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.

 

Sound.....

"Sound effects play an important role in conveying action. Music helps express emotion." Michael Geisler

I once got told that if you take music from a horror movie that it would no longer be scary... this is very true. Michael Geisler says that music helps express emotion, without there being music you can't hear what anyone is trying to express, or what the feeling the person is trying to give off, or even what scene they are trying to set. With the music it makes your mind think about what will be happeneing next....

Our group praxinoscope.

After being put in to different groups we all got allocated a different camera-less animation to create in our groups. Our group got given the praxinoscope, this consists of a rounded mirror in the centre of a spinning surface with a pictures of animation that gives the illusion the image is moving. The image we chose was an angry bird knocking down the building and knocking over the piggy's.

Even though we didn't finish the image, we tried it out and it looks really good.

My not so great thaumatrope!!!

So as a pretty creative person I thought that when I got given the task to create my own thaumatrope I would do a pretty good job.... Oh how wrong I was. I decided that I wouldn't follow any instructions and try and do it myself, what a bad idea. Even though I was extremely proud of my drawings not happy that I buggered it completely but I still did step by step pictures of my own.

What went wrong?
I think the things that went wrong were my circle was too big, the wholes that I made in the side weren't in the centre and my pictures on both sides weren't level.