Week one- walk cycle task
Task
For the first week task we got to build some stickman models and had to animate a walk cycle.
Preparation
This was actually quite a challenge really since I hadn’t tried to do a walk.
I tried to remember back from when I was reading the animators survival kit which was very helpful. We went to the computer room to print off some key frame points in the walk for reference. We set up a background for our stickman to walk in front of which was a white card so that the stickman would show up more. Multiple people in our group did a slow walk as to show the key points in the walk and to show what a walk would look like.
I also timed using the tick tock technique from which I got from the survival kit book which is a rough guide to knowing when a second is passed. For the walk I realised that it took half a second per step (which was 6 frames since we were using doubles) so that we needed 6 frames per step. I had also brought some sticky pads as well since I knew the stickman wouldn’t stay up on its own.
Doing the task and problems faced
Doing the task turned out to be a lot harder than most of us expected because of the flow, the walk itself wasn’t that difficult it was trying to get the flow and make it look real. It didn’t help the fact that when you tried to move the arm of the stick figure all of it would move as well and wouldn’t stay in position, it would have been much better I thought if we had used a manikin instead because it would have been easier to manipulate, the sticky pads wasn't working so well so we got some blue tack instead, but then this tended to appear on the camera since you needed a lot to stick the figure down. We didn’t prepare about the lighting and how that would look and how we should set them up, after a while the lighting got warmer and so the background looked a different colour which was very visible in the animation. I think that we were following the reference guide too much as well because we were doing this animation using replacement animation we were getting the stick figures to look exactly like they were in the guide and when it didn’t look right we were wondering why and which one of the guide did we miss out instead of using them as just a guide as they were intended and use our knowledge for the rest of the way.
Conclusion
I think the end result of the animations went quite well for a first attempt really; it was good to work as part of a group to get other peoples insight on how they would do things and in places it helped solve problems.
What I would do next time though is plan a lot more, especially with the lighting and make a video reference because that would have helped see it objectively.
In the end we really didn’t use the guide which in a way was good because we were actually thinking about what we were doing. I would have liked to incorporate different camera angles in as well but for this task was just to get the walk right. More frames I think would have made it look better since the end result looked more like a slow run than a walk.
This task has definitely opened my eyes to how much planning needs to be put into the stop motion and everything even for a simple walk, but I learned a lot which is always good.
Week two- theme-wildlife
Task
For this week’s task in groups we had to come up with an idea for an animation based on some themes we were given the themes were:
1. Growth
2. Wildlife
3. Conflict
4. Dance
Preparation
We first of all had to come up with an idea, Rebecca came up with a idea with fishes in the sea, we all brainstormed and came up with a few more ideas but we decided that we would stick to this one, the storyline soon evolved into that the stickman is sitting in a chair on the beach he sees something in the water and goes to see what it is he is then engulfed into the water by a huge wave, it then goes from the 3d world into a 2d cut out world but the stickman is still 3d, he falls to the bottom of the sea and knocks his head on a oyster ( it was going to be a treasure chest at first) the oyster then opens and he sees a pearl, grabs the pearl and then gets excited before a fish swi.ms along and blows a bubble which the stickman gets trapped into but the pearl drops to the sea floor, he tries to get it but the bubble makes him float away.
We had made a treatment from what was going to happen in the story.
A storyboard was going to be needed to help plan out the story with timing and set out the different camera angles we were going to use.
Then we had to get materials, I had brought the sand along and the wire for making the chair which leshika made and we put some fabric over it.
We knew from the first task that blue tack was pretty good at sticking things down so we got some of that. The first scenes where the man was on the beach wasn't that hard really so we mainly concentrated on the scene where the man goes into the sea, we got loads of images together from the internet of tropical fish which we then we picked some and drawn them out on paper and coloured them and cut them out.
We got loads of images of a sea floor so that we could get a pretty realistic looking sea floor, we thought it would be good if we had a light blue colour at the top and used a gradient to make it dark blue at the bottom to show depth. We looked at different things that we could put on the sea floor once we got the colour right, coral, some sea floor fish.
We settled to have a shipwreck at the bottom of the sea too to add more depth and realism to it. The background took a while to do which leshika did on Photoshop while we were telling her what it needed to look better.
We then set up the set and figured out where the lights were going to go in terms of the set, we had put tape on the floor so that we knew where the lights were supposed to go if they were accidently moved or if it took longer to shoot and if we had to leave it.
Doing the task and Problems
There was a lot more preparation for this project but it just seems that you just can’t do enough, we didn’t really prepare how things we going to stick properly because of the sand, so what we had to do was move a bit of sand out the way and blue tack the character down then move the sand back to how it was, which you can never get it perfect, the chair moved slightly as we were animating the stick figures, as with the first project working on such a small scale made it harder to animate but using a bigger figure would have required a bigger set and we really didn’t have the room so we continued on.
The walk was quite hard to do especially because we was trying not to accidently nudge anything in the process, also because we had placed the lights close to create nice shadows it was quite a struggle to work for long under the heat which would make your hands sweaty.
We should have had the chair stuck down a lot better since it kept moving as we were nudging it when we were animating also we couldn’t really mark were the stickman or the chair was so if we knocked them both a lot or even one we had to rely on using the camera to get the figure in the right place again.
We then changed the camera angle to do the next part of the scene but when we took a picture it was too bright and looked all wrong so that we had to spent a long time trying to get the lighting right, what we didn’t realise is that the main lights above we on during the first camera angle shot but then after a break the main ones were switched off which affected the lighting also. So we should off thought about the lighting for different camera angles.
Lighting was also a problem for the underwater sequence to, since the lights got hot and the colour of the background changed, from now on we would have to switch off the lights whenever we didn’t need them on.
We should have planned out more about the size in the underwater scene, since we printed off a a2 picture off the background but it was too small to do the shooting on mainly because the day before sum of the fish had been created but we decided to go home and do the rest which meant when we got in the next day we had very big fish because we didn’t decide on how big the background was going to be, we worked our around it though by putting the small fish at the top and using the bigger fish when the figure got closer to the bottom of the sea.
We also decided that we would have moving parts on the fish like the fins and stuff but we didn’t think too clearly about how we should connect them, at first we said we would use split pins but they would show up too much on set, then we tried using wires and that just didn’t work and in the end I said that maybe we should just use blue tack, we should have done a test really of using the moving parts on the fish as in the video you can’t really make out that the fins are moving anyway so it was pretty needless really.
For the first scene we was working pretty much blind really using the digital camera, flicking through the pictures to see if it looks right which is a ok indicator but not fool proof but on the underwater scene we had used a dv camcorder and used istopmotion which was a lot quicker and better for spotting mistakes and to get the whole flow for the animation timing, it would definitely be the way I would consider doing my next stop motion task.
Conclusion
I liked this task because I got a lot of insight of what sort of things can go wrong on set and what I need to think of next time I'm shooting something.
One of the other things I did like as well as we didn’t really have roles in the group no one was assigned anywhere we all just moved around getting to grips with everything, I was mainly doing the lighting and camera work though but we all had a chance at everything which was good since none of us knew really which area we were totally suited, which I think is great especially if we decided to do a film independently and we all learned a lot, especially about the lighting which really does have a huge impact on the whole feel of the animation and getting that right is a art in itself, now I know why in big films there’s so many people for lighting. The end result of the animation looked good, it flowed pretty well, leshika did the backgrounds on Photoshop after too but we were included in it too about the whole feel and the way it should look.
I think if we had planned better we maybe would have had more time to spare to redo the end of the underwater scene because of the light is was too bright on the character and hard to make out what the character is doing properly and I would have made the scene plan out longer so that the audience would have longer to get to grips with what is happening.
Week three
Task
For this week’s task we had to make three facial expressions out of plasticine and take pictures of them using different lighting.
Preparation
For this task we were allowed to design pretty much anything so first of all I had to think about what I was going to do, I liked the idea of doing animals since it was something different, my first idea was to do an elephant, but then I thought I would do a mouse since that creating expressions for the elephant might be hard and modelling the nose might be difficult, I could use wire to help it stay in place but I didn’t have much to hand at the moment so I thought a mouse would be better for now.
Doing the task and problems
As I have been modelling I wanted to do a more expressive range of faces so I choose to do smiling, sad and shocked. One problem that I faced after doing the first one and when I started doing the second one it was hard to get the ears the right size and shape; because I used beads for the eyes they were fine. I had to try and rip equal bits off and try and get the ear in the same shape and size.
Another problem I had was the whiskers, I could either use the modelling tool to make the whiskers or use the plasticine to make them. I decided to use plasticine; it was hard to get the whiskers to stay on the nose so then I had to use wire to get them to stay in place better, the only problem with that was that the whiskers was double the size I wanted them to be because of the wire inside.
I then after modelled them all, I went to take pictures of them, I went on the internet to help me with the lighting, it said to use 4 lights, one as a fill, one for softening the shadows, one as a background light and one to light up the characters.
When I got to the lighting bit I couldn’t get hold of three extra decent lighting so I just stuck with one, I had loads of lamps in the house but it would be hard to direct the actual light to create different lighting so I stuck with just the one lamp but I was still able to create different types of lighting which was good, but I think using the 4 light method would be better though because of the harsh shadows created which would be fine if that's what I wanted to create a more drearier place but wouldn’t be necessary in most of the shots that I wanted. I was able to create better mood than I thought but it was mostly either happy or sad scenes because the lights were either light or dark, which was because I only used one lamp so I didn’t have much contrast for the shots so it went in just one direction or the other.
Conclusion
The main problem like I said before was just due to lack of proper equipment I couldn’t really create much mood because I needed more contrast in the lights so what I need to do is get more proper equipment and then try more lighting effects out also do more research into how other stop motion films created certain effects that you have seen on them.
Week 4
Task
The task for this week was to create a armature
Preparation
For this task I had already looked at some books including cracking animation by peter lord and nick park, also crafts skills for stop motion and the animation bible had a bit of information about how to create a armature in the applications section.
These books are good because they show you in depth how to create an armature the best one being the crafts skills for stop motion.
So I got some materials to make the armature including 2mm wire, epoxy putty that hardens the areas that didn’t need to move, some plasticine (I got some super sulty because it looked more skin toned), some wood blocks for the feet and some m4 nuts and bolts to screw into the base of the feet to help stick the feet down when the character was on set.
Then I made a design, I knew that I wanted to make a human character so I made a design about how big the character was going to be and what the armature was going to be like when I made it.
Doing the task and problems
Once I had the design down on paper about how the armature was going to look like I started making the armature, I used a power drill to twist the wire; I folded two pieces of wire then put one end in the drill and had some pliers holding the other end and then pressed the drill to turn the wire slowly.
Once I had made the wire, I used the design to help me put it together, I used milliput epoxy putty which you have to mix two parts together and then in about 3 hours it goes solid onto the parts of the body that wouldn’t need to move just so it would make the frame a lot stronger, after the putty hardened I then put masking tape all over the model so that it doesn’t need so much plasticine so that the overall weight of the model would be less, the wire when bent wouldn’t stick through the plasticine when it would be put on and that the plasticine would stick better to the masking tape rather than the wire.
Then I started to build a layer of plasticine up onto it, the first couple of layers you could still notice the putty underneath, I wanted a pretty average build for my model.
After finishing putting the plasticine on got a small foam ball for a head which I attached to the top and covered it in plasticine, I then made hands which I used polymorph which is mouldable plastic which you put in boiling water and when you take it out it hardens as it dries, I then used thin bits of wire for the fingers and covered them all in plasticine, I then cut two bits of wood to rectangle shapes for the feet, I used a screwdriver to make a hole in them so that my wire would fit in the wood feet. I then brought some fabric to make clothes which I'm not too good at so I'm going to have to research how to make clothing to help me with that. This is as far as I have gotten.
Conclusion
The whole process itself I enjoyed because I like making things starting off with just materials and then seeing what can be made, it did take a lot longer than I had anticipated though especially putting the plasticine on and trying to smooth it all out, the hardest thing about the whole process was the hands I think because I needed to plan them out more, I really didn’t think about hands when I did the original design which was to my downfall, the hands were ok it was just mainly the fingers, I made them to size but I didn’t realise how much I would have to embed them into the polymorph for them to stay and not move so the fingers ended up looking really small so it looked odd, I also need to think more about how if I wanted to move the fingers because I would have to make them a lot bigger if I wanted them fully mobile and be able to see the small movements in the camera action when I use it to film, I thought that I could use some snipe nosed pliers to help bend the fingers but obviously don’t want to bend them too much over wise I will risk them breaking.
Overall though the research that I did into making the armatures and the books made making the armature a success and that I wasn't going into making it blindly, so the research paid off.
I just need to think more about the measurements of everything and see if it will work, and learn how to make clothes for the models so that they look more real.
