Tuesday 15th December 2009

Today we start researching information about our chosen medium for our project, which is animation and the history of it so that i can make a timeline from it. Me and Charna found loads of information. I started creating my timeline in the afternoon. So far i have found it difficult to make it as i find it very hard to work on Photoshop. We used Wikipedia alot and the same with google. In google we searched for animation history and history timelines. We got much information from this.

Positive And Negative Words To Discribe Your Animation

In lesson we watched everyones Risk video that they made and we had to give a positive and negative word to discribe thier video. Below i have put the words on a background i found on the internet. The feedback that people gave me was said too fast so i could not write everyone down, but i managed to get most of them. Their are some mistakes in the animation so some of the might reflect them as well.
Here is the positive Picture:


Here is the negative picture:

Final Animation Video For Risk Project

Here is our final animation for our risk project.

We could have done better with our animation, but we just did not have enough time to do it.

Once we have watched it, we spotted many mistakes. One mistake is that the bomb just suddenly appears by the fish character. It should have be coming in when the fish is moving (swimming). We also wanted a sound effect for the bomb blowing up but having the time was the problem. We are hoping that we will be given more time after christmas to finish it properly. I am happy with the animation but i feel that we could have done better. Charna was not in last thursday and she had the animation pictures, so that put us behind alot, but we still have done well. Overall the animation is good. I would of liked it to have been longer but that does not really matter.

We never used the MonkeyJam software that we download as it would not work on a mac computers, so we had to download a trial version of istop motion to create our animation.

L3 RISK - CHARNA & ALEX - FINAL from cmdiploma on Vimeo.

If We Had More Time On Our Animation

If we had more time to work on our animation:

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we would have added all of our picture frames. The frames we cut out were the walking snail and the jellyfish. As Charna was not in last Thursday 10th December 09, she had our pictures for the animation so i could not scane them into the computer that day so that had put us behind abit. We finished the animation on Friday by working over college hours at coleridge. The walking snail and the jellyfish has not been included in the animation and we erased the tree in photoshop as we thought that it would not look right.

We would of also made our own soundtrack and not a copy-right free song of the internet. Another thing that will need changing is that we make the bomb suddenly appear in the middle of the screen and it looks odd as we did not make it come in properly.

We never included any titles like RISK or a name of the animation. It would have been better with a title or two.

Things or moments that we would change:

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We would have not drawed the tree and coloured it in as we erased it in the animation as it did not look right.

Have another character in the animation (but we did not as we did not have enough time).

Maybe have a different background.

Mini Checkpoint 3

Tomorrow me and Charna will scan in our images for our animation. We did not get a chance to do  this today as someone else was doing this. We will need to scane them in order and save them in order. After we have done this, we will colour each of them in using Photoshop. This will take a while as we have to colour in about 150 image frames. 

Once this is done, we will use Mokeyjam (software) to turn it in to a video. I am still not sure how long it will be. 

What we have to do for each frame:

$  Cut out anything we don't want in the frame, such as pencil lines, any marks and the ground line in alot of the frames.

$  Make each of the backgrounds transparent, and put it onto the background layer that charna created in photoshop.

$  Colour each frame the same if it is the same picture or character.

$  Change the expression of the fish when it meets the bomb to blank, or with sparklers in its eyes.

$  Import them into the Monkeyjam software to make a smooth stopmotion animation frequently so we know how it's going so that we can keep making modifications if we need to.

$  Last of all we will also need to make a soundtrack in Garageband or find some copy right free music on the internet.

Animation Background

Here is the background for our animation. Charna has created it in Photoshop. It's set in space on some other planet as the fish looks a bit like a space ship. 

Here is what she did:  I drew most of it with the brushes, using a simple circle paint brush for the stars and then a circle swirly one for the grass. I used different layers for this so I could use different blending options for each of them. I liked the bending option of a outer glow, as it really added the illusion of an atmosphere or light coming from the stars and the planet.

Tuesday 8th December 2009

Today we have finished drawing our animation frames. It has taken a long time to do and i am happy that it is done. I feel that it is going to take a long time to finish. I think that we will not be done for Friday. Now we need to put them in order and then take a picture of every frame. This will also take a long time. We are planning to do this on Thurday and finish it on Friday. 

What Still Needs Doing For The Animation

We still need to finish off  our frames. These are taking a long time as we have to draw many frames. Then we need to put them in order ready to take photos of each of the frames. This will also take a long time to do. Hopeful on Tomorrow or Wednesday we will be ready to do this. The main editing day will be Friday as that day we have the most lessons. On Thursday we will get everything ready to take to Coleridge, we might start editing on this day as well.

Friday 4th December 2009

Today me and Charna spent the day creative more scenes for our animation. It is coming along well so far. We still have many more to make. We spent most of the day doing this. We also added the designs for the animation to our sketchbook. My sketchbook is also coming along well.

Different Designs And Final Design

In my sketchbook i have 10 designs for our animated video. We chose the last design that we did. The reason why we chose it is that it is a simple design and we had a storyline for it.

You can see this blow:

The other designs that we did included a killer pea with a huge knife, a gangstar pea with a knife, a gangstar pea with a big hat and a gun, two stall standing aliens and many more. You can see some pictures blow.

Animations

We got our idea for the animation by an animation call Kiwi. This video haves a bird trying to fly and he jumps of a cliff. We like the idea of having a cliff in it so what we have done is designed our character and then done the setting. It setting is on top of a cliff. The character is flying and his eyes are closed just before he flies of the cliff so he falls and that is when we are going to end it.

The Kiwi video is below.

Art equipment Needed

The art equipment that i will need is:

$ A Pen

$ A Pencile and sharpener

$ Paper

$ Tracing Paper
$ Colouring Pens

Technical Equipment Needed

The technical equipment that i will need to do the video is:

$ A HD Camera
$ HD Tape
$ Camera Tripod
$ A Camera USB Cable
$ Computer (Mac)
$ Final Cut Software

Thursday 3rd December 2009

Today me and Charna have now decided to do a complete animation insted of my other ideas, we thought that it would be better if we did it this way. I think this idea is alot better and it is coming along very well. Today we have drawn many ideas on paper and then we decied what one that we liked the most and what would be posible to do. Charna has done the drawings and i have outlined most of them and coloured them in. We have done about 22 drawings already with many more to go. We are going to colour in the rest in photoshop when they are all done.

Update

At the moment my partner is still not well, so if she is not in by friday i will be working with Sophie on her project as her partners is not in as she is not well as well. But at the moment i am still working on idea 2.

Idea 2

I have thought about idea 2 and i think that this would be good to do. First i would have to check with my partner Charna. 

Feedback From Sophie

Today in lesson, Sophie looked at my blog and she has given me feedback on it.

The 2 positive strengths are:

$ Lots of very detailed blog posts.

$ Lots of research about risk and artists from 'Beautiful Losers'.

The 2 things to improve are:

$ Write up some research into project ideas, i.e Youtube videos.

$ Could do evaluation of what happened in lessons.

I am going to do the things that Sophie has suggested to improve.

Final 1 Minute Video Idea 2

Another idea that i have come up with is that i would uses the 5 frames of the pea and have that going round a corner then a character comes in and walks to the bridge in Cherry Hinton Hall and have him or her walking on the edge of the bridge the going and walking over the waterfall by the bridge. This is related to risk as the two thing that the character does are risky as he or her could fall of the bridge and slip or fall of the waterfall.

When you see the pea moving i don't want the shot's to have any of the sky in the background as when the pictures come together it would not look right as the sky would be chaging very quick.

The rest of the video will be made from proper footage and not taking photos of each frames.

Final 1 Minute Video Idea 1

The idea that i like is that it would involve the pea that was in our 5 frames animation. I really liked the 5 frame animation as i liked the pea getting stabbed, so i though that we could reuse the 5 frame boards and still make more so that the animation is spread out. The pea would still be getting stabbed but not as often and the fork would not be on the other boards. I would also like the pea to have a costume. A hat would look good, with a ring, and a gun strap and a gun in his hand.

Risk Captured On Film

This is a Risk that has been captured on film. It is a Tornado back in August this year, ripping through a city. Their can be many risks with this. Eg. getting sucked up, a tree flying into you. Also if you watch the tornado, you can see bright lights in it, this is because it is distroying power cables. Anything you do can be a risk. Turning on a video camera is a risk, as you could break it or it could blow up. (not a big bang). The person who filmed this would have not planned to do this. He or she though that it would be good to film this as they ate their meal at the cafe. This is said on the youtube page.

This video is from youtube. Here is the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTxTWc0ShAg

5 Frame Animation

Here are the 5 frames in the mini animation that we made:

This is a risk as the poor pea is getting stabbed by a for. I really like the pea animation. I would like the final animation to include the pea getting stabbed, but it would only get stabbed 3 times through out the animation.