Response to Peer Feedback

In response to my animation, my peers have been fair and have noted some constructive and postive criticisms regarding my final animation. Overall I think I have succeeded to keep my animation original as possible.

The most popular suggestions for improvement were altering the lighting exposure or changing the video filter, this also obscured the characters in my animation, making it hard to recognise them for example Charles Bukowski and William Burroughs faces are obscured because of both the over-exposure and the 'Cartoon' video filter I had chosen to apply to the short.

The following image is a screen shot of my animation, you can see how the quality was hampered due to over exposure of the camera and the choice of video filter.

 

 

 

I wish I'd have taken more time producing and exporting my video, I would have preferred it to look like Terry Gilliam's animation shorts from Monty Python's Flying circus.

 

 

 

I think if I had focused on the colouration, the tone and the range of images I think I could have produced a better animation.

 

 

Another positive suggestion was how well the animation worked with the music bed 'This Here Giraffe' by The Flaming Lips. I am pleased with this response as I believe my goal was to cut 30 seconds of the music that would fit well with the animation, I think this has proved successful.

Futhermore I think if I had managed my time correctly, I would have had time to re-shoot and possibly involve more drawings and include more tweaking in the post-production stages.

My Stop-Motion Animation

Finally I have completed my stop motion animation, I began by illustrating two characters, the giraffe and his friend. I then cut out images of things I associated with hope and despair for example Bill Hicks for me is a hopeful but relentlessly passionate comedian. Whereas The Westboro Baptist Church are a group of hateful and aggressive people pushing extremist views forbidding and condemning homosexuals and other subcultures and mass media. Still I'm not trying to excuse it for its lack of narrative. I hope somehow you don't vote me a pass but a merit at least  if not for the design the effort? Appreciate that guys and girls.

Production

To create my animation
I used the following:

• A4 Paper
• A3 Black Paper
• 1 Gel Pen
• 1 Ink Pen
• 1 Pair of scissors
• 1 Computer
• 1 Printer
• HUE HD Camera (Web Cam)

I used iStopMotion linked up to the HUE HD camera I then laid down my A3 black paper and placed my cut-outs accordingly, sometimes having to erase frames that included my hand, or I had changed the position of my characters too quickly, a way to avoid doing this would be to use the 'onion skin' feature.

This is where an outline of your last frame will appear before you take another still. This helps you to create your animation with painstaking accuracy. It took me a duration of around two hours to create my animation, after completion I then exported the animation by clicking export movie.

Post-Production

When I had exported my short animation I opened it up using iStopMovie, a film-making software ideal for creating short, uncomplicated films. I then sourced an Mp3 file save of The Flaming Lips - This Here Giraffe dragged the music onto the timeline and then experimented with a range of video filters. After I decided on the 'cartoon' themed video filter I added credits, naming some of the characters that had featured themselves i.e. Bill Hicks, William Burroughs, Charles Bukowski etc.  After this I then exported the film and then uploaded the short animation by using the Blogger Video upload option and publishing this very page!

21/03/2013

This photo is of my two main characters the Giraffe and Ace the 'Birdwatcher'.  This time next week I plan to include backdrop designs featuring the landscape and include cutouts of additional characters. 

Pre-production

I fell behind schedule with my illustrations  I have made some cut outs of David Cameron one including him holding a pint of ale. With some more time spent on my production I will be ready to shoot my short just before the college half term.

Update on my animation...

I have previously designed an original storyboard on A2 track card, I will include photos of this soon. I have also been collecting used newspapers to cut out pictures of politicians and present day figure heads to include in my animation. I have used the website www.dafont.com to find a font for the title screen, I then enlarged the text size for the preview option and cut and paste the text into a pdf. document.  I am also going to include a few frames in homage to Jonathan Heartfield depicting the Giraffe eating David Cameron and spewing out money and bankers.

The Idea behind My Stop-Motion Animation Short...

I have decided that I will use both cut-out and illustration techniques to design my animation short. The general premise of my animation will be based on The Flaming Lips song 'This Here Giraffe' I will target my animation at a younger audience and tell the story of a tourist who meets a giraffe whilst bird watching.

I believe the sole reason I chose this song was not due to its child-like lyrical content, but the bass line! I know it sounds silly but bass-lines often produce good ideas, at least in my case. 

Things I will remember to include in my animation:

• Protagonists - 'Ace' and 'Giraffe'
• Antagonists - The Westboro Baptist Church,
  State Police, Thought Police...
• Colour prints
• Handwriting
• A bird
• Explosions
• Credits, crediting the cultural heroes that will feature

I will use the following software programmes: iStopMotion, iStopMovie

I will use the following tools: one kodak printer, A4 paper, scissors, gel pens, black matte paper

Time Lapse Photography

Time Lapse Photography is a technique made up of hours upon hours worth of pictures, once recorded the pictures are compressed into a film. Time Lapse usually operates at 24-30 frames per second but in Time Lapse Photography the rate of pictures taken is usually at 1 frame per every 30-60 seconds, for example if it takes the sun 12 hours to set, you'd have around 720 photos, if you compress those photos to a video at a rate of 24fps the sun would rise and set in just 30 seconds.
When the the footage is played in real time, it appears as though the subject(s) are moving incredibly fast as with the shadows or growth of subjects over a period of time, this can be seen particularly in plants. Some common motifs are sunrise and sunset, ice melting, cloud movement, star movement, plants growing, people and cars moving in the street.

This technique has been used in both feature films and television, most notably David Attenborough's BBC programmes Planet Earth, Frozen Planet and Life but more exclusively Attenborough's 'The Private Life of Plants' (1995) the technique also features heavily in BBC one's 'Life'.