1 Second Animation - Week 6

I made my 1 second for next week quite early because of all the other work I have to do.
I have based this 1 second on bonfire night because it is in a few weeks. 

I did this idea because I thought that it would be fun to make and would be different than just drawing fireworks. (plus I got to eat jelly beans and skittles afterwards) I used my camera and tripod pointing downwards onto my fake granite work top, because I thought the blue background with white speckles looked like a stars in the nights sky. 

I love how this turned out and think that putting sound with it made it come together really nicely. It was simple to make and fun as well, and overall I am happy with it. I think I could have positioned some of the jelly beans a little better. However, the wriggle effect they have makes it look quite alive.

I got the sound effects free from FreeSFX.com They are a great website! really easy to use and have loads of great music and sounds which will come in handy. 

All credit goes to them at. 

http://www.freesfx.co.uk

 

1 second a week - week 5

I was lacking in inspiration this week, so I made this because it's how I felt one morning when I couldn't be bothered to stand.
I think maybe some colour would have made this look a bit better. However, I am happy with the movement in this animation even though it's quite simple.

Project 6 - Character Animation (part 1 Research) - Initial sketches.

Once I had looked into body language I started doing some initial sketches of the spesific emotions we were told to do.

This was my first sketch for rejection. I made the head face down as if sad, and the body hunched with hanging arms as if depressed and hurt from being rejected. I also think the harms being limp shows a slight loss of pride, as if hes been turned away by a girl. I also made the step look like a slow extending walk to give of a slow sulking feel to the shape.

 

This was my second sketch for happiness. Its a simple jump, but lifting her legs back in joy, and her arms held high shows exitment and happiness, also having the face and head held upwards shows pride and glee within the image, all this compined makes the pose show obvious happy emotions, in quite an exaggerated way. 

My third sketch was for boredom, the slumped shoulders and spread elbows creates a very lazy shape, with the hands holding the head up, it makes it seem like they can't even be bothered to lift their own head, which creates a very bored feel. I also think that making the head look upwards gives a bored feel because it's like they are day dreaming.

 

This sketch was for anger/irritation. I think this pose shows controlled anger more than anything else. The head pointing forwards and the high shoulders shows anger instead of confidence. The hands on the hips and spread out chest creates intimidation which shows that the character doesn't want to be bothered if they are in a temper. 

This sketch is to show tiredness, I think this pose can often get mixed up with boredom. however, there is a few subtle differences, such as the head pointing downwards as if falling asleep, the shoulders are more relaxed due to lack of energy, and one arm is supporting the head while the other relaxes on the other arm, this shows no energy and they are close to falling asleep.

I also did a number of other sketches by hand.

As well as this I went and sat in cafes and watched people and their body language, this was a big help to see how people look in real life situations. I took some pictures and drew from them.

In cafes most people look quite relaxed if not bored while they just sit and chat.

I also drew some other emotions from body language I've seen.

Anger, sadness, and shyness. I took pictures of myself and drew some of these from those picutres. 

Project 6 - Character Animation (part 1 Research)

For the beginning of this project I have been researching into basic body language, and movement. I looked at how body language can show a large amount of emotions through even the subtlest of movements and positions.

I find this topic very interesting because it can be used greatly in real life as well as in animation. Body language in real life tells us a lot about a person and how they are feeling. It can make us decide a lot of our own actions towards people and situations.

Our own body language can affect our own emotions as well as others, simply just standing tall and open can make you feel more confident as a person. A lot of tests have been made looking into body language and how it can affect moods and feelings without our conscious mind even knowing.

For this project I had to look at body language and how it's used and how I could use it in animation. Body language is a key feature in animation and is exaggerated most of the time, animators exaggerate body movements to make the emotions more realistic and believable. Sometimes this exaggeration is taken very far almost to the point of unrealistic. However, if the movements are based on real life body language it becomes a believable movement or emotion for the viewer.

To learn how to animate believable emotions and movement I need to learn how real life people move. I looked at different images of body movement to get a basic idea of shape and form.

Looking at real humans stood in positions helps to see obvious body language. This is good because in animation it would be obvious and exaggerated. However, in real life body language can be a lot more subtle. I need to look at both and get a good drawn and visual diary of all kinds of body language so I can animate emotions in lots of different ways.

 

I also looked at some gesture drawn body language which is a good help because it gives me an idea of the sketches I’m going to do for my own drawn research.

I think the gesture drawing is good because you can look at the different body shapes and initial poses which create body language.

The best form of research for body language is watching people in real life. It's good to sit and watch people to see all of the subtle movements of real daily life. This kind of life is good to take quick sketches from to get the basic shapes and movements.
For the more in-depth exaggerated emotions such as anger and excitement. I will find poses of people or act out these emotions to look at how the body reflex these intense emotions with exaggerated movement.



Jan Swankmayer

Jan Swankmayer was a Czech artist and surrealist film maker. He is most famous for his bizarre dark stop motion films and surreal creepy claymation. However, he worked in a lot of different mediums and even did some famous live action films. He worked and lived in communist Czech and had to do a lot of his work underground when it was banned in 1972, because of this most of his work is based on the dark sides of communism and politics. His films have very strong meanings shown in dark sinister ways, which sometimes are quite hard to follow. 

 The Quay Brothers

The quay brothers are American animators who live currently in London. They were commissioned by Channel 4 after their work was thought to be influenced by Swankmayer. However, they had never heard of him before but still made the documentary. Only one of their films has speech and most of it is gibberish. They have a very dark depressing theme that runs though their work, a lot of it using creepy toys and dolls. There work is always very surreal with an edge of humour. Their work is also very hard to follow even though they usually have deep meanings.

 

AX1111 - Model making and introduction to life drawing, with Steve Dee

After my research was finished I started doing some initial designs for characters.

This was my first design that I did. It is a female kitchen brush, the bristles are meant to look like a skirt. This design was just practice for character design and making products look like people.

Once I had my research and a few ideas with the group we spoke about different story lines and came up with 3 main ideas. Once we had these Ideas we looked at which would be best and worked on that one the most.
We did design some characters for the other ideas just so we could look at which one would be the best. 

This ice skating ring idea. 
These ideas were for a Christmas themed idea, I like the reindeer made out of sausages. However, I think this idea would be hard to make, and not very interesting.

The superhero idea. 

For this idea I did a basic villain character, too look at what characters we would need for this idea. 

This was my villain "mr chop" I think it was pretty simple and I didn't think that the story would be very interesting because most cleaning products are portrayed as superheros. 

We decided not to do this idea.

The Halloween Idea.

This was our 3rd idea, we thought it would be a good idea to do kitchen safety instead of cleaning. We also wanted to do it for children, so we needed cute characters which the children would like. We decided to base it on Halloween because it's October and we thought it would be cute to have products wearing little Halloween costumes.
For this idea I made some character sheets. 

We might not use all of these characters, but I think we will definitely use Dr Frankinbrush.

 Once I had drawn my characters I developed them more to look at different ways I could make them look. This was the Bleach monster. I looked at what colours would look the most dangerous such as reds and yellows. I also looked at different eye shapes to decided which was the most menacing. I toyed with the idea of him having "goo" coming from his head. But I think it would have been hard to find the right material to use. |
This character was Designed and made by Frances Humphries

 This was my cheese grater character. I think he was the simplest to draw. However, it was quite difficult to develop him because he is such a simple character. I looked at different eye colours and shapes, and decided that the square shape would be the best, so it would be easier to make.
This character was designed by Frances Humphries and made by Matthew Harrison.

 Mr Frankin brush was my main character to develop. I had to think about the making quite a lot while developing this character because I had to use a real brush which meant I was quite restricted. I looked at different colours and hairs, which if I changed the hair colours I'd paint the bristles. I think the most important part about this character is his mouth. Even though I looked at the eyes a lot, I decided I would give him normal "googly" eyes to had a bit of cuteness in. Because of this I had to focus on his mouth so that his changing expressions where clear.
This character was designed and made by Frances Humphries

This was just a title page for the Halloween idea. It's got the first simple story board on it. We later developed this storyboard more in-depth.
Designed/Drawn by Frances Humphries
Storyboard written by Frances Humphries, Matthew Harrison and Gemma Rickers.

The first model I made was Dr Frankinbrush, We bought a normal dish brush, and then I glued gloogly eyes onto the top of it, and the sequin to create the made scientist look. We also made different shaped mouths out of felt which we could change so that we could lip sync it. I think this worked really well even though we only did 4 different mouth shapes I think it lip sync well and looked really good.

We used felt, pipe cleaners and googly eyes on a lot of the characters to give it a kind of theme. Only Dr Frankinbrush and Count Spatula had different mouth shapes.
We painted a large back bored as the set using normal paints. I designed and drew the image on the background using the original Frankenstein film sets as inspiration. Me and Gemma then painted all of the set in dark dingy and spooky colours.

Once the set was finished I made the monster Bleach. I used a normal bleach bottle and stuck on simple paper eyes. I then took the labels off and drew my own spooky labels with a stitched together theme. I also used green and red colours to show bright dangerous colours. I also used two drawing pins stuck into the neck to look like bolts. The last think we did to the Bleach was cut the mouth out so we could have him spewing bleach all over.

The other model I made was the spider sponge which is a small background character but is quite cute. I made him by cutting a washing up sponge in half and threading black pipe cleaners through it as legs. I then threaded string though so he would hang as if on a web, I think this was quite effective. The last thing I did was stick on googly eyes. I think it looks very cute.

The set we made was pretty simple, we just painted a back board and then made 2 electricity conductors out of card and ping pong balls. These were simple to make and looked quite effective. The only other prop we used is the red curtain which we just made out of cloth. 

All 3 of us worked together on the animating, Matthew Harrison set up the lighting and controlled the camera while me and Gemmer Rickers moved the characters, we decided that we would move certain characters each, I controlled the Bleach, Forks and Cheesegrator Ghost. This worked really well because we could keep track of what had been moved and what needed moving. 

Once the animating was done all of the pictures needed putting together and the whole film editing. Me and Gemma Rickers used Sony Vegas pro 10 and 12 to edit the animation. Gemma did the lip syncs for count spatula at the beginning and end. While I pieced the frames together in the middle adding effects and timings. Matthew Harrison found the background music and sounds effects which I then added in at the rigtht times. Gemma recorded and edited the voice audio and then added it to the film in the correct places and times to the lip sync. The last thing I did was mask the cheese grator at the end so he could pop on screen with count spatula. I think the masking looks quite good and runs smoothly.

I really liked working with Matthew Harrison and Gemma Rickers. I think we worked as a team really well and developed our ideas together in interesting ways and then helped each other with what ever we needed. I think the animation as turned out well because of the effort everyone in the team put in. I enjoy working in a team because you can discus ideas and opinions so the work can be made better though critical development. 

In conclusion. I think that this project has gone really well and the animation has turned out great, I'm very happy with it. 

1 second animation week 4

This is the 1 second I did for week 4. I chose to do a bird because I've never animated a bird before, and thought I would try something new. I also thought i would use some perspective in this animation.

I like how the perspective works and I think it looks quite good. However, I think the flap in the wings could have been made slightly better. Maybe with more frames and better positionings it would have looked better.

I looked at this picture for help, I think that i followed it quite well, but maybe it would have looked better with the feathers, but I thought for my first try I would just do the basic movements.

Project 5 - Photography.

Action.

This picture represents action through movement.The added blur effect on the ball adds speed to the movement as the ball flies through the air. Matt's face also helps with the action theme, because the tense fear in his face shows something bad could happen as the ball hits him.

Autumn. 

This is my favorite photo out of all the pictures I have taken because of how pretty the leaves look with rain on them. I think this picture works really well with autumn because the main focus of the image is an acorn which are known to be autumn seeds. I think using the aperture setting on this picture makes it look a lot more effective, because the acorn and leaves stand out from the blurred background.

Busy.

I think this picture is a little uninspiring. However, I like how the light has hit the 'no entry' sign and given it a very bright colour. This picture is showing people walking around the town center on a busy afternoon. The pavements are full so people are even walking on the road.

 

Comedy.

I think I found comedy to be one of the harder themes, because it's hard to make laughter from nothing. However, I think that this picture is quite funny, because its a large smiley face ball with a coat on balanced on a traffic cone. While thinking of things to do this came about and I found this hilarious at the time. But maybe it's a 'you had to be there' kind of thing.

 

 Curious.

This is a picture of my mum looking into an old worn out tree through a large hole, I think this shows curiosity quite well because looking through gaps and finding new interesting places is all a part of being curious about your surroundings.

 

Film Noir

I had to research into film noir and look at all the different images which already existed. Film noir is very much black and white, with harsh lighting, strong shadows, and pretty woman. Another thing I noticed about film noir, everyone either smokes or has a gun, due to the fact I couldn't get my hands on a gun, I decided to use a cigarette as a prop in this picture. Because we couldn't edit the pictures in anyway I couldn't make them high contrast or black and white, so instead I found a bright light and asked my friend to stand close to a wall so that I could get a strong shadow and a good light contrast in the image.

 

Happy 

I took this picture simply because looking at it makes me happy. I think the idea of making faces with food or other items is a nice idea and makes cute pictures. I like how the orange kind of gives it overly happy eyes. 

 

Horror

I like this picture because I think it is quite spooky, and the metal railings and massive lock make it look quite scary. I think the light contrasts in this work well in this picture because it makes it look quite creepy, the apprature also makes this image look quite scary.

 

Pulp Fiction

This is a picture of an iron statue near my house, I think it works with pulp fiction because it is creepy and weird, and doesn't look like a normal image of a man. I also think the angle of this picture adds a certain odd feel to the picture, and the aperture has blurred the other creepy man in the background too creating a nice overlapping look.

Quiet

This is a picture of an empty basket ball court, I think this shows quite really well because of how desolate the court is, a large empty space where lots of people should gather, but instead there is no one around and it gives the court and eerie quiet feel.

Sad.

I think is image conveys saddens really well because the snow drop is rotting away and drooping as if crying. I also think the background works with this image, even though it is blurred out you can see the unnatural concrete and buildings surrounding the dieing nature, which in itself is quite a sad thought.

Storm.

For this picture I decided to do something different, I tried taking pictures of the rain. However, I don't think it showed a storm very well. So instead I decided to do this, which is meant to be a storm in a tea cup. I used a spoon to spin the tea to create a tornado in the liquid to symbolize a "storm in a tea cup" which is a famous saying about having a fight over nothing important.

Tension

I also found tension quite hard to portray in photographs, I think this was the best one. We tried to get Matt to look like he was extremely tense about something, and he was trying to release that tension through alcohol.

Overall, I think this project was surprisingly difficult. Using my camera was the easy part, having to think up ideas and unique interesting ways of showing things was very hard. Even though it was hard with some of the themes I managed to get at least 1 picture for all of them, and I really enjoyed the project and thought it was a good project because it really made you think and use your head to come up with new ideas.