Story Board - draft 1

 Early draft of my storyboard. The 12 shots on the board aren't individual shots as it would only take up 1 second of footage. This is the brief idea if how i want my story to flow. The which i was given is Nortec Collective and its rather bouncy and happy, there is a trombone which comes in near the start of the music and it is over looped with a slight hip hop beat. My entail thoughts of making this animation was to make my film quite humours and a little bit cheeky. So i have created this story of a hippo finding love. The reason for the hippo is that it imitates the trombone as an instrument, the sound is very big deep and has a chubby feel to it and an animal which could imitates this would big rather large and chubby just like an hippo or elephant but I choose hippo as though it would create a funnier character. The basic story line is that it's set in Africa near an oasis which the animals go done to get water and revitalize them self's. A young male hippo comes onto the scene around 25 seconds into the music and he see's a strapping young female hippo and when the music starts to drop to the beat the male bounces over to the oasis where the female is feeling happy cheerful. He eventually catches the eye of the female hippo and they both are faltered by one another and fall in love. The cheeky side to the story is the young hippo at the end of the scene, the camera will be a close up on his face and he raises his eye brows in a seductive way to show the audience that he might get lucky, also this leaves the audience in suspense of what could happen plus can be interpreted in various ways, in all a 'cheeky chappy'.

After careful consideration and group talks i have decided that this idea won't be taken through to the final development stages. The reason for this is that I want a animation which is going to really stand out and be quirky and funny plus an element of abstract thinking and this idea is rather simple and slightly predictable. I want a design which will have an element of surprise. Also because this idea is heavily based on character development and key facial features of the hippo's it will become too complex within the drawings to complete in the time period given and not undermining my own drawing stills but I haven't quite got the skills under the pencil and paper to pull off exceedingly well drawn characters which imitate what the ideas in my head look like.

 Early development into my first idea of the hippo which finds love in South Africa. Basic drawings of how i would want the characters to look.

More work in the sketch book, looking at movement of the hippo and the scene setting.

After Effects - Movie promo

This is my exported movie I did in 'After Effects' workshop. I manipulated the timing of my clip and reversed time and slowed parts down. Very rough and basic but was just experimenting with the program.

                        

Workshop - Aftereffects

I suppose this style of work can be related to flipbook animation as it is all raw primary drawings and methods, no digital aided design has been masked over it just her raw talent and a camera to capture it all. In this workshop we were shown by one of our tutors how to master the skills to create a moving imagery movie in the computer aided design 'After Effects' This was a great workshop as many of us have never used this program before and it was a great opportunity to learn how to use it. We went through the basics starting with simple images and getting them to move across the page and finally went onto image sequences and making a short movie clip. I'm going to create my animation on this program as it gives at of freedom to do what ever I wanted in the program but obviously with out the tuition I wouldn't be able to do so. 

I have done sceen shots from the computer to show the steps in which i took to learn and get my haed around the program.

We started in Photoshop with an image and used different methods of selecting parts of  images.

We then took the selected parts of the images and processed them into After Effects.

Various steps in which we took to develop the images to start moving. We set the frame rate at 12 frames per second

After playing around with images edited from Photoshop we imported a jpeg sequence labelled 1,2.3 etc. Once imported it gave us a short composition in the project page and then dragged into the composition area. This automatically played all the images one by one in a sequence at a fast rate so that it was seen as a moving image. This short movie we started to create was set at 12 frames per second again.

After importing the sequence we played around with the timing and key frames so that we could change the sequence to either speed up, slow down, reverse etc. After doing this we exported the composition into a movie format. I choose a Quick Time file.

Animation which relate to my chosen 3 words.

After choosing my three words i started to look and research various animation clips which show the three actions and emotions through moving image. I want my design to be funny and have an element of abstract which also relates to quirky. I don't want to take a too serious approach to my animation keep it light hearted and no messages really behind in.

This clip I found really shows off an abstract way of thinking and very creative. Different footballs fight and ganging up so that they get to be the match ball for the game. A clever idea and unusual which I like. 

Kseniya Simonova

A very inspiring Artist which i came across before this assignment. Simonova has such skilful hands she uses sand and a white box and draws images which her hands. She tells stories through her imagery. The clips aren't at a set frame rate she just goes as fast as she can but once you watch it can be seen as moving imagery and you can capture what she is explaining and see the story flow. A very creative way of designing careful hands and lots! of practice.

See for your self how the story is shown through her creative imagery.

I suppose this style of work can be related to flipbook animation as it is all raw primary drawings and methods, no digital aided design has been masked over it just her raw talent and a camera to capture it all. 

3 Choosen Words

We were told in our brief to consider three words which would best describe the piece of music given to us. This was asked because it will help the development of our ideas come along better and more clear as will indicate what we were thinking about the music and hopefully the words will for trait in the animation design process.

My Choosen 3 words:

• Bouncy
• Quirky
• Humorous 

 There were many words which I though described the music but I couldn't have them all so I picked the 3 words above which best worked to go with my music and the words which I thought I could create the best moving imagery too.



Playful                       Bouncing              
Happy                       Entertainment
cheerful                    Trombone
soft                             Fun
old                              Swinging
hip hop                     Beach
Sea side                   Holiday
Family                       Friendship
Banter                      Laughter
Humour                   Bulling


Various words which associate with my music :

Group work - 3 points! that will do

3points - our own animation clip. The scene is shooting a basketball through the hoop. We were asked to design 36 separate images showing a sequence. The 36 scenes will provide a 3 second film as 12 frames per second. This is done so that the image is seen as moving. I worked on this task with a fellow designer Jay Lodge. This design process is similar to flipbooks. Remember as a child drawing stick men dancing or fight on sticky notes and then flicking through them so that it looks like the little men are moving, this is pretty much the same but slightly more advanced programs evolved and more care taken on the drawing side. Once we had the scenes done we had to process the single images into C.A.D program (aftereffects) so that we could make a short movie clip and that it looked like our basketball was actually moving and shots the hoop.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSZ_Xd1MlWU&feature=player_embedded

Unfortunately there has been a technical fault when uploading our film so above is the URL of the video on YouTube.

My Music for animation - Babel Nortec Collective

This is piece of music which I have to create the animation too. The song is Nortec Collective and is from a hard hitting film 'Babel'. The music is a rather fun jumping/bouncing track. There is laughter and humour within the music and I'm looking forward to start designing ideas based around the themes in which the music makes me feel.

Flipbook animation

This is another way of creating moving imagery. The idea is to draw many images on separate pages and line them up perfectly on each page then once done flick through the pages at a rate in which the images appear to be moving. If done correctly I can look very impressive just like the examples below. Also this process of drawing the images can be used with a different method by importing into a computer aided designer program. In these examples it shows the primary method and is all hand made and hasn't been digitally played with. I really like this idea of designing an animation but I don't reckon it will be my choice of design as I'm looking at a more cartoon style of drawing and humorous instead of a very considered style of drawings like these examples.

 This clip is very clever way of putting a design together into a moving image. Fast hands and a good memory is required for this style of imagery. One mistake will have to start again. The music works really well with this design and urban feel of a par core street act. The clip

has been synced very well together.

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This is a really good example of a flipbook and how it works. It shows the frame rate and the speed in which we can see the images as moving and see it as a short movie clip. Towards the end it gets really fast and the images all come together and just looks like it has been videoed because them movements are so fluent.

Animation - TV

Animation has been around in films and television for a very long time. It is a simpler way of sticking to a budget for a movie or a broadcast as there isn't any requirements for paying actors/actresses. Animation in films and general TV broadcast has always been a very good way to present an idea or show emotions and it is highly controllable just by a little editing. Some of the main examples of this would be Disney films and Pixar. These films have been made for young viewers mainly children as the rating of the films are either a 'U' or 'PG'. All these motion graphics use a much higher frame rate than which I'm going to use. My animation is going to be set at 12 frames per second so it shall be seen as moving but won't be a fluent as some of Disney films and Pixar animations. There frame rate is around 25-40 per second. 

A very distinctive memory of my childhood. The  animated film- Toy Story. One of the biggest hitting animated films of all time.

The opening credit's to Pixar is a great example of the study of animation. Even though it's very simple it has been carefully considered. The lamp is imitating a pet dog. As the movements of the lamp and how its characteristics shine through the fluent movements. This is also a great example corporate identity as soon as you see the lamp shuffling along it is recognised as Pixar.

A lot more modern animated comedy series 'family guy' Using outrageous comedy with animated characters has a better effect and more impact than if the characters were real actors as the scenes can be digitally edited to exactly how the screen producer wants it to be so more impact through the directors thoughts can be shown through the animation. This is modern entertainment show and mainly watched by teenagers and older people.

This example I posted is to show how technology has progressed and the methods used has changed animation. This very early Simpsons episode shows how rough and jumpy animation use to be and it seen as cell drawings. Also can be seen as the effects that money has to an animation. The very early Simpsons didn't have a great deal in a money budget so the quality has slipped but its clear in today episodes how much works goes into the series and how the quality has changed dramatically

Workshop - Stop Motion

A very hard but exciting technique to grasp. Stop Motion takes a lot patients and time. We basically were shown the program in which we could create a stop motion design, this was called istopmotion. The idea is to get subjects to shoot and then take a picture of the position of where you want the subject then to get it moving you have to move the image in very small steps and keep taking photographs of every movement. This is why it can be very time consuming but can look great once done. For the workshop we worked in pairs so that we could get a brief introduction of how to use the equipment and how to set up a scene.

 

This is our try out of stop motion. Very basic and rough no flowing story just idea's and getting to grips with the software.

Just wow, just wow. How much i would like to say this is my own creation of stop motion but sadly i can't. This song which i came across uses create stop motion methods, clearly a very talented group of people have designed this piece. I love how it just flows and really look's like one whole moving film, even though it has just been shot on scene on the bed.

Man Ray

The main man himself. This is one of his early short films using various methods of photography and film making. There is a lot of rayograms in the clip and some of the imagery I've tried to recreate in my own rayograms. The influence is where the field of daisy's come up and I've design a rayogram just like his. I really like how Man Ray uses his imagery to fit with the music. The music is very trippy and minimal and the images relate to it. This is classed as animation because majority of the images are still shots which have been put together to make a moving imagery film by using around 20 frames per second the image can be interpreted into our minds as moving and therefore becomes a short film which we can see.

Workshop - Rayograms

We had a basic introduction into old photography techniques. This method is rayograms invented by Man Ray him self. The images come out with a negative look and contrasting colour of black and white. The process is by taking light sensitive paper and magnifying a light source onto the images for a certain time period (lighter the colours and focus less time) These are my own rayograms using different objects and materials placed on the paper to create various different images and sceptical designs. Quite a few of my images were inspired by previous work from Man Ray. This style is used in many old short movies mainly in old French films, very early production and early film making.  

Man Ray inspired imagery from one of his films. I used loose tobacco spread across the light sensitive paper. I put the light on this image for 21 seconds. The reason for this was that it gave darker black areas and focused on the details of the tobacco.

Same idea as before, just experimenting with different timing for the light source to be focused on the paper. The bottom image i made by waving my hands across the page in 5 second intervals

Bubble wrap gives a great texture and a Man Ray feel. Shot this image with the light for about 12 seconds. This gave me a lighter tone.

Same bubble wrap but placed a pair of in-ear head phones underneath the wrap the wire gave a nice effect almost looks like an x-ray.

Before starting the rayograms i had to do testers to see how long i should leave the light on the paper for. This tester shows that i left the light on too long.

These two strip testers really helped and showed that i should leave the light on for about 20 seconds if not longer as the this time gave me clear detail and good bold colour.

Playing around with different objects seeing what could be created.

I really like this image, i moved my hands around the paper and different hights this gave me great depth within the photo. Also looks similar to x-ray shots.

More experimental work with the rayograms some creative imagery can be created uising this method of Man Ray's

Animation which in inspires - old and new

After been given the brief i started to research into animation i have seen before and techniques which other designers have done. We have been told that for us to understand and see images move as in a film the standard amount of images per second has to be 12, therefore anything before this is seen as separate images and not as moving images which correspond to a film and through this process a story and be told.  I came across quite a lot of unique animations this gave me a better understanding of how to create my own film and the hard work which will be pumped into the assignment.  

This video i came across when researching is an illustrated story of peoples lives, the clip has been made by drawing on which i believe is a whiteboard the hand is drawing in the clip and by speeding up the drawing digitally a film is starting to take place and we can see this as a story by interpreting as moving image.

This is crazy! alot of work and public space. This video is using around 30 shots per second. I really like how the story comes togther flows from one thing to another mad ideas and a very creative spark.

PRINT TO PIXEL - new assingment 21/03/11

Starting the new assignment Print to Pixel. The brief was handed out and we have to design/create a moving image movie clip lasting for 30 seconds. The film has to correspond to the music which we were given. There were 10 music selections and they were given out to separate groups. My music is Babel - Nortec Collective. We will have various workshops to master and design methods in which to create our short films. These methods will consist of ; stop motion, rayograms flipbook and general animation. The piece must be animated therefore hand drawn but can consist of digital arts. A mixture of these methods will make me achieve and succeed to full fill the brief.