Wednesday 3 June 2015

Task 4: Evaluation

My target audience at the end of my animation sequence were slightly disappointed and confused because they didn't know what was the reason behind the storyline.

I didn't use Stop-motion to it's potential because I didn't get enough shots to make my edit 25 frames per second which made the whole video fall apart.

I didn't manage to target my specified audience with my animation because as I said before I didn't use as much frames as it required which left the animation without a plot, so when my target audience got to watch it they didn't know it was about 'bullying'.

I think that the idea behind the animation is what me and my group did well, it was a nice constructed concept but we rushed the whole thing which made it a really bad project. For the next time I will make sure we take our time on the animation, think about every single detail so our target audience actually knows what's going on within the final product, and most importantly have 25 frames per second.

Wednesday 20 May 2015

Task 1a

Animation 1:                                           Wallace and Gromit


                         
                                       
This animation was created using the stop-motion technique which basically consists of a camera being repeatedly stopped and started to give the animated figures the impression of movement. Since all the characters in Wallace and Gromit are made out of plasticine they are endlessly pose able which means there are no limitations to the imagination which can be introduced into this animation. The downsides to this animation technique is that it's very slow and time consumable which can be irritating when you don't get the results which you are trying to achieve, and this can cause you to have to start all over again. Projects like this can take as much as 2 months just to get 1 episode; roughly about 20-30 minutes of footage. Stop motion is made with pictures which means there's no sound, so you'll have to add the sound yourself for example voice overs when the characters are trying to communicate with each other which only adds to the production time.



Animation 2:                                                3 Little Pigs





Above is an example of a cut-out animation and is a unique technique for producing animations using flat characters, props and backgrounds cut from materials such as paper, card, stiff fabric, or even photographs. This is a good animation technique to use because it's simple and easy to make a interesting short video as long as you have a good imagination, as for the video I believe it was well made and it shows how creative short videos like this can get with just a simple idea. The downside of this technique is that you can get several paper cuts.




Animation 3:                                                Brain Divided 




Brain divided is a short CGI animated film, with the CGI animation you can create some fantastic effects which are less costly than doing them yourself physically. You're able to imitate people in real life into a CGI animation with pin point perfection. A major let down within this animation is the fact that it is very complicated and needs loads of practise because of the style the animation is made.

Wednesday 3 December 2014

Task 1b:   Techniques


Zoetrope

Zoetrope is a technique along with a few others of pre-cinema animation devices that produce an illusion of motion by displaying a sequence of drawings or photographs showing progressive phases of the same motion.

A Zoetrope is a cylinder with slits cut vertically in the sides, while on the inside of the cylinder there is a band of images from a set of sequenced pictures. As the cylinder spins, whoever looks in trough the slits will see the pictures moving across. The slits keep the pictures from blurring together, and the person sees a rapid succession of images, making an illusion of motion.

Since the late 20th century, devices which work on similar principles have been made, named analogously as linear zoetropes and 3D zoetropes, which makes the traditional zoetropes referred to as "cylindrical zoetropes".

Below is a picture of a Zoetrope, showing exactly what one looks like and also what goes inside the cylinder which in this case is a picture of a lion jumping through some sort of box and then landing on the horse and as it spins you can see the lion jumping and landing on the horse.


Victorian Zoetrope


Kinetoscope

The Kinetoscope is an early motion-picture device, which viewers would be able to watch movies through a peephole but only one person at a time.

On the left you will see a picture of what a Kinetoscope looked like, and also you can see the struggle that people had when they wanted to watch a movie since they would have to stand up and stay in the same position throughout the whole thing.

The main idea for the creation of the Kinetoscope came from  Thomas Edison in 1888 and one year later it was largely developed by his employee William Kennedy Laurie Dickson until 1892.

The Kinetoscope premiered at the Brooklyn institute of Arts and Sciences on May 9th, 1893. The first publicly shown film was the 'Blacksmith scene'.

Flip book

A flip book is a book with a series of pictures that changes gradually so as you turn the pages rapidly the pictures appear to animate by simulating motion. 


Above is a video which was made by a Cristiano Ronaldo fan in drawing with real past footage of Ronaldos career at Manchester United and his current club Real Madrid. The flip book includes Ronaldo scoring a free kick and getting past the oppositions players by taking them on.

The first flip book appeared in 1868, it was under the name Kineograph (moving picture). It was the first form of animation to employ a linear sequence of images rather than circular.




Cel animation


    
In this Animator vs Animation video, the animator starts by creating his own cel animation in Adobe Fireworks, he starts by drawing a stickman in one spot, and then he carries on drawing the same one again but 3cm to the left and changes the position of his hands and legs to create an illusion of movement. As the Animator leaves the room, the Animation comes to life and starts causing mayhem around the computer screen.

Cel animation also known as classical animation, traditioal animation or hand-drawn animation is a technique where each frame is drawn by hand. Cel animation was the dominant form of animation in cinema until the introduction of computer animation. In cel animations the characters are usually drawn on cells and laid over a static background drawing, by doing this it reduces the number of times an image has to be redrawn.  


Rotoscoping

  

I have chosen this video as an example because it has a range of frames and it's well animated. The opening scene is in a toilet, where you see a teenager looking in the mirror as he is shaking, he opens up the cabinet and starts looking through his pills only to find he ran out. The next scene is him sitting in the living room and turning on the tv, but none of the channels are working. His condition starts getting worse due to the lack of pills, as the phone starts ringing he grabs it along with the alarm which is also going off and puts it inside the oven and turns it on; he runs outside and it ends after the explosion which is repsented by the white noise.

Rotoscoping can either be done by hand or digitally, when it's done digitally it's quicker to complete the project you're trying to finish. Rotoscoping is simply the act of isolating an image from a video and removing/isolating them from the background. When making a Rotoscoping sequence digitally there are programs which you can dowload to help you for example Adobe After Effects CS5 has tools like the Roto brush which basically allows you to draw an outline around the image you want and also the stuff you don't want.   



         Drawn on film


In this video,  a tutorial is shown of how drawn on film is carried out, the animator starts with a blank film stock and puts it on a light beam and starts drawing a cat head for his first scene. He then puts another blank film stock above the one he drew the cat face on and he basically traces the face once again and adds a small adjustment by making him blink in the second scene. He then goes onto make other scenes until his animation is complete.

Drawn on film is directly drawn on the film reel using a number of tools, techniques and methods. The annimator does this by laying the film reel across his working surface and fixes it into place, he then works on his project frame to frame to create his image on each individual frame adjusting it wit each sequential frame to show progression of motion. This animation requires a great deal of precision and talent.


Digital applications


This CGI (computer generated image) is about a hairdressers, and this woman who wants to get a haircut but her husband doesn't want her to get just any haircut and while his wife is choosing what to get, her husband brings out an old photo of how her used to be so that the hairdresser knows what haircut to give his wife.

  



Claymation

Clay animation is basically another form of stop motion animation. Every animated piece, character or background, is deformable which means that it is made of a malleable substance which is usually plasticine clay.




Animators


Walt Disney

Walt Disney most commonly known as Disney is one of the biggest multinational company, they are known around the world for their kids TV channels, movies, and attraction parks located in Paris, France and Florida, USA.