Animation Questionnaire Results
In the later stages of this project, after all pre production and all production work besides editing was completed, then we all began independent work which involved each group member editing their own individual ident from the footage we had all collectively produced. This allowed for four different revisions of the project, giving the client a lot of choice by producing four very different idents with the same purpose and needs suited to the client.
My finished ident was based on the theme of surprise, I had three characters; two of these were penguins which played on the animation cartoon theme of the childrens television programme, Pingu and the third character was 'Morph' whom is also an animated television character from the popular childrens programme, SMART. By combining these popular children characters we allowed the target audiences (12-18 years, secondary: 35 - 55) to connect with their childhoods.
I feel that all the idents produced were of high standards and met the client needs. I felt all work produced was to a near professional standard and we were all very proud of our completed works.
In my ident I liked the title scenes which consisted of around 90 still shots which I created individually using Adobe Photoshop. I felt that if I could have everything in the complete production using stop motion animation. I was able to include multiple motion graphics on the frame with the use of super imposing the motions. I done this by creating different things seperately and layered all of the motions using Power Director 6.
Weaknesses in the project mainly consisted of time constraints. As using stop motion animation involves using seperate frames constantly, this took a lot of time and a lot of revisions as we had to set an ideal frames per second and had to then deliver all of these frames, altogether spending a lot of time in the photography process of this.
Strengths in the group was the use of team work. We were all able to excel in different areas of the project, we had some clashes on what people wanted to do but this was more of a good thing allowing the group to benefit a lot more. An example of this is that both Jack and Jordan wanted to work on the creation of the characters which allowed them to both work on this process thus speeding up that process and finishing with good quality characters.
I would say that my completed ident was of good, near professional standards in terms of the use of editing (using super imposed footage across multiple layers) and the standard of the edited footage (such as the titles) whilst using industry standard editing plaatforms such as Adobe Photoshop and Power Director.
The sample we asked were all media students of Park Hall Academy sixth form between the ages of sixteen to eighteen. The sample are all included in the target audience but a factor that must be stressed is that these are all our peers and are all also competing for their ident to be the winning ident for the Park Hall Academy Media ident project.
Blobz The Motion Picture
Here's the video I made for the week project. I created seven simple 'blobs' and a giant 'blob' and these 'blobs' were the characters of my animation. I created the title using Adobe Photoshop CS5 and pieced everything together using Pinnacle Studio 12. For some reason Pinnacle doesn't feel like importing the title image, so here it is below.
Overall I am pleased with the motion picture. If I could do this again then I would like to get the title in the front of the video but most importantly I would like to try and gain a correct speed which would involve taking a lot more pictures (frames) and also making the motion longer as this motion seems to be very short. I was able to take all of the pictures in around 20 minutes and this consisted of around 120 pictures. If I could get to around 400 shots then this would take me and the group for our ident around 90 minutes. What I was pleased with in this production was the experimentation of camera angles. I wanted to try and get the camera to have a bit of motion as this engages a viewer more than a single shot, if a viewer can relate to an animation. Another issue in this production was that the plasticine colour seemed to stay on my hand in the creation process so many of the colours may overlap such as the white plasticine around the eyes had a bit of black and green plasticine mixed i with it, as for the next production I will be working in a group we could perhaps all take on seperate roles in the creation process to prevent this from occuring again or washing our hands after different types of plasticine, however, the latter may be time consuming.
Genres of Animation
TV animation
There are various forms to Television animation and this includes station idents, cartoon programmes and comedy programmes. An example of a station ident would be the Cbeebies idents, they largely consist of blob like creatures and were most likely drawn in a preliminary sketch and later animated on a computer through computer software such as Adobe After Effects.
A big fan of animated channel idents is the BBC whom use these in various ways across their entire television network. As you can see on the left the BBC 3 ident seems to take many characteristics from the Cbeebies ident. They use a lot of bright, glossy eye catching colours in their idents, this is most likely due to the fact that they were created by the same department or even people at the BBC or by one of their contractors.
In Cinema we see animated films on the schedules all the time, we also see a lot of blockbuster animation films such as Flushed Away, Chicken Run and Toy Story. Animated films can take a long time and they are done in many different ways; the first two films I just mentioned, Flushed Away and Chicken Run were produced by British animation studios, Aardman. Aardman animate using plasticine and real life sets and would take an extremely long time to complete a production depending on how much staff a production has. Toy Story could be done in a much faster framework but Disney Pixar concentrate more on preliminary sketches and animating these on a computer as well as development of a story so the production time can really vary depending on how much a producer wants to put in to a single production; another thing with Disney Pixar is they add many special effects to their productions as well as creating these in 'Disney 3D' and IMAX formats, as well as the standard 2D format.
Advertisers often use various ways to capture an audience and attract viewers to their advertisements to make them more successful. An example of this is 'Compare the Meerkat' which is a viral advertisement for 'Compare the Market (.com)' The advertising campaign is produced by the VCPP Agency. Compare the Market (and ..Market) is owned by the BGL group and compare the meerkat has been ranked the fourth most visited insurance website in the UK. The advertisement more than doubled sales through Compare the Market year on year. This has extended past a television advertisement and 'Aleksandr Orlov' has now got a book, an iPhone application, text and mobile ringtones. The style of this animation is realism as the meerkat looks real as does its surroundings but they are all in fact computer animated.
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Computer Games
Most video games are animated, but there are many different ways that computer games are animated. An example would be Super Mario galaxy which focuses strongly on gameplay, bright attractive colours and the use of preliminary sketches. We can see how characters and items such as the stars could be animated through a sketch or drawing pad connected to a computer and later being animated through a computer as everything has detail but not as in depth as other games such as Call of Duty.Many of the special effects may have also been drawn at first and later animated or they could have been generated through use of computer software. Games such as Call of Duty may have had ideas sketched out on paper etc or drawn on to a graphics tablet but most, if not all of this will have been re-rendered on computer software as the games are very realistic and put a lot of focus in detail.
Mobile Phones
Mobile phones are not really the first thing that comes to mind when people discuss animation but they can be very effective tools when used in the right situations. This advertisement campaign was used to advertise a ringtone for mobile phones for a company called Jamster. There were many complaints about how a penis and scrotum are visible in the advertisement but the ringtone itself was quite catchy and was very popular with children, teenagers and young adults, in that order. The ringtone was premium and required users to pay to use Jamsters service on a weekly basis, users would have to read the small print to know they were infact signing up to a non limited contract which took £4/week from their mobile account. The ringtone was very popular amongst children and this caused controversy as it seemed as though it was aimed at children and with more and more children getting mobile phones they wanted this ringtone without realising the repercussions of this. Another one of Jamsters ventures was called 'Crazy Chick' which involved a dancing chick being charged the same way as the 'Crazy Frog' was although this acted as a screensaver/wallpaper. The frog and the chick were both computer generated but have a motion to them allowing them to move in varous ways, for example, in the advertising campaign 'crazy frog' looked as though he was driving a motorbike although you could not see this.
Websites
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Developers of Animation
Willis O'Brien
Willis O'Brien was born on March 2 1886 and passed away on Novermber 8 1962. He was an irish american and he pioneered motion picture special effects. Willis started his career as a cartoonist for the San Francisco Daily News. He was also a professional marble sculptor; Willis had a gret array of skills in art and construction. In 1933 his first wife had shot and killed their two sons and later turned the gun on herself, she survived but later died from cancer and tuberculosis.
O'Brien was hired by th Edison Company to produce several short films with them, all of which had a prehistoric theme. Willis' first Hollywood venture was "The Lost World" which was released in 1925. Willis had many ventures using stop motion including King Kong (1933), Son of Kong (1933), The last days of Pompeii (1935) and Mighty Joe Young (1949). O'Brien is an accredited Technical Creator and has won an Academy Award for Best Visual Effects.
Ray Harryhausen
Ray Harryhausen was born in LA, California on June 29 1920 and is an american film producer. He is also a special effects creator and has created a brand of stop motion model animation which ois often called Dynamation. He also worked on Mighty Joe Young with Willis O'Brien. Befoe the popularity of using computers in camera stop motion and CGI (Computer Generated Imagery) movies used many different approaches, one of these was the use of stop motion. This technique was first used in The Lost World and more famously, King Kong. Willis O'Brien's work influenced Ray in this field of animation. Harryhausen can draw a distinction between films that combine special effects animation with live action and films that are entirely animated such as the films of Tim Burton, Nick Park, Henry Selick, Ivo Caprino and many others.
Jan Švankmajer
Jan Švankmajer was born on September 4 1934 and he is a Czech surrealist artist and filmmaker. His work uses various media and he is best known for his work involving the medias surreal animations and features. His work has inspired artists such as Tim Burton, Terry Gilliam and many others. Some of his major trademarks include very exaggerated sounds, which in turn create very strange effects in eating scenes. He uses fast stop motion when people walk or interact. He often uses clay in his animations and food is his favourite medium. He continues to make animations in Prague.
The Quay Brothers
The Quay brothers are identical twins and were both born on June 17, 1947. They're influential stop motion animators and both won the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Set Design for their work on the play "The Chairs" in 1998. The twins reside and work in England after moving here in 1969 to study at the Royal College of Art. Most of their work features puppets made of doll parts and other materials. The pairs best known work is "Street of Crocodiles" which was based upon a short novel by Bruno Schulz.
Tim Burton
Tim Burton, born August 25, 1958 is an American film director. He is famous for many dark & quirky themed movies including Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands, The Nightmare before Christmas, Corpse Bride, Sweeney Todd, The Demon Barber of Fleet Street and many other blockbuster movies also. Burton has directed 14 films in 2010 alone. When Burton was young he made many stop motion films in his garden. After Burton graduated from Burbank High School he attended the California Institute of the Arts and studied Character Animation. After he graduated from CalArts he was hired at Walt Disney Productions' animation studio where he worked on many productions such as The fox and the Hound and The Black Couldron.
Aardman Animations
Aardman Animations, also known as Aardman Studios or simply Aardman is an academy award winning british animation studio, based in Bristol. The studio is famous for creating many stop motion films using clay including Wallace and Gromit & Chicken Run. They have also entered the computer animation industry from 2006 with Flushed Away.
Clay Animation Research
Clay animation is one of the many forms we see in todays stop motion animation. Clay is a good item to use in the formation of stop motion animation because it is deformable and can easily be changed from its original creation, also clay can be manually moved rather than acting as the actor would have to remember the position that they were in. In our stop motion ident for the childrens TV station "Cbeebies" we will be using plasticine clay in bright colours to attract the childs attention and seem child attention. Primary colours are more widely used in childrens programming rather than dull bland colours such as grey as primary colours are bright and attract the attention of the children.In clay animation each item is sculpted, usually around a skeleton architecture. In our meeting we had many ideas of what we would be doing, these included the small "blob-like" creatures currently used on the Cbeebies idents or using a morph like creation. We would most likely be creating a centre object and have the action occuring around this centre item. We have not yet decided on what the centre object may be, we will come to this conclusion in a second meeting after each group member has conducted their research. If we were to go with the "blob-like" idea then the clay would take on a freeform motion where as the morph idea would involve using character motion where the character will be recognizable throughout the motion. An idea we looked in to during the meeting involved strata-cut animation which would involve slicing a loaf of clay in to various scenes and then moulding from that but we felt that would limit the amount of creativity we could put in to producing the ident and would not be suitable for the station we have decided to create for; Cbeebies.
The creation process
When creating our stop motion ident we will need plasticine or polymer clay as well as wire to hold the pieces together and give them a spinal structure.
The wire will then be beant in to shape and then we will mould the clay on to this structure.
We will most likely need to use a base clay which we can add clay on to, for this we will use a neutral colour such as grey.
We will then add the following layers of clay on to this.
The clay shall then be animated, for this we shall be using a digital camera, perhaps on a tripod so we can keep a consistant camera shot.
We will use a flat service to base the creations on.
We will then move the figure in to its next position.
We shall then load the images on to a computer and this will then be pieced together to form a motion using software such as Pinnacle or Power Director.
The chosen form of clay the group shall be using is Plasticine clay as this clay does not harden as easy as other forms of clay and we will be producing this motion over the course of a few days.
Group Activity
Jack | Jordan | Dan | Gary | |
Stick to subject | Y | Y | Y | Y |
Sitting appropriately | Y | Y | Y | Y |
Using pauses | Y | Y | Y | Y |
Correct voice tone | Y | Y | Y | Y |
0937 – Discussing ideas
0939 discuss character ideas
0941 discuss resources
0945 research idents
0949 summarise research
0952 channel research
0954 cbeebies ident is chosen idea
0956 colours used etc
0958 Meeting closed
Jack – research childrens idents
Jordan – research cbeebies
Gary – research clay stop motion
Dan – research stop motion animation techniques
Aardman Studios
Aardman studios was founded in 1976 and began as a low budget project by Peter Lord and David Broxton. The two wanted to put their dream into action of creating animated motion pictures. The partnership had provided motions to the BBC for deaf children called "Vision On" which created Morph which was a simple clay character that is still used in an art programme on CBBC called "Smart".Later in time Aardman produced many shorts for Channel 4 which included the "Conversation Pieces". At this point Aardman started hiring more animators. Three of these new animators made directional debut's with Aardman creating the "Lip Synch" series.
October 28 1999 was a very special day for Aardman studios as they had been signed a $250 million deal to create 5 feature films with DreamWorks (Now DreamWorks animation) which included Chicken Run. On 1 October 2006 just before the release of Flushed Away, The New York Times reported that due to creative differences DreamWorks animation and Aardman would not be extending their contract and the deal was officially terminated on January 30th 2007. Aardmans spokesperson, Arthur Sheriff stated "The business model of DreamWorks no longer suits Aardman and vice versa".
In April 2007 Aardman signed a three year deal with Sony Pictures Entertainment which was renewed in 2010. Aardman co-founder Peter Lord stated "We are all very excited by the potential and have a number of projects we are keen to bring to fruition with this new relationship. In June 2007 these ideas were released:
- Arthur Christmas
- The Pirates!
- The Cat Burglars
- And an untitled project involving Nick Park.
This article contains references from Wikipedia EN
Development
More information here
William Horner evolved the idea of the phenakitoscope with his 'zoetrope'. This was a device that would hold a motion picture inside of a spinning circle, if you were to lay the inside image out it would be a very long rectangle, one could simply replace this to change the motion. 
George Pal was born in Hungaria and his use of animation was phenomenal. He raduated from the Budapest Academy of Arts in 1928 and after his stay there he began making films for Hunnia Films in Budapest. He migrated to Europe when the Nazi's came in to power where he bagan working for Paramount Pictures. George created many productions for Paramount including Puppetoons and switched to live action film making producing The Great Rupert. George was presented with an honorary in 1944 for "the development of novel methods and techniques in the production of short subjects known as Puppetoons". George passed away at the age of 72, he has got a star on the Hollywood walk of fame and in 1980 the Academy of Motion Pitcure Arts and Sciences founded the "George Pal Lecture on Fantasy in FIlm" in his memory.
Thomas Edison, the famous American inventor had also made a contribution to the animation movement. He invented the Kinetoscope. This was not a movie projector but it projected images within the device for individual viewing. The device had the basic parts that we still see today in movie projectors. Edison's creation created the illusion of movement by conveying a strip or perforated film within a sequence and displaying this via a source of light and high speed shutter. The sequence you can see to the left is titled "Fred Ott's Sneeze" and not only was this a major movement but it seen the first awarded copyright of a motion in the United States.
I created this using Macromedia Flash MX 8.
Techniques
-The Principles of Animation.Squash and Stretch
This is one of the most important techniques in the animation process. The purpose of this technique is to give a sense of flexibility and weight to the objects being animated. This technique can be applied to simple objects such as a bouncy ball or to complex items such as facial expressions.
Anticipation
This technique is used to prepare the audience for action in the film. This makes the action seem more realistic. An example of this would be a tennis player preparing to hit the tennis ball and hitting the tennis ball. This technique is not only used in physical actions, it's used also in many less physical items such as a character looking off the screen to see somebody arriving or to focus attention on an object which will become part of the action.
Staging
This technique is similar to staging as we know it in film and theatre. The prupose of this effect is to direct the audiences attention and to make it clear what the superlative is of the scene, what is happening in the current scene and what is about to happen in that scene or in further scenes. This technique can be put in to action through various ways such as where the character has been placed, the use of light and shadow and the camera angles. The objective of this technique is keeping focus on what is relevant and to avoid any unnecessary detail. Examples of this 'type' of technique is what we often see on the news but in a slightly different essence where the bacjgrounds of a still frame is blurred out so that a person or object becomes the most noticable on screen.
Straight ahead action and pose to pose
Straight ahead action means to draw out a scene frame by frame from beginning to end, I had experience of this in drawing a flip book and it is a long process especially if this was used in creation of a childrens cartoon. It can also be very easily misconstrued such as forgetting bits of a scene.
Pose to pose involves drawing out a few major frames and filling in the intervals later on. This may be drawing a fish tank with a moving plant as that could consist of only around ten frames, you could then add the fish later on with a new layer to the film.
Straight ahead action creates more fluid dynamic action of illusion in making your eyes feel this is a very natural production . The negative points to this technique is it can be very hard to maintain proportion and creating the exact poses frame to frame.
Pose to pose is better when using dramatic or emotional scenes in which composition and relation to surroundings are of a greater importance to a production. A lot of the time a combination if these two techniques are often used to create a production but with the advancement of computer animation these techniques can often be used slightly differently as computers can allow you to maintain the aspect ratio whilst keeping seperate frames and then combining these on seperate layers displaying the end product of an animation.
Follow through and overlapping action
These two techniques are very closely related. They both help in the process of rendering movement of objects and helping to create a more realistic look to the objects on frame; giving the impression that characters are being applied to the laws of physics.
Follow through refers to seperate parts of the body continuing to move after the moving character has stopped such as a character walking down the street, stopping and putting ones hand to ones chin in order to think whilst the legs still remain static.
Overlapping action is how the tendency of parts of the body can move at different rates, we could imagine this technique being used in a scene where a character is running and the characters head turns right to look at the other side of a running track, the head would move at a different pace to the legs as if it was moving as fast as the legs either the character would be moving very slowly or the head should move at this different pace on order to show emotion on the face and not make this look like a production error.
A third technique is known as 'drag' where a character begins to move and parts of the character takes a few frames to catch up with the character. An example of this could be Marge Simpson, famous for huge hair out of 'The Simpsons' is running and then sharply stops, if she is applied to the laws of physics her hair will be slightly behind her head whilst running and presumably would fall forwards or to its natural position after the sharp stop so we can see the force of this 'drag' through the hair, this could be a small thing to consider when animating but the end result in registering this technique in the viewers head wouold be huge. Body parts with much tissue like large stomachs, breasts or loose skin on a dog would be much more prone to force than the torso of the dog which is more static as it has more bones.
An example of the moving hold would be in 'Thomas and Johnston' where the character is rendered absoloutely still and this is often used in drawing attention to the main character. Thomas and Johnston said that this gave a dull and lifeless effect on a character but this could produce a powerful emotional scene on how one was to use camera angles and lighting in a scene.
Slow in and slow out
Movement of the human and many other objects need time to accellerate and slow down. This makes animation look more realistic if it has more frames near the beginning and end of the sequence. This applies to characters moving between two extreme poses like sitting down and standing up, this also applies to inanimate moving objects such as a bouncing ball.
Arcs
Most human and animal motions occur along an arched trajectory and by animating this the motion picture should make these movements more realistic. This technique can be used on bodily items such as a moving limb by rotating the joint the limb's attached to, or an item being thrown along a parabolic trajectory. The exception of this technique is a mechanical movement which typically would move in a straight line.
Secondary Action
By adding a secondary action to the main action, this makes a scene more life like and can help in supporting a main action. A character whom is walking could simultaneously swing its arms or keep ones arms in ones pockets, the character could be speaking or whistling or be expressing emotions through facial expressions. One of the utmost important things one should consider when using secondary actions is that the action should empathize and compliment the main action; not taking attention away from the main action. If the secondary action is taking attention from the main action then perhaps the action is better to be left out. A point of note is when using facial actions in a dramatic scene then these will often go unnoticed, when in these circumstances it's better to use this secondary action at the beginning and end of the motion rather than during the motion.
Timing
The timing is referring to the number of drawing or frames allocated per action, thus translating to the speed of the film. On a strictly physical level, correct timing to an object would make the item to appear to the laws of physics thus having a more realistic motion; for example, the weight of an object would decide how it reacts to a moving force such as a push. The timing is also of vitaol importance for establishing the mood of a character along with its emotion and reaction. Timing can also be a device to communicate the aspects of a characters personality.
Exaggeration
This is technique which is very useful for animation; a good mimic of reality can look static and dull when used in cartoons. The degree of the exaggeration used can depend on whether one seeks realism or a certain style such as a caricature or a style of an artist. The classic definition of exaggeration which was used by Walt Disney was to remain true to reality but presenting it in a more wild and extreme form. Other forms of exaggeration can involve the supernatural or surreal aliterations involving the physical features of a character, or elements in the storyline. It's important to employ a certain level of restraint when using exaggeration; if a scene contains many elements then there should be a balance in how those elements are exaggeration in relation to one another, thus avoiding confusion or overawing the viewer.
Solid Drawing
The principle of solid drawing means taking in to account the many forms used in three dimensional space, thus giving volume and weight. The animator needs to be experienced in creating mechanical drawings to show advancement when drawing the 3D shapes, the anatomy, weight, balance, light and shadow. For the classic animator this would involve taking art classes and drawing real life sketches. One thing in particular which Johnston and Thomas warned about was creating 'twins'; characters whom were mirrored either side of one another as this made the characters appear lifeless. Modern computer animators draw less because of the advancement in the facilities a computer can offer. Yet this work benefits extremely with basic understanding of the principles of animation as well as the basic computer animation know-how.
Appeal
In cartoon characters, appeal is what we know as charisma which would be seen in an actor. A character that is appealing isn't necessarily sympathetic; villains and monsters can also be appealing; the important thing is when using appeal is that the character appears to be real and interesting. There's many tricks for making a character connect better with an audience; for likable characters a symmetrical or paticularly baby-like face is often effective.
Referenced from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/12_basic_principles_of_animation