Animation Assignment 2

Animation Ideas

For my assignment I have been asked to create a short animation that is at least 30 seconds long using a animation technique to create it and show off, these animation techniques include Stop-frame animation, Time-lapse, Cut out and model animation, Pixilation. My idea is going to be using plasticine and cut out animation this will involve pixilation and I will be doing a parody of a movie scene from "Taken" a R-rated action movie, my animation is mainly for comedy aspects the main goal is for it to be funny. My backup idea is very similar it still is from the film "Taken" however the plot of my animation is different its less of a joke and more of a re-enactment of the movie in an animation. Here is an example of a stop frame animation made with plasticine that I thought was successful... 

I think that this animation is successful in its aspects, because it appears like the person who created it took a lot of time for each frame and the movements is extremely smooth they are little to no jerky movements created by the animation, so they must of moved the objects ever so slightly during its creation this requires a large amount of time and patience to create this means he could then use a good high frame rate to help the video to become smoother, this helps to show with patience and achieve the precision of the movements how smooth, lifelike and effective the movements can be when achieved at a high precision level. Another thing that is effective in this animation is the emotions the animation achieve with the help of the visuals and the most important thing the music it creates lots of interesting emotions some quite light hearted and funny and others quite upsetting and dark. I think it gets its audience to experience these emotions successfully due to the visuals and music. This animation will help me think when adjusting the characters/models in the animation as it will help me to adjust much less and have more patience, so the end result is much more effective giving my animation a better visual aid.

This animation uses the same idea in stop-frame animation it is still taking several photos and moving the characters slightly, however it's done with Lego instead of plasticine both are good in different aspects Lego gives you an easier platform to work with characters are all the same shape and size and it is easier to set backgrounds however for capability Lego is very limited compared to plasticine which has endless things you can create and manipulate with. The animation shown above is successful due to the camera work, there are lots of different frame and composition in this short animation which makes it more cinematic and more enjoyable to watch, also the music makes the animation very light hearted and enjoyable to watch. This is also a backup idea I have for my animation.

Time lapse animation is probably the most simple process yet the most time consuming, this requires to leave the camera film a single shot for a long time and the footage is really sped up so that processes that normally happen over a long period of time will be shortened down into a short clip this can give some very interesting viewing results, however I have decided I will not be using this technique for my animation as it is just way too time consuming and without a long amount of time the animation will not be effective so I will be sticking with pixilation as it is less time consuming.

I have now created a storyboard that tells the full plot of my animation, its shows 6 slides of each scene fairly basically so I have a basic idea of the plot synopsis.

I have now finished my animation and I stuck to my main idea/plot, and also used a Lego model as well as Plasticine as I thought the Lego model I created that you can see in the film would be too difficult to create out of Plasticine, so I made the model which was supposed to represent a hovercraft type of vehicle and I used black Plasticine to make it look like the model was hovering, my backgrounds I collected from google images, I got backgrounds but also floors/grounds to try and get certain scenes look like it's an actual building, for some movement I would shift the character at different rates between shots to make certain movements faster or slower and smoother, for example at an action scene I would need less pictures meaning more jerky movements to speed up the action as being too slow would make it a bit unnatural looking. The camera I used the HUE animation studio camera to shoot my animation with, these were effective to use for my animation as it has a long thin flexible neck that is very easy and quick to adjust to change the frame/composition of the shot. For software to capture the animation I used Istopmotion 3, this software allowed me to capture my animation easily by taking pictures whenever I needed them by hitting the spacebar, this software was easy to use and if there was any mistakes I made I could easily delete any shots that were not right.

In Post editing after my animation I used premiere pro a high end editing software, I removed any unnecessary cuts that I did not notice before, The main thing I was trying to achieve in editing was applying the music and audio to the animation, meaning some dialogue was added and a series of different types of sound effects and background music, an example of some music I used was "Far Cry Blood Dragon Theme" for the fight scene as this really complemented the scene well making it quite upbeat and matching the pace of the action, another way I edited this fight scene was when I colour graded it, I gave the fight scene a blue/teal colour effect to it, to signify the action scene making it look more gritty and much more effective the colour almost seemed to match the overall theme of the scene with the music as well, it also made it look almost dreamlike which was a unique look it gave to it. An example of sound effects that I added was the car crash sound and the punch noises, this alerted you when someone was hit making it more significant and also adding some humour as it is a really cartoon sound effect. The dialogue I collected from YouTube and applied it to my footage by lengthening or shortening the shot of my character to match the duration of the dialogue, For the driving scene I wanted to add some sort of theme to the journey to make it a bit more interesting so I added the song "drive" by "the cars" to the short scene as it is a classic and is pretty well-known, I thought this was perfect as the song matches well to the scene as it is a driving scene and the song is "drive". To end my animation I used the "final fantasy 7 battle won theme", as the short theme is fairly well-known and very recognisable, this also makes the audience know that the character in the animation has completed the thing he was set out to do.

https://vimeo.com/201726840

Here is my final completed animation that I have created through stop motion.