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'.