Podcast Assignment

 

Scientific and Creative Learning: An out of classroom learning environment

                For the group podcast assignment I was in a group with Tara Simons, Sarah-Jayne Beynon and Sheridan Wood. For our podcast assignment, me, Sheridan, Tara and Sarah-Jayne decided that we wanted to do our podcast on the Waterfront Museum in Swansea.

"The National Waterfront Museum tells the story of industry and innovation in Wales, now and over the last 300 years." (Museums Wales)

                Once all four of us had some spare time, we went down to the museum, where we walked ourselves around, took pictures and videos and looked at the different activities.   We decided we would only use Sheridan's phone for this so it would be easier to upload on to the computer  to put it all together.  On our first visit to the museum, we wanted to ask a member of staff a series of questions to help u with our podcast but as no one was available at the time we arranged to come back within a week. Sheridan took the phone number so she could phone and arrange at time that suits them best, as well as us.

                On our second visit to the Waterfront Museum, we spoke to one of the gentlemen that worked there called Ian Smith. We found a nice place to interview him, I interviewed Ian Smith while Sheridan videoed the interview. I asked him three questions. Once we had finished Sheridan went home to add the video to the podcast that we had already started. As we couldn't upload the video, we had to record it from Sheridan's phone to the laptop. As the recording was bad, we had to repeat what Ian Smith said, so people could understand what was said.

                We needed to finish our podcast, so me, Tara and Sarah-Jayne went over Sheridan's. While at Sheridan's we searched for research on museums and on how the government helps museums, concentrating more on the welsh government.  While at Sheridan's we all took it in turns to video ourselves saying certain information on the Waterfront Museum as well as voice over's on certain pictures to explain what they are and what they do.  We also explained how it helped children with their innovation skills.

                 I did some research on the Welsh Government site and found out that the National Museum Wales was founded by Royal Charter in 1907 and now has 7 sites, one of these including the Waterfront Museum. All 7 of the sites are free entry which has had an impact on all of the museums including the Waterfront Museum. Once I researched all the information that I needed too, I videoed myself on Sheridan's laptop and added it to the podcast.  (Welsh Government, 2014)

Here is the link to our Podcast:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTZb9rD0AgI&feature=youtu.be

Bibliography

Museums Wales. (n.d.). Retrieved February 18, 2015, from National Waterfront Museums: http://www.museumwales.ac.uk/swansea/about/

Welsh Government. (2014, November 19). Retrieved February 18, 2015, from National Museum Wales: http://wales.gov.uk/topics/cultureandsport/museumsarchiveslibraries/acnmw/?lang=en

Peer review of animation assignments

As part of our assignment, we had to present our animation in front of the education futures class and choose one animation that you would like to review in your blog.

 

The animation that I am going review is Sam and Sam's animation.

 

The reason why I picked this animation was because I thought it was one of the best and it was one animation that stayed in my head. The animation was made up of little balls of clay, blue and green, the animation starts off with one blue ball and one green ball. These two balls end up fighting and then they both call in their 'army's' which is about 6 balls of clay of each colour, these balls of clay start jumping around and going to war with each other until they form a big ball which then changes in to a globe, showing that it is better to work together then to work against each other. The message I got from the animation was that world peace is what we need and that working together is better instead of doing on your own or working against each other. There was no sound effects or talking throughout the animation just backing music but I think this was enough as if there was sound effects that it would catch your attention.  I also think the backing music was perfect and set it off perfectly which was 'Better Together' by Jack Johnson.

You seen in the animation that there was a lot of work in to it and also the skills that both Sam's had was definitely shown in throughout the animation. Sam and Sam didn't use Zu3D like a lot of the other students including myself. They used an app off a mobile phone called Stop Motion Studio. I know that with talking to Sam and Sam that they have difficulties using these app but it was nice to hear the tell us the difficulties they had and how they overcome them. For me, I don't think this could have been any better, it was a simple looking animation but a effective one, which expressed its message perfectly.

 

Here is the address for Sam Whites Blog to see the final animation:

http://samwhitep132490.blogspot.co.uk/

Animation Blog - Evalution

While doing our blog, Tara and I hit many hurdles that we either had to jump over or that we had cut out and think something else up. To start off, our main problem was that we didn’t think of a story board before we started our animation, we only thought of a couple seconds and thought as we went through, were I think that if we would have planned it before hand, that not only would the animation be more clear that it would have been easier for myself and Tara while doing the animation. If we would have planned it better also it would have run smoother for us. When it comes to the characters, we already knew that we wanted to use clay but yet again if we planned it better than we could have decided if there was another material that would have helped us or that would have been better with the animation that we were making.

Within our animation, we wanted to try and show the difference in days with our backgrounds and lighting but because we changed rooms half way through the animation it meant that we had different lighting in the beginning compared to the end. With moving the clay, we had to be very careful with our shadowing, which was really hard to towards the end of the animation because the day had gone to night we had to turn on the light but then this changed the lighting all over again as well as putting our shadows in the frames.

As we were worried we wouldn’t have enough time and started without really planning things out, I think that if we did actually plan a storyboard we would have thought about the materials more, where we might not have used clay. Even though was good as we needed our characters to move around a lot when moving them too much we ended up with the characters falling apart which meant it took us more time as we had to model them back to what they looked like in the beginning.

Another problem that we had was as it was a group assignment, when me and Tara were trying to find the time together it was becoming more difficult as we were very rarely free at the same time, which meant that were spending a lot of time on it over many days when we could fit in as were if it was an individual task it would have been a lot easier for myself as well as Tara as we could have done the animation when we were free instead of relying on each other.

Another problem we faced was the sound, we recorded music from YouTube for our intro and credits so we recorded it on Audacity saved it to my laptop and then put it on to Zu3D but what we didn’t know was once we tried to play it on a different computer that it wouldn’t play due to the actual recording not being on the computer.

I think that if I was going to make an animation myself again, I would make sure that I plan it out better and I would make sure that I had a story board in place before I decided what materials to use and what I would want in the background. I don’t think I would use Zu3D again, it is designed for children and I think with an adults head it made it a lot harder to use.

In this picture, I am remodelling 'Roxanne' because when we kept moving her she kept falling apart.

 

 

Animation Blog - The final animation

After over 800 frames, a lot of work and dedication, re-modelling 'Roxanne' and 'Royston' we final have a final animation. Once we had taken all the frames we needed and put the sound in were it would fit. It was last minute that we decided to add the music 'Roxanne' by The Police as it was missing something by putting in this music it made our story come more to life.

There is a certain part of the song which we believed fit in well with our story that is why there is only a certain part of the song. This part of the song was:

"Roxanne you don't have to wear that dress tonight, walk the streets for money, you don't care if it's wrong or right"

Just with this line in the animation, it made more sense of our animation and was very apt. To add this song in, we had to record it from our mobile phones on a application called audacity, which we then saved in it and out it on to Zu3D. The sound affects that we used on the animation  come from YouTube were we recorded them off our phones then straight on to Zu3D.

This picture is from the final scene, this is showing how far 'Roxanne' has come from the beginning scene.

Animation Blog - Step Five

To make animation come to life there was certain objects that we needed to use that we wouldn't be able to make out of clay, the main objects that we use were two toy cars, trying to make these out clay was impossible and would have been very time consuming. The reason why we used two toy cars was to get the impression that it was two different people and 'Roxanne' was involved in even though the first car the person that was in it never showed their identity.

The other main element to make our animation come to life was the sound, we added in sound effects, when she was walking, also when the cars were driving we had the sound effect of a car driving and the horn tooting. We put 'Roxanne' by The Police at the beginning of the animation and at the end.




 
 

Animation Blog - Step Four

Within our animation we had three different backgrounds to create three different scenes. The first background we used was the orange brick affect. This was to give off the effect that she was down a alley way or a lane, to make it look more real, we added props in that Tara had made which were the wheelie bin, black bags and alcohol bottles. This was the scene that we wanted to show people how 'Roxanne' lived on the street and slept on the street where she could.

 

The second scene we used was the night scene with the shops and the lamp posts, we used this background to try and show the audience that it was going from day to night while she was driving around in the car. This scene was not in our animation long as we just wanted to give off the illusion that it was night time. Even though it was on black paper to show it was night time, we also wanted it to show how much trouble 'Roxanne' was in and her feelings that is why we only used white chalk instead of using all colours to make it colourful.

The final background that we used was the garden background, with this background we wanted to show how bright the colours were, to show that 'Roxanne' had started a fresh and the colours resembled how happy she was and how better her life was now that she had met 'Royston'. It showed her happy as can be watering plants which was her new hobby.

 

 

Animation Blog - Step Three

To start off the animation we needed to have set our scenes up and get the camera in place. To make sure that the camera wouldn’t move we used blue tac to keep it in place, this would make it easier for us. We couldn’t make all of our props so we did have two toy cars that we incorporated in different scenes. While making the scenes we did struggle with ‘Roxanne’ and ‘Royston’ as they were both made out of clay, when we moved them a lot they tended to break especially when we had to make ‘Roxanne’ sit down, so after certain scenes we did have to either mould them back together or take them apart and start again.

 

As the scenes went on, we were thinking of certain scenes off the top of our heads that we wanted to incorporate that we thought would be an better idea then what we had already discussed and looking back at the animation now it think we were right. Throughout the animation, we wanted to show the audience of ‘Roxanne’ moving from scene to scene to make it look like days were passing to make it look like we were looking at ‘Roxanne’s’ life for longer than just a day.

Animation blog - Step Two

Stage two of our stop-motion animation

Once Tara and I had decided our topic for our animation we needed to think about making our characters so we could make our stop – motion animation come to life. We both decided that it would be best if used play dough/clay so when moving our characters in the animation it would be easier to move and adjust them. At the beginning, we started off with a female character, she was the main character and we named her Roxanne, as we worked through our animation we added in a second character, this character was male and we named him Royston. When it came to making the cast and the props, we decided that I would make the characters and that Tara would make the props like the wheelie bin and black bags.

 

While we were making the characters we also had to think of the plot and the props that we would need to make animation more real. We decided that the story would start off with showing a typical day in ‘Roxanne’s’ life, which would include ‘looking’ for work, drinking and sleeping on the streets down a lane. We knew that we couldn’t just do two minutes of ‘Roxanne’ so this was when we incorporated ‘Royston’. ‘Royston’ would find ‘Roxanne’ sleeping on the streets and want to help her build her life back and get on the straight and narrow. The final scene of stop-motion animation would be showing ‘Roxanne’ over her addiction, and living her life with her new found hobby gardening. The message that we were trying to get across was that everyone needs help once in a while, there is help out and no one is on their own.

Animation Blog - Step One

"Stop Motion Animation is a technique used in animation to bring static objects to life on screen. This is done by moving the object in increments while filming a frame per increment. When all the frames are played in sequence it shows movement. Clay figures, puppets and miniatures are often used in stop motion animation as they can be handled and repositioned easily. " http://www.techopedia.com/definition/109/stop-motion-animation

Once Tara and I had decided we were going to work together, we decided what the best topic for our stop-motion animation would be. We wanted to use a topic that would be affective and would teach the children something useful for life. As students we needed to think outside the box to make sure that the audience would understand our message, this is then when we came up with the idea to do our topic on alcohol abuse. The reason why we chose this topic as we believed it was a well-known problem to people, we also wanted to show the signs to our audience on how a problem can get worse.

 

Alcohol abuse means drinking excessively, drinking more then what the recommended limits of alcohol consumptions. Alcohol abuse can lead to number of health problems which can affect you physical and mentally, such as alcohol poisoning, cirrhosis of the liver, inability to work and socialise and destructive behaviours, such as drink-driving.

A problem with alcohol starts with the increase amounts of alcohol you take in. The three main risk categories based on how much you drink, that can be used to help judge your own level of risk, are lower-risk, increasing risk and higher-risk.