a very tedious process, but then I can compare it to now as we use layers in Photoshop to create the same kind of thing 

Interim Crit

I presented my animation to the class to receive some feedback. I obviously knew I had not completely finished because I need sound but I needed to know how I could improve my work via others feedback. 

Comments made were that audio needed to be added, but the story was still clear without it. In the running scene, it was pointed out that my character drops when running and the arm movement could flow better. They liked the fluidness of the paper plane and over all I revised positive feedback.

I am now going to add audio, and plan to have wind and ocean sounds along with a soft upbeat instrumental to go in the background. I'm going to look on a website where the music and/or sounds are copyright free, that I can use without having to ask for permission. 

Air Mail (no sound)

This is my finished animation, I need to now add sound, which I have thought about. I want some wind noises and wave audio with a calming instrumental.

Credits

After I decided on the name Air Mail, I looked at some images to help me get ideas for a font and imagery. I collected a few images and really like the stamps that are put onto letters and parcels, I know the image isn't mine, but I would have created my own if I had more time. For personal and student use I'm allowed to use this image, but if my work were to be shown at a festival or somewhere I'd need permission or like I said create my own. 

I chose the font because it looks like it was written using a typewriter and went with the black and white style I have going on. 

flying plane

I needed to make the plane look more like it was flying. I rotated and moved the plane so that it would look like it was in flight.

running

I animated my character running, but because I want this scene to go on for 4 seconds I decided to have my character running in a centre shot so that it can be a longer time on screen. I drew the character running normally, but I soon ran out of space and it only lasted a second. I'm going to make the background move to make it look like he's running forward but keeping him the the centre. 

run sequence

For the next part of my story, I have the guy running and reaching after the paper aeroplane, I looked online for some reference and came across this series of photographs of a run sequence by Eadweard Muybridge. This is a good reference for me to work from as it will help me get the leg and arm positions right. I will be drawing mine differently because I want my character to be desperately reaching for this paper plane letter.

Scene 5 and wobbly lines

When I copied over the selected area from the neck down, I couldn't get it to line up exactly. In the first gif you can clearly see that the neck line wobbles and the body moves around a lot. I tried to fix this but didn't quite manage it. The neck line isn't as wobbly, but there still is some movement and there's the same situation with the body. This is as best I can get it for now, but I'll try go back and fix it if I have time when I finish the whole 20 seconds. Currently, I'm on 12 seconds.