Evaluation

Evaluation

The aim of the animation was to find a recent news story and base a narrative around that, being inspired by something that is happening in the world. In doing so I have been able to demonstrate my skills in story telling and animation techniques, as well as finding new ways to further improve my skills. When deciding on a news story I started looking into the conflict in Syria and finding out about the situation there and how it has effected peoples lives, focusing on how it has effected children who have been caught up in the conflict, who's lives have been completely changed by it. When researching into this I found the story of a young boy who had been caught up in this horror, the boy was talking about his experience and what he had seen, how confusing it all was and some of the terrible things he had to go through to survive, such as hiding in a car full of bodies, he also went on to say that since he got to the refugee camp he was told to keep quiet and not talk about the things that had happened. As a result of this I came with a rough narrative I wanted to explore in response to this boys experience. I decided my characters would be 2 brothers who live in Syria and the confusion and horror of what they are going through because of the conflict. I image the desperate state of mind that these people must be in as a result of the sights they've seen, which too often, are the consequence of major conflicts involving civilian populations. To get across my ideas I designed the brothers in a childish style, being quite simplistic. I decided that the children should have no mouth in response to what the boy I have based the story on said about having to keep quite, I feel that representing this by them having no mouths would reflect upon what the situation is like and how their not supposed to talk about it. I also made the decision that instead of having soldiers I would have the turn into monsters, this is to show the horror and confusion of the children and how horrific this experience is for them. Once I had my idea I drew out a rough storyboard to start out with, taking time to think of how I wanted to portray the narrative. After a few alterations to develop the story into something I was happy with, I was ready to begin making my animation. I decided that I was going to hand draw my animation but use my Photoshop skills to compile the elements together. The process for doing this was to first design each character and then, using tracing paper, draw out each frame for each little movement that I wanted, cutting out the previous drawing then tracing over it, slightly changing it for each frame. The way I am doing this allowed me to only need to draw out movements once and then I would be able to reuse them if I wanted, even so it takes a long time to get a simple movement in animation and so I spent a lot of time drawing out different characters and monsters, figuring out how they would move and react to what's around them. When designing the monsters I had to think about how each of them would move in a way that suited each design, weather it be that they walked in a certain way or even if they float and how they would appear. Each movement had to be drawn very carefully lining up as best I could with the previous frame, for example, a running animation for the children I would line up and draw out things that wouldn't need to change such as the head and then draw out the things such as arms and legs which would move slightly to create the next frame to give the appearance the character is running when all the frames are played together, each step taking a total of 6 frames, 12 frames for the whole running cycle. Once I had drawn out everything I wanted, the backgrounds and frames, some from different angles so the character could turn around, I scanned each set of characters into my computer. I then took them into Photoshop, where using my skills I was able to clean up the images so I could get them how I desired, editing brightness and contrast so the lines would show better, for the backgrounds and characters, then removing blank space around the characters, using the magic wand tool to delete it, so I could simply select the movement I wanted. Once I had everything as I wanted I was ready to start putting together the animation. Still using Photoshop I composed each frame by starting out with a background and then going and copying a movement from each character that would be in the scene and pasting them on top of the background in layers, editing the size of each character as they needed to fit into the scene, to represent depth. Each frame I had to select the next movement for each character in that scene and line it up with the previous movement, then moving it slightly and deleting the old movement once in place, I had to make sure they where the same size and right place so the animation would run smoothly. After composing a frame I then saved each time as a JPEG file and named each a number so I knew what order they would be played in, saving them as a JPEG allows me to take the now flattened frame into Movie maker where I put the frames together. The technique of using layers in Photoshop in not too different than how animation used to be created without computer technology, Photoshop makes this process easier but the idea of layering the components on top of each other is the same, as animation studios such as Studio Ghibli or Disney used to work by hand drawing the backgrounds and characters separately, layering each character on top of the background and taking a photograph to create a frame, more recent animations may have been created using software such as Adobe Maya, although some are still made using older techniques. However the process is still very long, as there are a few stages to it, from the drawing to editing in Photoshop and compiling each frame together all take a long time to do. there are some limitations with this technique, you need to know exactly how you want to compose each scene once in Photoshop, as if anything needs altering you have to go back to hand drawing for the most part, there are some basic workarounds in Photoshop you won't always be able to get the effect as desired, for example if you wanted a scene in a certain angle, say looking up at a character, this would have to be hand drawn before hand as even with the tools in Photoshop that allow you to alter how you would at an object or character it wouldn't have the desired effect. On a couple of occasions I did have to go back to hand drawing a few things, there is a scene in my animation that has silhouettes, while changing the colours in Photoshop is easy enough, it leaves the image rather undesirable taking away from the stylised look I was going for, so I went back and re-drew some basic standing poses for a human character and monsters but as a silhouette instead. After I had all the frames ready I took them into movie maker to create the animation. I selected a couple of songs and an explosion sound effect to add to my animation that I felt would fit with it. I placed the songs and sound in as needed, using movie makers 'split' tool to cut the sounds where needed I needed to so I could use the next one. I chose songs that would fit the mood of my animation so at the start it's quite happy, the 2 brothers playing and so I selected a happier song, and then explosion goes off and a sad song plays after that. I had some trouble with the explosion scene here, I had wanted it to be a white screen shaking, with the explosion sound effect in the background but because of the limitations in movie maker the best I could get was for the screen to flicker. I shortened each frame down so I had the animation running at about 12FPS (Frames Per Second) I changed this on some frames, by increasing their run time, to add a pause where needed, thanks to this my animation runs quite smoothly. If I where to do this again I would spend more time drawing out more frames for characters and drawing more backgrounds so I can get the scenes exactly how I want them, I would also spend more time thinking about the storyboard and how I would compose each scene before starting to work on the frames. I also would take more time to work on more frames and create more of them for each movement to have a better FPS. Overall I am happy with how my animation ahs turned out, the narrative changed slightly along the way because of some of the limitations and difficulties I faced but it didn't stray so far off that it became something else, I stuck with my idea and kept at it making it into what I wanted to produce. In the future I want to explore different animating techniques, using different computer software learning and finding new ways to improve my skills. In creating this animation I have gained a better understanding to the amount of work, time and effort that goes into creating an animation and how to do so, also improving my Photoshop skills along the way and finding ways to animate a character smoothly.

Flip Book & Thaumatrope

In this workshop I was to produce a Flip book and Thaumatrope animation, if possible relating in some way to my news story. To create a Flip book I had to fold the paper to be fairly small and cut it in a way that would allow me to put a flip book together and have usable. I came across a few problems along the way, the folding for a start was quite confusing but once I got through that more problems arose when it came to stapling  the book together on side, which was made impossible by thickness of the book. I also had to cut the edge so it would flip easily, this didn't work either, as the edges just became rough which made it had to use. In an attempt to fix this I tried using tape to stick the pages together loosely which didn't work well but it did the job. The main problem came to actually 'play' the animation, flip through the book, once I had drawn in each frame/page, instead I decided to show it off it would be best if I just took photos instead and so did so to run it better. I never finished the whole book as I came across these problems along the way, which too time to figure out but what ended up with is a simple look at what flip books are and how they work. If I where to do this again I would try finding a different method to actually make a flip book as this one didn't seem ti work well for me, it may be best to just buy a small sketch book or create something simpler and smaller so that it would work, such as folding a sheet of paper into small squares and cutting it up evenly, not too thick so I can staple it together or possible glue the top of every sheet, and make sure to cut it in a way that I can flip through easily.

A Thaumatrope is to images on either side of a small piece of paper that relate in some way and work together so that when you flip the paper one goes into the other, such as drawing a bird on one side and a cage on another, giving the appearance that the bird is in a cage. To try and relate this to my news story I decided to draw a bomb going off. I don't think mine worked so well, this is partly because I couldn't make sense of how to work it well in my head and I don't think the thing I chose to do worked so well. To make a Thaumatrope, you simply need to cut out a small piece of paper, I used a circle to create mine, as most seem to do, but it can work with other shapes and even more pictures. The basic is to have 2 pieces of paper the same size that flip into each other, more pieces can be used for a more complicated piece. You then stick these 2 pieces of paper together on a stick so that you can flip it easily and then just twirl the stick in your hand and it should create some kind of animation/illusion based on what you have drawn.

Studio Ghibli

Studio Ghibli is a Japanese film company who create wondrous and magical fantasy animations, such as spirited away. Ghibli films are mainly created using a hand drawn technique, only rarely using CGI (Computer Generated Imagery). For this every single frame has to be drawn out by animators before putting it together to create the animation, there is a lot more to it than just this though. Each scene must be drawn out, frame by frame, it is then transferred onto carbon sheets before being burnt onto transparent cells. This is when color is added using water color paints. Backgrounds are created separately from characters, the cells are then placed onto the corresponding backgrounds and each frame is shot individually. It is then the job of the editor to sync up the actions with sounds, such as speaking, the timing must be precise as the images must match the dialogue/sounds accordingly. Everything is then put together creating the final outcome. Studio Ghibli films are made for entertainment with original stories. In the case of Spirited Away the story is very magical and entertaining, the feeling of the film is quite mysterious as a lot of the things going on can be confusing at first as well as wondrous and exciting. I plan on creating my own animation using a hand drawn technique, while I will make mine in a much more simple style, I really enjoy the movies Studeo Ghibli creates and love the art style of them, with beautiful scenery and interesting characters. I am also planning on having monsters in my animation, some of the inspiration for this comes from some of the creatures that appear in Studio Ghibli movies, such as the character No Face from Spirited Away.

This quote is an extract from an article I found describing the work that Studio Ghibli puts into creating a  animated movie.
"The majority of Studio Ghibli films are made using traditional animation techniques. So what does this mean? EVERY SINGLE FRAME is hand-drawn by animators, before being put together to give the illusion of movement and create the film. This is a very repetitive and time-consuming process but the studio’s co-founder Hayao Miyazaki believes that “hand drawing on paper is the fundamental of animation”."

Student Led Workshop


We were split into groups and given a subject within animation to teach to the rest of the class. My group had to teach how to edit using Windows Live Movie Make and iMovie. To do so we came up with tasks for each group member and planed out how the lesson would go. I focused on learning all I could about the software and producing a little example on what could be done with it and having to plan a little demo of how to use it, while the others worked on producing a PowerPoint presentation as well as handouts.

Editing is an important part of animation as it sets the pace of it and adds more details, as well as helping set the tone and mood for the overall animation. It is important to use editing to help create to atmosphere wanted and polish off all the final details.

Hand Drawn Animation

For this workshop we were to make a simple hand drawn stick figure animation in pairs. Me and my partner came up with a narrative based upon his news story, the narrative was about these islanders who appeared normal and sophisticated but are actually crazy. We never got the animation finished as we attempted more than we could handle and what we did end up with was a very basic introduction to hand drawn animation with very little variety. Although unfinished this project showed us how hard animating can be and how much work needs to be done to create an animation. The technique we used was to draw out everything on to a thin piece of transparent paper and then trace over it on a similar sized piece and then take a picture of each frame. With this technique adding too much detail, as we did, is extremely time consuming! However with the ability to draw whatever comes to mind it is a very open way to create an animation. There are better ways this kind of thing can be done so you wouldn't have to draw out everything on each frame using a program such as Photoshop may help shorten the time, another way may be to use the paper differently, such as drawing a background on one piece and a character on other pieces and moving them around on the background. However with this technique there are many ways that you could present your animation in, the way we did t was to move previous frames away after use, although leaving them in and maybe moving the position of the next frame and camera could leave a trail behind.

Lotte Reiniger

The videos above show the work of Lotte Reiniger, the first is an example of her work, the second showing how she actually made her animations. She is an animator who worked with shadow puppet animation, focusing on stories such as fair tales or folk-lore. She used pins in black card to move limbs, her narrative was told through the movements of characters. The designs also held a big part in her work each character needs to be distinct and match their role in the story, with little detail because of the materials used. To crate her animations she cut out charters and background details from black card. Each character would be cut into different pieces, separating limbs, such as arms be cut away from the body and then she would pierce a pin through the arm and body where they would join which allows for movement, she would do this with every limb. She puts together the the scene on to a light box, and then adds characters into it slowly moving them bit by bit and taking a picture for each frame. In the Hansel and Gretel story, as seen above, there are characters such as the children (Hansel & Gretel) as well as the witch as well as animals such as a squirrel. The scenery is of a forrest and a house, the witches house and cages. The images se has used are her interpretation of the fairytale Hansel and Gretel. The typography in the animation is used to introduce the story and credit the the work, animating and design as well as voices and music within the animation. She would have made these animations to entertain an audience. Because of the style of the animation the shots are limited, only using a side view of the scene, this is because of the limitations with this technique, using a variety of shots with different angles could wreck the narrative and confuse the viewer. I have experimented with shadow puppet animation, i made my characters quite simple in comparison to Lotte but have tried to make my characters distinctive. I used the same techniques she has to create the animation, I decided on a fairly simple story, Instead of using a light box I just placed my components together and moving characters slowly taking pictures with a camera for each frame.