Applied Production Diary - (24/4/17 - 30/4/17)

This week we set up our animation ready to animate! I have been waiting over the Easter break to come back and get this animation on to a good start to seeing it all come together was really great.

We did have a lot of problems with equipment, where the camera had the wrong lens, the other lens kept erroring and we could only find a portable battery to use for the camera, not great for stop-motion. However, I dealt with all of these problems and decided to take the battery home at the weekend so that I could fully charge it and when we come in on the Tuesday we can straight away start animating.

Little Louie on set!

Then we saw how the Louie and Marie looked...

I am so happy with how this production has turned out and I am so excited to start animating!

I also decided to do an animation test with the first scene we will be animating, which is the digger scene. This basically helps us see what the set look like and how it the final product will look. I found it really easy to animate these little diggers and I feel like using toys was the best option rather than making the diggers ourselves.

Next week our plans are to go in on Tuesday and get all the digger scenes sorted and carry on animating!

Summative Evaluation

Project Report - Responsive

Presentation Boards - Individual Practice

Presentation Boards - Thirsty Planet - Collaborative Practice

MAGIC - Animating and Submission

Today I animated my Magic animation! It only took one full day as I had good planning and a storyboard/animatic to go off. I started by animating all the wide shot scenes and then finished by shooting the close ups.





I also made up my own set by using one of the stages and taping black card to it to create a blank background. I found this was the quickest and most effective way to get a clean background for my animation as I didn't have an actual set. I also used magnets to keep my character stable and so he would be able to do the jump scene! The main thing I found difficult within filming this animation was the camera would only focus on one point in the scene and this made the piece of cheese not be as clear as it could have been. I tried to mess around with the focal point on the camera, but as soon as I plugged it into dragonframe the focus would change. I'm not sure if this was down to the camera or dragonframe but it made a lot shots hard to frame. Another problem I faced was that by using the magnets the puppet's feet liked to jump around a lot and this was quite annoying as I had to try and find the exact place it last was using onion skins. I feel the only way to get round this would be to keep adjusting the magnets instead of forgetting about them.



I found that the animating went really well and next I edited it all together. I decided to use an ambient sound in the background of my animation to give the sound some texture and I use kitten noises for the cat to make it seem cuter. I also used foley mouse sounds every time it would come on screen to establish what it was in case it wasn't as clear. Below is my final animation!


Just Like Magic from Stacy Straub on Vimeo.

I'm really pleased with how this animation turned out and I am starting to see myself improving with my quality of animation! I feel that stop-motion really is where my skills lie and I am going to keep growing with it.

MAGIC - Animatic

Here is the quick animatic I came up with for this brief. I kept it really simple just so that I could get an idea of the timings I needed for when I came to animate and my final animation will be longer as I will add titles at the start and end. 

MAGIC - Creating Puppets

Creating the puppets was something I chose to focus on as it is something that I want to practice and I decided to make the cat and mouse out of felt because I used it in a previous project and the puppet turned out really nicely. In my previous responsive briefs I used digital, so I felt it was more beneficial to create a challenging animation for my last brief including the build of a puppet.

First I began by measuring our the wire, using my puppet plan.

Then I put the armature together.

I then used masking tape to secure parts of the armature and bulk out the arms and legs so that they bent in the right place.

 

Next I glued sponge all over the armature.

All sponged up!

Then I began felting.

Basic layer before little details were put on, and after this I also glued on some eyes and decided to add a little moon on Cleo's forehead to keep in with the theme of magic.

AND... here is the final puppet!

Overall, I think my little puppet turned out well! I really like how cute he looks and I feel that he didn't really need a hat or costume in the end and this would have just complicated the animation, especially with the little time I have left with all my deadlines coming up. The only criticism I have with the puppet is that I should have made the tail longer, I feel like it's a bit short and stumpy, but this is simply a learning curve and I am still learning how to build puppets. I had never made a puppet with a tail before, so I didn't know how long to make the wire but we live and learn! 

Finally, this is a really quick few images of the mouse being made, which was really simple.

And the cheese will just be a little blob of yellow plasticine, which I'm not too worried about right now, as long as the main two puppets are ready to animate!

MAGIC - Moodboards, Designs and Storyboarding

To start the creative juices flowing for this brief I began by creating some moodboard, as I normally do, this was from a spider diagram I did basically thinking about the different ideas I wanted to explore.


I settled on the idea of a cat and mouse, where the cat is stirring a cauldron and then the mouse runs by, distracts the cat and it chases it off screen leaving the cauldron to bubble over. It's not the simplest of ideas, however I am going to figure out a way to make it more simple whether this be to buy a mini cauldron or to use a very plain set and props.










Here are my moodboards.

From these moodboards I started to come up with character designs for my main character the cat, and his name is Cleo. I didn't want to go to far into detail with the character designs as it is going to be a puppet so the main things that matter are the fur detailing and his colour. This is because I'm still new to making puppets so I can't guarantee that the final puppet will look exactly like my design on paper.

This was an initial idea for Cleo where I thought of him wearing a wizard's hat.

I then decided that the hat was a little cliche and started drawing a bunch of different designs.

I settled on the top right hand corner design and drew some emotions, which was just for fun as Cleo will not actually be able to express these with the way that his puppet will be designed. However, it still gave me a chance to develop his character.

I next started to plan the layout for the puppet.

After I did some designs for Cleo, I looked into coming up with my storyboard, again I had to keep the shots really simple as I feel that I will struggle to get into the stop-motion studio at college so i might just have to film it where ever I can with a tripod. Keeping this in mind I made sure to use shots that were easy to film and didn't require the crane. I actually at this point decided to go against my original story and went for a completely different narrative that was simpler, used less props and would be a quicker option considering the time left for the year.

Here are my storyboards!

So, now my designs, ideas and storyboard are done my next steps are to build the puppets, scene and come up with an animatic before going on to animate!

Responsive - AnimateClay *MAGIC!*

After my previous responsive briefs were both done in digital, DUIK and Photoshop animation I now want to do one in stop-motion! I feel like I have practiced and played around with digital enough now to know that I don't really want to pursue a career in it if possible and I would like to focus my time into stop-motion. The brief that I am looking into this time is a 5-week challenge from AnimateClay a website that showcases independent animators and gives support and knowledge to those who want it.

The theme this time around is Magic.



Above are the rules for the contest and it basically states that only real world objects can be used unless its for certain effects and that it can be any length. So, I am going to create a stop-motion animation for this challenge and I have around 5-weeks to complete it and my next steps are to start getting some ideas down!

Applied Production Diary (3/4/17 - 9/4/17)

This week I have been recording the song for our animation in Leeds College of Music!

In the studio!

As I have never recorded a song before it was really cool to be in a real recording studio, I played guitar tracks and sang main and backing vocals for the track.

First, we recorded the guitar and Harry wired up the studio before I got there so all I needed to do was go in and play, although it took around 3-4 hours to get it right! I felt it was such a great experience to see how songs are recorded and how good it is to use original music and sound for an animation as you can get the right feeling in the music in comparison to using someone else's songs.



All I need to do now is wait for Harry to mix the song and make it sound perfect and refined before I can get the final version of it. I feel like now we can test putting the song to the animatic and possibly fix timings of scenes depending on the timing of the song, this way it will fit perfectly. As the song describes the story it is important that when the lyrics tell a certain part, that is what the audience are seeing on screen.