Wednesday 30 March 2011

My First Animations.

Stop Motion.

Stop motion is an animation technique to make a object appear to move on its own. The object is moved in small increments and individually photographed, these are frames, when the frames are played as a continuous sequence it creates a illusion of movement.

Today I had my first animation lesson, this was a workshop on using i stop motion pro. We where given some toys, a camera and a mac, using these and the programme we had to create a short animation. We had to input all the key movements into the computer using the camera and when put together the programme would run it in a fluid motion.                                                                 
                               

The first animation is believed to be, (and is in the Guinness world record book as) Albert E. Smith and J. Stuart Blackton's The Humpty Dumpty Circus 1898, in which a toy circus of acrobats and animals comes to life, this film however has been lost.

More recent stop motion animations;

The Nightmare Before Christmas, directed by Henry Selick and produced by Tim Burton was one of the more widely-released stop motion features.

                  

Henry Selick also went on to create James and the Giant Peach and Coraline,

                  

                   

Tim Burton went on to direct Corpse Bride.


Nick Park, found fame in clay animation and created the characters Wallace and Grommit. his first feature length film grossed $100 million!!



Stop Motion Aanimations I've Found And Like!

A guy recreated a scene from Greece using Lego for his dissertation.

                 

I have included this sand animation because I could see myself using sand in may animation.

                  


Cell Animation.

I decided for my character to do a little girl as I want to use a girl in my animation, and its supposed to show youth.


I partnered with a girl who's character was a teddy bear, so for our cell animation we chose to do a teddy bears picnic for our 2 seconds.

First the little girl is on her own. 

Then the teddy bear comes to join her.


She pours him a drink and they sit and have tea together.






Story Telling.

All forms of communication are ways of telling stories, happy, sad, past, present, future, personal, it is also a way of expressing our thoughs.


What Is Animation?

Annimation is the illusion of movement. When single images are passed in froung of the eye quick succession (more then 10 frames a second,) the illusion of movement can be created in the mind. Frame rate is measured in frames per second (FPS), normally 12/25/30FPS.  
  

Early Animation:

1820's Thaumatrope

                 

1840's Zoetropes.


                 

1880's Eadward Muybride. This annimation was to win a bet about horses feet leaving the ground.  The images below are the stills but this is actually a film.

                      

1930's Masters of animation Wald Disney. All hand drawn frams on a timeline made into an annimation using a flip book technique, the new annimation still uses timeline and frames.

                                          




PRINT TO PIXEL

New Brief.

The new brief is to create a 20 to 30 second animation to go with a given piece of music. It will be assessted in two parts, storyboard and then process and the animation. My assigned music is Melting Pot by Boris Gardener.


Three words I associate with this music are Fun Sun and Youth, the music reminds me of summer, beaches, flying kites, roller skating , beer gardens, driving through the country side with the windows down but it also reminds me of music they play when your on hold to the phone company, British gas, Inland Revenue and all those other annoying companies.

Wednesday 9 March 2011

Final Poster.

                                

Saturday 5 March 2011

Poster.

For the second task of this Brief we have to design and make a poster celebrating 100 years of GF Smith Paper and we should use the skills we have learned in our workshops to complete the task. The limitations are: it must contain 100 years of GF Smith Paper, Design Museum, 01-31 July 2011 and it must be an A2 portrait format. 

GF Smith Paper.

From the images below I can see that the company likes to mostly use Black, white and primary colours. They also only use san serif type, and are very proud of there history.

                         

                         

                         


                         

                                   

                                     

                                      

Peter Callesen.

These are probably my favourite from all the paper engineering research I have done, they are quite funny and pretty and I would possibly use influences from this in my own work. I like the delicacy of them, the attention to detail, and I think the cut out is as effective as the creation.

                                   

                              

                                            

                              

                             

                             

Development.

Below are some poster experimentation's using influences from Callesen's work i think they are quite successful. I will try this with more colours and will also try to mix this with the pleating idea.




Below are the above tester repeated on colours card, they do look good but I do think the with one is more effective. Again i may try using other colour and better photographing as i don't feel they are as strong as they could be.





I took this accidentally with the flash on my camera, but I do think it would look ok as a poser still.


I will now try this same technique but adding some digital text in photoshop. This would mean I my only use one part as hand made? possibly GF Smith Paper?

Change Of Plan.
                               
After attending my last workshop i have decided to change y idea (many other people where doing the same thing), so I've gone back to the pleat.

I want to use the pleat again, but I would like the type to be included and go with the paper.....like below.


Below is a piece of paper with the text printed on and pleated, its very simple but I think it looks brilliant.





Below is the same idea but with smaller text again its very simple but very effective.
  

Again below is the same type printed the same size but cut out with scotch tape over the top and the laptop light shining behind. I do think it would look better with a heaver paper and this is just printer paper and therefore is very see through.


I tried the above again using heavier paper and it worked a lot better.


I pleated the cut out paper and put different coloured backgrounds.







I also tried the light one again but decided against it.


                              

My 3D Outcome.




Thursday 3 March 2011

Development.

Richard has now taught us a number of methods to enable us to design our own 3D structure from paper. Our aim now is to use a chosen skill to develop a display for the atrium outside our graphics studio. It must be constructed from sheet paper, three dimensional and include a repeat theme.  

Neeta Madahar - Falling 4.

Last year on my Foundation degree I visited Bradford's I-max media museum, exhibiting there was Neeta Madahar. She is a visual artist working with photography and video, these where my favourite of her exhibition it included both still and moving images of clusters of Sycamore seeds falling through the air, these works are an artificial representation of a naturally occurring event. They evocatively refer to the ways in which our memories can become dreamlike in their recollection. I want to concentrate more on the movement of the seed as they fly through the air.


                          

                          

                          

                      

                         
Sycamore Seeds.


What I want to capture most in my piece is the falling, the way the spiral and glide rather then the shape.


                            

                           

I have chosen pleating as my method. Below is a single sheet of A5 pleated paper, this is my starting point. It does embody the repeat theme but I would like to expand it more, I could add more pieces of pleated paper.


Below are two pleated pieces of A5 paper, now it does look more like a sycamore seed, but I don’t want it to be too literal. Although people in the atrium looking at it on display won't no that my starting point is sycamore seed they my guess.


I’ve now increased it to three pieces of pleated paper it is now looking less like a sycamore seed, but it could possibly pull off being a snow flake. It defiantly now embodies the repeat theme more.



This one now has six pleated pieces of A5 paper. It defiantly responds to the repeat theme and does not look like a sycamore seed. It especially looks good from the side.




What I would like to do is hang these in the atrium in a spiral shape, I would either want them to slowly spin individually or the how spiral to spin. It would then feel like an optical illusion. They would not jus be A5 size, they would increase in size: A5, A4, A3, A2. They would then decrease in size from A2, A3, A4, A5.



Final Piece.
First pictures of my final piece, some of these are a little out of focus as I took them standing on my bed, I will retake these properly in the studio.