Animation

Throughout my Animation following the theme of pong I have used the stop motion technique and also using cut out coloured shapes which represent the main characteristics within my animation. I did not use artificial light for this as the production was accomplished at home. Although the lighting changes throughout the animation due to the lighting been natural, the lighting is for ever changing from light to dark. I think that this has given my Animation an advantage on a good level as the changing light's match the eerie high pitch tone that carries out through my chosen part of the song 'How To Smoke'. However, the lighting is not professionally made with using the Adobe After Effect's program, the natural light give's it that bit extra effect as I have taken a digital online played game and created it by hand giving a more natural influence to my animation.

Development Of Animation

For my final animation I have decided to still go with the theme of pong to lead for my final animation but I have taken a second opinion from one of my University Tutor's and produced my animation by using cut out shape's and a camera to use for stop motion. My animation consists of 12 frame's per second which I felt was a comfortable rate to work with, it flow's quite well at 12 frames per second and displays it well.
Here I have taken screen shot's of my process of developing my Animation in after effect's.

 Here is the process of how I organised my images for animation. On Mac software there is a programer called Automator where you can quickly re-name your images by using numbers from 1 to 353 and so on. This was far better than going through each image and re-naming them individually.

 Here is where I got the necessary files for my animation which would have been all the images which i imported by image sequence so the images would then be in order and at 12 frames per second. I also imported the edited audio file into my animation where the images would run along with my chosen part of the song.

This is the final stage at where I am editing my setting's ready for rendering my animation to upload to YouTube where I can then Show in my blog for final submission.

Tester Animation Shapes

This is a tester of my animation using different colour paper following my original storyboard. Only now that I am using paper for this tester I have chosen to not include character based items but simply the shapes to still follow the basis of my idea. Here is a video where I have experimented with the shapes and introduced different concepts and a wider use of the area. I think that the idea of using colour paper to portray the shapes and also creating my animation has a more abstract feel to it. I will possibly do more tester animations to get a better feel and create another storyboard to fit better.

Cut out shape animations and Tutorials

In this post I have looked at some tutorial's on YouTube of how different cut out shape animations are made and also final outcome's which will help inspire me in completing a final outcome if I were to follow on by producing my animation using shapes to tell my narrative.

Shapes

Here is just a blog post on a few different shapes that I have found images of using Google. I thought that looking at different shapes both 2D and 3D would give me a better look on how to portray the shapes from different angles if it was 3D or sizes if it was 2D.

Here are some images of 2D and 3D shapes that I can use as reference for the animation.

Further Development of Animation

After visiting the second group meeting with my Tutor I got some feedback on how to make my Animation easier through production and less stress. Originally my Animation was going to be produced by using the cell animation technique and using a whiteboard to draw each frame which would have made the process faster. I then showed my Tutor what I had so far by using the white board technique and suggested that I take this further and produce it onto a home made television to give the impression of my animation is a game that is been played. I then carried on with the production.
After attending a second group tutorial from a different tutor I got a second opinion about how to go about my Animation. This was to still use my idea of the theme of pong but using cut out shapes and developing that by using the stop motion technique which would make production much easier. I will do a tester animation to see how this technique will look and play along with the song I have been given for my animation. If the tester is successful this will be a final look for my animation which in my opinion would make the Animation more abstract.

Re-arranging Seconds

To get a better feel of how my animation will look during the time frame I have quickly drawn up my key frames and inserted them in to After Effects. I feel that this process makes putting my animation together far much easier than thinking about it off the top of my head.
I have also included the cut out of my chosen part of the song to also help me with getting the right timing for each scene.

This is a screen shot of my key frames with in After Effects which shows each layer on the timeline which I can edit by stretching the layer on the timeline to make the layer short/longer. This process is quite helpful for if there is a change of mind.
My animation used to stand at a time of 30 seconds long and is now standing at 25.

Tester Animation

Here is just a real quick two second animation video that I have created using a whiteboard, iMac camera and After Effects to piece it all together in the end. The two seconds consist of 24 frames which equals to 12 frames per second which is what I am currently aiming to work at. Although looking at the two second animation, although it is only short, I may upgrade the process to 24 frames a second for a more clean approach.

Another Animation

Idea For End Credit Of Animation

After using the Stop Animator app for my figure animation I really got into the frame of mind to do more animations. As there is an end scene to my animation I figured why not design an animation for my ending credit?
The letters GP which is a nickname given to me by a sibling of mine and it stands for Ginger Prince (hahaha) so with the term prince I thought of drawing a somewhat crown/hat that would relate to Prince and then following up with the word designs. This has got me thinking further down the line in my career as a Graphic Designer and presenting myself with a more professional approach. This is the animation which I will take through in to the Adobe Creative Suite and bring it up to scratch.

Storyboard Numero Uno

This is the first draft of my storyboard for my animation which includes thirteen key frames of what happens throughout the animation. Each key frame has a description of how long each frame will last and also what happens in each frame. I think that the storyboard is well thought out and shows the rationale of my final outcome. I will keep thinking different motions that could happen in my animation to either express a key frame better or change the animation slightly to perform in a better standard.

Development Of Animation

Following on from my first initial idea I have started to develop the idea and start creating visuals on how I would like each aspect to look like with different colour ways which will determine my animation production. I have drawn the main parts of my animation and took great care with the detail and how I would like each aspect to perform.

Here I have looked a different colour's that I think would look well on the character field of my animation and also came up with the idea that throughout the animation the character may change colour depending on the characters mood. I then followed onto to sketch some cartoon/lego like facial features to show and express different situations. By doing this I am giving my animation a anthropomorphism aspect to it. I then joined both colours and facial expressions that match each other also the colour to indicate mood such as feeling sad would be blue, confused yellow and finally red for anger.

I have also produced a few sheets on the development of what kind of ball I would like to use throughout my animation. I have drawn up an illustrative brainstorm of different balls that relate to sport as my animation resembles tennis I thought it best to look into ball sports.
As the idea resembles tennis I think it best to actually use a tennis themed ball.
Snowballing on top of the idea I then brought up a few different colour's that the tennis ball could be portrayed in. I then chose my three favorite colour's and drew and painted mock up ups of how the ball would look with each colour. 

Illustrative Animations and more

Thinking more into my animation I keep leaning more into producing the animation illustratively as that's how it appears in my head every time I think about it. So here are a few videos that I have found using Youtube for some inspiration.

Although this is not an Illustrative animation I thought I would put it on my blog post because it's amazing.

Practice Animations.

This is a video of a simple animation that I had learned quite recently from what my mum used to create when she was a child. Although it is simple I think that it is quite interesting, interactive and playful towards animation.

This is another experimentation using stop motion to create an animation. To do this i had used an app on my iPhone which is called Stop Animator which allows you to take the shots necessary and then joins the images together to create them into a video therefore an animation. This app was very helpful and gave me the knowledge of how many images I would need to have for 20-30 second animation if this was my chosen media. Although the animation is a bit jerky in places I'm still quite pleased with the outcome for one of my first animations ever. 

Idea's/Chosen Idea

After listening to my song thoroughly it gave me a few ideas in which I thought would work well with the rhythm of the song. Each one of the idea's I think would be quite effective if completed using cell animation working individually with each individual frame. Here are my idea's that I have come up with:

These are the idea's that I have come up with after listening to my animation song and also taking into consideration which part of the song would fit better with each animation idea. Each idea is different, due to the given song changing into different moods and changing from fast paced to a slower rate, each idea is from the inspiration from the different parts.

First Idea: This is taken from the digital game which represents tennis. As it can be either fast or slow paced I think that this concept would work quite well with either setting of mood within the song.

Second Idea: This concept is a spin off from the title of the song "How To Smoke" but made into a journey which is factory based which causes pollution.

Third Idea: This concept idea is of a running tap with the water then traveling down the drain in which then the water would create different shapes.

Fourth Idea: This concept is of a ball that rolls through different neighborhoods and then changes/morphs into different objects to blend in.

After much consideration into the theme of the song and case of animation media I really like my first idea as I can take the song and then cut it to the section i want. As this animation idea is quite versatile I think it will be quite easy to produce.

Brain Storming

After listening to the song the I have been given to produce an animation to i began to build some brain storms to help me break down the song and give me some thoughts on the song itself.
I first created a brain storm of words that popped into my head whilst listening to the song and then chose three of those words that I thought best described the song.
After this I then created three more brainstorms that related to each word and what objects came under each word. This has given me a better idea of what could be made through my animation and different aspects.

My three chosen words are: Traditional, Scratch, Bounce

Research of the band Fingathing

From searching the internet on the band Fingathing, which is the artist that I was given one of their songs to use for my animation, I have learned that the band Finagthing are a Jazz/Hip-Hop band from Manchester. The band consist of a classically trained double bass player named Sneaky and a DJ turntablist named Peter Parker. 
 

 

 Fingathing have also released a few albums/ep's throughout their career so far. Here are some images to show you their front covers which are creativley designed creativley by Chris Drury

I really like the album covers that are designed by Chris Drury, there are in keeping with the genre of music and also with each of the musical artists profession, keeping the theme quite street hip-hop but also including bass instruments with I think give the cover a great effect.

 

Group Animation

Here is a picture of the ideas that we as a group had come up with during a workshop. The goal was to pick a single logo and also an image from given sheets and create an animation using both of the images. As a group of 6 we were each given 24 frames to draw in order to complete the animation and run it smoothly either using Photoshop or another program. This will be uploaded shortly in time when all frames are complete.

Song to animate to

This is my song that I have to create a 20-30 second animation along to for my project. I think that the song is really abstract as the beginning of the song starts with a narrator which sounds quite old time theatre which then leads into a hip hop genre but then suddenly falls into a quite dull repetition followed on by a SCI-FI finish. Although the song is named How To Smoke I don't think that my final outcome will be produced to do with smoking as I think that my chosen audio slot will be between 1:20-2:00 during that time slot where I think that I have a better chance of communicating with the audio and producing a better piece of animation whether it be photographic or illustrative.
Here is the song to give you a better idea of what I am working with.

Inspiration

Here are some videos that I would like to just start off my blog to my new project print to pixel. These videos that I am going to include are just a couple of videos that inspire me to create my very own animation to a given song for my project at university. 

Some of the videos that I've included in this post are pretty much how I would like to produce my animation or along them lines.