Flipbook Research

Flipbooks are an good way of producing a fun little animation test in a handy notepad. This flipbook below is about a minute long and is very detailed and imaginative. Flipbooks can be carried around physically and dont need to be viewed on a digital device. However the main downside of flipbooks is that no one can flip consistently at 12 or 24 frames per second so viewing flipbooks can be abit hit and miss.

Pixilation Explore Research

Pixilation is an animation process in which the human body is used as the puppet and is usually photographed sequentially. Because pixilation is still an animation technique the 12 principles of animation still apply and therefore the animator can create effects which the live action video cannot produce. This is an example of pixilation.

Frame by Frame Animation in Photoshop Research

Frame by frame animation in photoshop is a good way to create animations straight on to the computer without scanning in tons of frames and photoshop is very useful for colouring animations but i think frame by frame animation in photoshop tends to have less energy and charm than traditional hand drawn animation. Below is the only example of frame by frame animation in photoshop i could find.

Apply Final Animation

This is my final animation for the Apply brief. I learned alot during this task as i had never animated a four legged animal before so learning that felt like an achievement although i still have alot to learn about how animals walk. i tried to incorporate the principles of animation into my work by keeping them in mind whilst i was animating and i think used most of them effectively. For example the movement of the wolves legs when walking were arcs so that their movement is fluid and appealing and also the movement of the wolves themselves are in arcs. i used easing in and out alot just after and before the wolves would take a step to try make the movements believable. The main thing i feel i need to improve on is staging/composition because i dont fell like the eye is really led through the animation at all, i fell like the two wolves are forcing a split focus of the eye in which the audience can only really concentrate on one at a time.

The Incredibles

The Incredibles is one of my favorite computer animated films, it really shows that if you know how to animate and you have mastered the 12 principles of animation then it doesn't matter what tools you use to animate with, you have the potential to create a great piece of animation. The characters in this film are appealing, have personality and their superpowers add to their charm and individual quirks. This film is one of the reasons i'm really excited to learn more about CGI as i think it is a very effective method of animation and has great capabilities.

The Illusionist

The Illusionist is a french animation about a magician who is under appreciated and out of work so he travels to Scotland and meets a girl who befriends him. The general mood of this film is quite glum and moody, this is shown through the dirty colour palate and the general body language and general expression of the protagonist. the film is also very funny mainly due to the animators using the principle of exaggeration so that some of the characters are humorous, the drunk Scottish man is a good example of this. The process used is hand drawn animation and it is beautifully drawn, i find that the lighting in some of the scenes helps draw the eye towards the action or the focus point, this is very nice and creates an atmosphere.

  

Ring of Fire

This is a very interesting animation about sexual desire, it features two cowboys, both very different types of characters. The two cowboys venture through sexual desires and become so immersed and changed that they become lost and struggle to interact with a woman intimately, they just take what they want and leave her like shes an object to be used. In the end it shows the more sensitive cowboy applying water to the wounds of a woman who had her innocence taken from the other more aggressive cowboy. I think what this is saying is that to treat a woman with care and affection is more rewarding in terms of true happiness than to just take what you want and use her. This is what i think the animation means anyways and it probably has various interpretations. This animation is aimed at adults because of the mature themes and imagery.

Treasure Planet

I may say every Disney movie is my favourite Disney movie but nevertheless treasure planet is one of my favorite Disney movies. The mix of hand drawn animation and 3d works really well i think and i love the characters, i think the characters are designed really well and the audience can really connect to them during the intimate emotional scenes. This animation is generally aimed more at kids but maybe teenagers also. I think the main appeal of this movie is the world that the film creates, a futuristic, lush space environment which is a pleasure to see explored throughout the film.

Coca-Cola - Man & Dog

This animation is an advert for Coca-Cola. It shows a man taking a dog for a walk, the man is gloomy and depressed whilst the dog is having a great time seeing everything optimistically. the use of colours reinforce the story, for example when the man is the focus the colours are dark and gloomy but when the dog is the focus or the camera is from the dogs point of view everything's bright and colourful to portray the happy carefree attitude of the dog. The technique of the animation looks hand drawn which suite the mood of the animation. The purpose of the animation is to advertise the product of Coca-Cola which it does by having the man bump into a Coca-Cola machine and when he drinks the Coca-Cola he is happy.

Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs

Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs by Walt Disney was the first feature length sound and colour animation and it set a very high standard. i have noticed that some of the scenes are alot darker than would be produced now in a Disney animated film. This is probably because when snow white was produced in the 1930's animation was a marvel to everyone and everybody of all ages wanted to see the amazing animated films so the audience of animated films was everybody. Whereas nowadays animated films are mostly aimed at children.

 

The Old Man and The Sea - Aleksandr Petrov

The old man and the sea by Aleksandr Petrov is a beautiful animation based on Ernest Hemingway's novel of the same name. The technique used is oil paint on glass, due to this technique the colours are very vibrant and expressive. Petrov is obviously a master of animation, the movements are so believable and fluid and the characters move differently just as they would in real life. For example the old man moves slowly with a soft of hunch to his back whereas the boy moves with exaggerated movements and more enthusiastically. This all helps the animation to feel natural and immersive.

Thought of You - Ryan Woodward

This short animation is is really nice to watch and really goes with the song it is animated to. I believe the majority of the animation is rotoscoped, i really dont like rotoscoping as i think its just like copying although rotoscoping can be used more of like a reference rather than a crutch. the principles of animation are evident in this animation, such as very obvious arcs throughout the dancing and the majority of the movements and easing out and in is very evident here aswell. In terms of the story i think it is very open to interpretation but i think its mostly about how love can change you.

Frame by Frame Animation in Photoshop

These are some animations i made using photoshop. Its alot more effective to create frame by frame animations in photoshop than to hand draw them because you dont have to buy paper and keep punching hole in the paper all the time, there is also no need for a lightbox either when you have onion skinning. However i still think hand drawn animation has a lot more energy and charm than animation done in photoshop.

Research for 5-10 second Apply Animation

For my 5-10 second animation i began to have ideas about the theme love and all the different ways this could be represented visually through an animation i began drawing some ideas that i had and just drawing anything i thought of at this point, i also tried to develop a character based on drawings of other members of the class.

 

After this early development process i essentially took a u-turn as i began thinking instead about hate rather than love and about fierce wolves can be and can signify hatred even if they are only acting instinctively. i began playing around with drawing wolves; as i have never studied wolves before, i had little idea about their distinctive features and characteristics which i would need to capture if i was going to animate them. Therefore i searched up a national geographic video with plenty of useful footage of wolves performing various actions and studied it.    

 

 

For my story i had two wolves circling each other and then one jumps on top of the other and they start fighting and then they both turn into humans and realise the consequence of their actions and the man on top drop his fist/knife but the other man kills him anyway. i liked this idea but i thought it was too much for a 5-10 second animation so i decided to just animate the first scene of the two wolves circling. Below is my storyboard for the idea above.

Pose to Pose Research

In animation there are two main methods for animating, straight ahead and pose to pose. Pose to pose is the method alot of animators prefer and so do i, there are reasons for this. For example it is alot easier to keep the mass of the character/object consistent with pose to pose whereas with straight ahead it is easy to drift off track with keeping the characters mass the same. Also if the animation your working on has a set amount of time it is very hard to keep to the set time with straight ahead whereas with pose to pose it is alot easier with the use of timing charts which i use often if not all the time when i am animating. Straight ahead does have advantages however such as spontaneity and excitement because when animating with pose to pose for a while the animation can often lack these traits.

Below is an example of pose to pose animation:

Pixilation Development and Storyboards

 At first i thought i would make a pixilation about a skeleton that came to life as it developed muscles and eyes, i had a few other ideas too shown on the image below but i decided i didn't want to do anything too complex.

Therefore i decided to keep my pixilation simple but i wanted it to be quite playful aswell so i came up with the idea of animating someone washing their hands and the taps and soap being mischievous, below is my final storyboard.

Pixilation

This is my finished pixilation animation. I incorporated the principles of animation into my pixilation where they were needed. For example the arc of the soap as it slides across the sink and i also made the soap ease in and ease out as it approached the sides of the sink because it slows down at those point therefore ease ins and outs are necessary. Also most of the time there is nothing in the scene that doesnt need to be there to tell the story, this is the principle of staging. Overall i think it went well but i could have made the ending more definitive and made some bits smoother.

Flipbooks

For the studio brief "Flipping 'eck" we were told to produce flipbooks demonstrating our understanding of the 12 principles of animation. i produced a bouncing ball flipbook and a moving ball along arcs flipbook. I like the way they both turned out but i think i may have squashed the ball too much sometimes.

The Man Who Planted Trees

The man who planted trees is an animation by Frédéric Back. i really like the way this film is animated, using coloured pencils on frosted cell. There are alot of panning shots to give the audience the sense of the atmosphere when the boy is traveling in the mountains. The story is very inspiring and really suits the narrators soothing voice, the story is definitely my favorite aspect of this animation as it holds a very powerful message that you should never underestimate the change one person can make to the world and to other people. This animation is aimed at everyone as it has such a rich story to tell that can be appreciated by all audiences.

"Feels Like We Only Go Backwards" Music Video

"Feels Like We Only Go Backwards" is a song by a band called Tame Impala and the music video to this song was animated by an animation company called "Becky and Joe" i think this animation is perfect for the song it was made for. the colours and the movement complement the sound really well. i think the process is mainly Plasticine and coloured paper. Because this animation is made to go with a 3 minute music video, there isn't really a story and its more of an abstract animation to accompany the music in contrast to a feature length animation in which the music is meant to accompany the visual side of the animation.

 

Storyboard Research

This is a storyboard from "Bambi" and this is different to some of the other examples because instead of having drawings for each scene, this storyboard has drawings for every few seconds of animation so this is obviously quite a developed storyboard. also i like the use of framing too make sure that everything that needs to be in the scene is in the scene.

 

Storyboard Research

This storyboard is from "Afro samurai". i really like this style of storyboarding because it looks refined and professional but it also has a lot of information and a lot of camera movements. i like the way it includes the timings for the animators and the descriptions of whats going on so that the animators know what to animate.

Storyboard Research

This is a storyboard from "Famous Fred" by Joanna Quinn i like the way Joanna Quinn can draw very quick and rough and her drawings feel very solid. This storyboard example is a lot more organized and has a lot more information than the others and i like how there is a description of the characters actions and the speech.

Storyboard Research

This storyboard is from dumbo and it is a lot more refined than the previous example and each drawing is pinned to a wall, this allows the team to move drawings around if there is an easier way to show the sequencing of the story or to add drawings incase something doesn't make sense.

Pixilation research

Her Morning Elegance / Oren Lavie

we were shown this animation in the briefing and i really liked the way the bed is essentially the canvas and the subject is traveling through all these different environments whilst still staying on the bed, i think this is very creative and unique.

 

Western Spaghetti / PES

I think this animation is also very creative. The use of toys and craft items is a very interesting and appealing way to animate food. The design and the colours make this animation very aesthetically pleasing. The sound effects work really well with the whole idea of the animation and are very crisp and clear.

 

Neighbours / Norman McLaren 

This animation is very well animated and the sound effects add to the appeal and humor of the story. The story is a metaphor for the two political superpowers fighting over control and supremacy with the flower being the thing that allows them to do this.

 

 

Freeview Play TV advert

This television advert for Freeview play tries to manipulate people’s emotions to connect with the advert. The story is basically a dictator who is pictured in the advert in one of the beginning scenes after the establishing shot and who is making everyone conform in this case to a television subscription package. This is clear because at the end of the advert it states how there is no subscription with Freeview play. The mood of the advert is determined with the colour schemes, for example at first the colours are mainly reds and blacks but at the end as the woman and dog find the unconverted television the colours are mostly blue and yellow.

Famous Fred

Famous Fred by Joanna Quinn is an animation mainly aimed at children but is entertaining for adults also. The dialogue is very easy to listen to and matches the essence of the film with its smooth clear voices. The story is very creative and simple but works really well, the story is obviously very developed from the use of storyboards and thumbnails. The characters are simple but very aesthetically pleasing, the characters are humorous and bouncy which adds to the appeal. The colouring looks like its done with coloured pencils but i can imagine it was done digitally but this hand drawn look adds to the innocence views of the children and the playfulness of the story.

Pose to Pose Animation

I used a light table and animation paper to animate a pendulum swinging from side to side, i like the feeling of drawing on the animation paper and the paper is very transparent even without the backlight from the animation table. i like the flow of my pendulum animation but it needed to be higher on the backswing but now that i have made this mistake hopefully i wont make it again.