Filiming - Narrative

As we have been editing, we found that we have got enough footage for it just to be a music video with the band singing. To make the music video more interesting we decided to add a narrative to the video, for this Scott and I listened to the song again and thought about the key words in the song and how we could create a narrative and what it would be a about. I also contacted the band to see what the main theme to the song is. However as they aren’t very good at getting back it touch, we went along with what we could really understand from the lyrics. We understood that it was about a girl and how he used to be dating this girl and they didn’t really know where their relationship is now. From this we decided we would film me as I am the only girl in the group. Now we had an idea of our narrative, we needed to think about location, props and costume. As we didn’t have much time left to create the narrative we thought about an area close to college and then we thought about one of the quiet areas of the college where there is lots of Greenland and willow trees. This fits with the idea that the girl is lost and doesn’t understand what is happening with their relationship.  Also from listening to the lyric of the song there is a lot about phoning and talking. We thought we could add in that the girl keeps checking her phone to see if he has called. I then needed to think about clothing, I thought about shorts and a formal t-shirt but I thought this wasn’t in the theme of the music video in the end I went for a very simple jump suit so the audience could do the thinking about the girl rather than having a bold outfit on which could influence them.

On the day of filming Dan stayed to edit the footage and me, Doug and Scott went to film. Scott was filming, Doug directing and I was acting. We went to the location planned and first of all we decided to do the shots that related to the song. One of the lyric is " we keep going round in circles” for this I stood still while Scott went around me with the camera. We also had another idea where the band members walk into the studio and that in the editing we would cut in some footage of the girl walking around as well. As the band is performing they are thinking about the girl. We also did lots of different shots of the girl in different places and her checking her phone and then throwing it away in anger.

I think the filming went well we could have done some more planning, however as we didn’t have much time I think the narrative will now give a different element to the music video. It will also make it more interesting to watch for the audience. We should have done the narrative sooner as we might find when editing in the narrative to the music video that we are missing something and we might not have time to add any other ideas.

Progress Report

This week after filming we have been busy getting everything together to make our final video. Doug has been editing the fottage together with help from Dan, with two people working on the editing it helps make the video better because more ideas are getting raised. We have had some problems with the footage as Doug started creating the music video at home then carrying it on at college, however the computer couldn't recognise the file. This meant we had to start importing the files again into Final Cut, although each time you import a file the clip has to  be rendered. With the higher size clips the longer it takes to render, at one time it took 40 mintues so this was taking up a lot of our editing time. This has set us back a while and off schedule, but over the next few weeks we hope to catch up.
 After filming last week we asked the band to record the song so it would be easier to edit and the sound quailty would be better. However when going to get the song they hadn't recorded it because of a mess up with the studio. We have now set a new date to have it ready for us by the start of next week, and sorted out a time when the band can record the song together.
While sorting out these problems I have been making sure all our paper work is up to date such as the storyboards, shot lists and location sheet are all done and correct.

Day of filming

Today we did the filming for our music video, we had planned to start filming at 10.30. We had a few problems to start off with as one of the band members didn't get into college untill 11, however this did give us time to get some of the individual shots done of the others first. Our location didn't really stand out because we were just in a standard room however we might be able to do something in the editting and add some effects to make it stand out more.

 Another problem we had, we forgot to ask the band if they had a recording of the song they wanted to do, and they didn't but this wasn't a problem because they will be recording that next week and get it to us as soon as possible. Normally when you film a music video you play the recorded verison of the song and the band mime to the song and in the editting process you lip syinc the song with the filming. We will still do this it will just be a little bit harder to get the clips to fit with the filming. Once we had all the band members we started looking into how we wanted the video to work. We came up with the idea of the band walking into the rehersal and setting up their equipment and plugging in their guitars and getting ready to play their song.

Scott was filming all the footage, Doug was directing all the shots and I was making sure we had all the equipment to hand and all the band members knew what they were doing. Unfortunately Dan couldn't make the film as he was unwell.We had individual shots of the band and now we needed to do the shots of setting up, for this we did over the shoulder shots of the band walking into the room, and then another shot on the other side of the door of them coming into the studio. We also did close up shots of them plugging in their equipment. We then began filming the song a number of times each time changing where the camera was. On one of the takes we used the dolly, this is like a tripod however it's on wheels so you can move the dolly around while getting steady shots.

 The good thing about this band is they are easy to get hold of so if we wanted to get some more footage I think this would be easy to do. However if we did this again I would make sure we had a list with us of all the different shots we wanted to use, and got some more footage of the band messing around as this is what their fans would want to see.

No Band!

This week our band Forest have decided they can't do the music video anymore, as they can't all be free for one day as they all have exams and coursework to do. Instead of us trying to waste time to get the band together we have decided to contact other local groups.We have now had to search for some different bands. I have been looking at some local events and local gigs to find some bands I could contact. At a radio station where I volonteer, we have an unsigined chart this is where local bands enter a top 5 chart of Cambridge and see if they can stay in the top 5. From this I have contacted some bands and got response from the band called The Varsity that we could use. They were free later that night to film, however Scott and Dan weren't in college so they wouldn't have be able to film. It was also late for us to book equipment and know what sort of filming we wanted to do. We also wouldn't of have time to look into the song and think about shots for the music video. We have kept this band in mind incase anything goes wrong. We also asked at the college music department if they knew of a band we could use, they sugested a band called The post. They have rehearsal sessions on a Friday morning so we thought we would use this band as they are easy to get hold of and we can make the music video about the band and their rehearsals. Tonight we will be planning what shots and angles we will be doing. Also searching into the song and to see when to use particular shots

Equipment cost

Today I looked into how much it would be to hire a camera for our filming. We are alowed to use our college camera's but if we were doing it without the college we would have to think about a buget and cost of equipment. I looked on google and found a website that lets you rent out equipment, they had good prices however you couldn't rentout equpiment for just one day. Although this could be good if we forget something when filming we wouldn't have to worry not having the equipment long enough. Instead of using a large cannon camera we found a Canon 5D MKII this still gives high quaility footage just a smaller camera. This was £75.00 for 3 days this is a lot cheaper than other video cameras and this camera is meant for shooting short music videos.
We also thought we would need a tripod to get steady images of the band. We made sure we were looking at the right tripod to fit the camera this was £30 for 3 days.Also for our camera to work we would need a memory card when you hire the camera you get a battery and charger and a 8GB memory card however this might not be enough so we looked to see how much a  card with a bigger memory would be. We went for the highest memory card we could find which was 64GB.To make sure we would have enough space for all the footage this was £18.00. In total this all came to £123 for 3 days of filming.

Planning

Today we thought more about who we wanted for our band in our music video. As our groups have now changed, we looked back at our mindmap of the bands we knew of in Cambridge and looked at our shortlist. We then chose the band the Forest, this is a 5 piece band they have a number of tracks on sound cloud and do gigs around Cambridge. Forest don't have  a music video for any of their songs, so they are very interested in having a music video made for them. Scott is friends with the band so we have all been talking about ideas through Facebook. They gave us a song they wanted to be used, this is called The Great Green. To get us thinking more about how our music video could be presented we created a timeline for the song. While we all listened to the song we noted down on the timeline how long the intro is. For a music video to be powerful the introduction has to stand out. We knew had six seconds for an introdcution from doing the timeline. Then any thoughts we had on the song for example any key changes or any words that stood out and what could be a main feature in the video. For example there are some "ooh's" that really stand out and break from the main vocals so it would be good to do a close up on the singer at this moment. After doing this we thought there should be a narrative to parts of the music video and other parts being the band playing the song. We asked the band if the song had any meaning and if they had any ideas of what they would like the music video to be like. One idea that came up was using a hall ( that the band could get access to) and having an audience of toys. But the toys could attack the members of the band. We all liked the idea of the audience being toys but we didn't think we could make the toys move. Another idea we had was showing the band memebers one by one and showing their characters and roles in the band. They would then end up at a performance of theirs.

Research for music video

Today we started to think about our music video we are going to create. We then got into a group of four, me, Stephen, Doug and Scott. We got told that we would need to find a local bands in Cambridge and make a music video for them. Once we get a band that we can film we will need to find a time and place where to film the video. To start getting ideas for our music video and to find a band we could use we created a mind map of some local bands we knew and some we found online.  Stephen has a large knowledge in local bands as he has one himself, so using his band could be a good idea as we would know they would be reliable for filming. When finding a band we would make note of them and listen to what sort of genre of music they are. When we found bands or solo artits we liked we listed down what genre of music they were and what their band name is. Once we came up with some ideas of what we would like to do we made a short list from our mind map of: 

• Lewis Mokler
• Total Emergency 
• Alice Wilkinson 
• Prince Among Thieves 

Both Lewis and Alice are solo artits so would be easier to get than having the Prince among thieves as they are a large band. We then chose to focus on Lewis, Alice and Stephens band Total Emergency. Once we have come up with a final decision we will contact them and get an idea of when and where we can film.

Horror opening - animation

For our next task of animation we have to create a horror opening sequence for a film. In a task we had already done before we  hadlooked at old horror films and their openings. In our group we had all looked at a different films but in the end we chose to base the opening on the plauge of the zombies. We then started to think about what characters would fit wih this film and how we could animate them. We all did our own moodboard of ideas and then chose a character we would work on in final detial. Some of these were characters I made up and some I took from the film. I then picked a character from the film re-creating him to make him look more like an animated zombie and changing the colours of him. I drew him front on and got an idea of how he will look and how he might move. For him to move I needed to draw him from a side view, back view and from the front again. This was hard to know how a character would look from the side and how to draw it. I then did a colour version of him to bring the idea of the character to life and give a more detialed and intresting character. This image shows what my character will look like from the front, back and side.

Once I had drawn out all the ways my character would be seen I then decided I wanted my chatacter to walk as this is how I thought a zombie might move. I was given a silhouette of a character walking and I put this into photoshop and drew over it with my character. Then using the animation feature in phtotoshop I could see how he could move once I had drawn out all the frames for my character. For this I had to change the time between the frames so it would run smoothly. Once I had all my frames in black and white I created a new document and added colour to the frames and made him have more detial. This image is the frames in black and white as you can see I made my character more of a cartoon as I didn't want my character to look exactly the same as the character from the film.

 

 Once I had the frames for black and white and colour I created a document for my character to move across the page. I repeated the character loop twice so he would move across the page. To do this I had to make sure each frame was in the right place in reaction from the last frame and the next frame to come. Then again I made sure the character moved across the page smoothly changing the time between each frame to 0.2 seconds.

Now I had my character and he was animated I needed to think about the background he would walk on. To start with I designed a strip of what my background would look like, now I had an idea I wanted it to look like I then had to think about each layer of the background. This is to give it a 3D depth and not make the backgorund flat. In photoshop for my first layer I drew my moon in the middle of the strip of the background. This is my first layer because this is what would be seen furthest away in the background. My next layer I got an image from the internet which I copied to create a creepy fence however I left a gap in the middle for my gate to be on a different layer and closer to my character when he walk on the background. The thrid layer were my trees, for this I drew one and then copied the layer and made all the trees different sizes to create more depth. The next layer is the gate and a few grave stones to make it more of a horror background. For all of the layers I have added colour all of which are dark and gloomy to make sure it come across as a horror scene. Then my final layer is the ground which my chacter will walk across.

Blu style character

 
As I had already animated my character before, when I made my character loop without a background, I understood more about how the animation would work. I had problems understanding how to use the animation tool on Photoshop. One large problem I had was when I drew my character on paper I made the bat go off the page, so when this was animated the bat would go out of the shot to the left. This didn't work on my animation as I didn't have enough frames of the bat leaving the animation. So now it cuts off through the animation. Now I had my character I had to make it in the style of the artist Blu, he does his animation work on buildings and brick walls. For this I went around college and took photos of places I thought I could use for my background, however in the end because I didn't feel very confident with my animation I just used a simple plain wall background. I imported the image into Photoshop and made it my background layer. Then making sure I imported all my frames in Photoshop I could then think about the animation side. I did this creating a new frame for each of the new movements of the balloon. Once all the frames had been placed and the timing for them was right I could add a small amount of colour to my balloon, however I should of done this before I created the frames as I then had to add the colour to all of the frames. As this was one of my first pieces of animation I feel I have learnt from it a lot, at first I didn't understand how the animation would work. Once I had done a few frames on the animation tool in Photoshop and played it back I started to understand how animation worked. From doing this I think I have learnt that you really need to think about how the animation will work once you have drawn it, and what the motion of the character would be like.

Love Spin

This animation Love spin is done in a 3D rotating process, where for the first mintute and a half we see a blue figure sitting infront of what starts to be a plant pot and then involves to become other things. The scene builds up around him and then he starts to explore and we see more of the scene. For most of the track we see a street scene where there are other poeple doing activities and as the camera rotates round we see the characters evolve. They have done this by keeping you focused on the animation in front of you but behind the "plant pot" or dark area, the animation the viewer can't see is changing. Then we will soon see the characters changed or placed to a new set. This scene then returns to the original plant pot and we are introduced to a female figure, in the same way the scences were built up we couldn't see the scene being taken down.

 

I really like this animation and it is one of my favourites I have seen. I think the whole idea works, although we know the animation is being changed behind the plant pot it is interesting to see how each charcater and scene with change. One thing that really stands out for me is the size and use of colour for this animation, your eyes don't know where to look as so much is going on. The idea of it rotating makes it a lot more exciting and interesting.Normal i stop motion can get boring if it is really simple. However this video has so much going on the viewer is kept intrigued and they will continue to watch.

At the end of the video we see that the scale of the animation was then made smaller and was done on a vinyl. Although this is very impressive I first thought the whole animation was done at this small scale, then to find out only the very ending was is a little bit disappointing. However I think Love spin have improved on the normal i- stop-motion and have made it more interesting with the rotating 3D effect. When doing my next piece of animation I will see if I can take pieces of Love spin and try to improve on my stop-motion.

Lemon Jelly

This Lemon Jelly music video "The shouty trach" is done by using animation in a flip book style. This is something I thought about when making my character loop as it has the same principle of them drawing out the animation before creating it in further detial.Something that I think works really well is where they have thought about what animation was needed for what parts of the song. These are then repeated for the chorus, from the simple animation you start to get the rhythm of the song easily and it stays in your mind. When going to put my character loop animation on a background I will think about what elements will work, like they have done in this animation with the sketch book background making it look like someone is drawing these animations out.


I also like how this animation focuses on the characters being very simple but you are drawn to their movements that fit in time with the song. The whole animation really works as it focuses on these two characters head banging and the whole genre of music comes across through these two animated characters. When making animation I will think about how this has been made and how they are portrayed so much information through two characters.

Photoshop Character Loop

I scanned in every frame that I drew into a booklet into photoshop and I could then edit them in photoshop and start making my character loop. For every frame I had to adjust each scan and clean them up in photoshop so they would be clear to see in my animation. Firstly I adjusted the threshold this made each line bolder and clearer. I then went into filter, blur ,gaussiam blur and making sure this was set at 1.0 radius this made the outline thicker and you could see each black line clearer. However before it becomes clear the image is blurry so I then had to adjust the curves and this set the image back to make it stand out. Using the paint brush I cleared up any unwanted black blodges or adding more black where parts of the image had been lost from the blur. Once I had done this I made the background a layer so I could magic wond the background and get rid of it. I then did this for all the frames and started to move each character loop in the place they would be played out in the animation. Although when doing this I found a problem because I had drawn my character using a border and it goes off the page, when I later make this an animation with a background of a wall it wouldn't make sense. When I go to take photos for my background I will have to make sure I get a top of the roof and wall so my ballon character can go off the top of this.


This is my final video for my character loop animation without a background. Looking back at this I think it turned out good in the end however if I did do this again when drawing out all the frames I make sure that the character is the same side through out. Although this wasn't a large problem I manage to sort this out in photoshop through the animation process. Once I had layered out all of my frames on photoshop I noticed it doesn't follow through clearly were the ballon goes of the page and comes back on through the bottom. Next time I do this task I will make sure the animation follows through neatly. Something I think works well is the whole idea of the animation were the bat comes through and the small amount of colour makes it stand out more. 

Finish Limerick Video + Evalution

Before we could create our film we had to make our credits. For the credits we cut out all the letters in white so they would be seen on our black background, we had this black background for when we didn't want the jungle background. We then spent the rest of the time glueing together our characters and set up the stomach for where the woman would be eaten. We cut out around the trees with a stanley knife this was to give it a clean cut so we didn't have any white edges. We did this so our tiger could go through the trees to show more depth and movement in our piece. We had our tiger exit out behind the trees so it would lead onto the next scene neatly. We set up the camera on a rostrum which gave us a high angle and we also didn't have to adjust the camera every time for a new frame. On the bottom of the rostrum is a raised plate from where we could set up each frame, then looking down the camera we could see what would be shown. We linked the laptop up with the camera so we could shoot our frames we used the softwear Istopmotion to capture the frames and then using final cut to edit it all together and finally adding our audio. When in final cut Scott had already recorded his voice over, he imported the clips and the audio and started to edit it together. He extended some of the credits so they were easier to read and our names were on screen longer,he also had to slow and pause the audio at times so it kept to speed with the animation. 

 Here is our final piece on the Limerick....

Looking back at our video I think it worked well all the animation fits with the Limerick. However if we had more time I would have tried to have some frames of the rection of being eaten by the tiger and more detial in the stomach scene, for example making a background for the scene. Another thing we could of improved was making sure all the things in the frame are in the right place before taking the shot. Throughout the piece there are a few mistakes on the animation, at one point a hand comes into the screen and also when the tiger is going through the jungle he clips through the tree one moment he is behind them then infront. Apart from these I think we have learnt more about being careful when taking each frame and to think more about what the audince will see and understand. Next time we would just need to work more on the editing and make sure the audio sound is clearer. Overall I think the main design and crafting of the anaimation has made the piece stand out and become a well animated limerick.

Limerick Animation part 1

In our lastest lessons we got shown and ex students work for a music video however they did this music video (Shown above) using cut-out-stop-motion animation and cutting out each shot using coloured card. From watching this video we then needed to make our own from a limerick. We had a number of limericks to choose from this is one we selected:

"There was a young lady of Niger
Who smiled as she rode on a tiger;
They returned from the ride
With the lady inside,
And the smile on the face of the tiger."

We picked out the key elements of the limerick and choose what we thought would be easy to show through animation and what would stand out well. We then assigned roles to each member of the group Scott worked on the storyboard and how we want our limerick to be shown as he was doing this he told us what we would need to draw out. As our main background it would be the Jungle, Doug and I set off looking for ideas of what our background would look like. We searched on Google and found a simple background that we could work from and give us a basic idea of where to start. We wanted a simple background that our tiger could walk through the Jungle. Dan then worked on drawing a tiger and a woman however these would have to move in each frame and the tiger would have to look like it was running. We needed also make it look like she was sitting on the tiger so Dan drew only half of her. We realised later on in the Limerick we could use the same drawing of the woman as it was a side view. So I had to make another one of her but as a front of view. When we put the tiger onto the jungle backgound we found that the tiger was too large for the background. We didn't have enough time to draw another tiger but because we had done small trees it just looked like the tiger was in the front of the frame and it started to give the animation depth. 

Jan Svankmjer

Jan Svankmjer is one of the world's foremost animators he was born in Prague in 1934 where he still lives today. He did all of his training in Prague in the 1950's at a institute of Applied Arts  and an Academy of Performing Arts. Making his first film in 1964 he is responsable for some of the most memorable and unique animated films.Many of his films invole objects coming to life using stop-motion many of these objects are made of clay as seen in his animation Darkness Light Darkness.

In lots of his work he used Stop motion along side live action these pieces included Alice made in 1988 his first feature-length film. This won the feature film award at the 1989 Annecy International Animated film festival. He often uses fast-motion sequences when people walk and interact but one of his trademarks is exaggerated sounds. Although much of his work is made from a childs perspective such as Down to the Cellar they sometimes have a disturbing feel and aggressive manner. His latest work was in 2010 called Surviving Life but his next project is set for release in 2015.

Sumo Science

Sumo Science are specialists in animation and work together to create fresh new animtions. Ed Patterson & Will Studd make up the team represented by Aardman Animations. They have used different styles of stop-motion, 2D, live-action and Puppetry. They have worked with a number of companies to make commercials these include Hellmans, Innocent Orange Juice, Weetos, P & O, Johnson's Baby Wipes and most recently Nokia with their Gulp animation.
The inspiration for Gulp came from their previous work on Dot also working with Nokia. Dot was the smallest stop motion character (9mm) in a film winning a Guiness world record as well as 15 major advertising awards. The brief behind Dot was to celebrate Nokia's new phone and cell scope however knowing they couldn't animate blood cells they came up with the idea of Dot. For an animation of a minute and a half they were making 4 seconds a day this video got 3 million hits on Youtube.
Nokia 'Dot' from Sumo Science on Vimeo
This lead onto Gulp the worlds largest stop-motion animation with the largest scene being over 11,000 square feet filmed on location in Pendine Beach, South Wales.This film is having rapid success online like Dot it was also filmed on a Nokia N8. In Dot they used a 3D print to create the character whereas in Gulp it was easier to use a real person for their fisherman but moving each joint like a puppet. The story of Gulp was about fisherman who catches a fish he then becomes the bait for a larger fish and sets off a chain reaction. It was shot for 5 days day and night outside with the help of a large team of animation graduates. To produce 20 seconds of animation took about 16 hours. The set of stills play back at 25 frames per second to show the motion.

Gulp. The world's largest stop-motion animation shot on a Nokia N8. from Nokia HD on Vimeo.

Box Animation 3/11/11

Today we got into groups of four and made an istop animation using a box of coins and making them come in and out of the box. To do this we set up a tripod and a video camera and had the camera pointing down to the plain blue paper and our box closed. Like Jan Svankmajer we wanted a fast paced animation of the coins to come out and move around the box in a stylish way. We set up the istopMotion on the laptop and connected it to the camera. For every move we made to the box we took a still frame of it we carried this throughout. We thought about where the pennies would go and what they would look like to our audience. We wanted the box to fall over and then the pennies could move around the table and then the pennies could go back into the box. To make it more interesting we left one coin where it was and so this coin would go into the box on its own and it would also make it easier for the lid to get back on the box without it jumping. When the box was falling we needed to balance it on its edge we were given bluetac to keep it in place the only problem with this, was because our box was see-through you could see the bluetac if we had longer on this task we could have thought of a way without using the bluetac. Each time we made a drastic movement we played it back to make sure that this main movement looked good, if it didn't look right or we got someones hand in the frame we just deleted that frame and did it again. Once we had done our final frame we took more of the same frame so that it didn't jump and start again too fast we were then done with the film but next we needed to add sounds. For making our sounds we set up final cut and imported our video and then used the voice recorder to capture the sounds we would make. To make the sounds we recorded them all individually for expample when the box clicks open.Then we started a new recording for when the lid pops off. If we needed the clip more than once we copied it the right amount of times so it all sounded the same this worked with the box closing and opening. Once all the sounds were added and put in the right place to the film we watched it back and thought if anything could have been improved. When the pennies move around the box we didn't think the sound was emphasized enough. So we copied the same clip and played it at a different time to make it sound like there was more movement. I think the sounds relate a lot back to Jan Svankmajer work and it all came together really well. Below is our final video.
 

Animation practionour research: BLU

BLU

Blu is an Argentinian active street artist who conceals his real identity. He lives in Bologna and has been doing street art since 1999. He travels around the World doing active street art on all different kinds of buildings. He first became known by doing spray paint artwork  in Bologna. In 2001 he started doing his work on a larger scale and using different and bigger equipment by doing this his work became more powerful and stood out to people and made him even more global.This got him to work with other artists making short films of animation his lastest work has been in places such as Spain,Greece, Italy, and Poland. This video is about an unscientific story about Evolution and it's consequences a lot of his films are simliar to this with them all having great movement through animation.
In 2008 Blu was asked to do a painting for the Tate Modern buliding where they were celebrating street art and Blu as an Artist. All of Blu's work is kept in a fast pace style and he takes inspiration from the buildings he works with you can see this in all of his art. Today Blu still uses animation to create his most known work to do this he use istopMotion where he paints his work on the walls and pavements but once he has done a frame he paints over it in white or grey to carry on the motion. This video shows Blu's ambition to make his work stand out to other artists this piece was done in Buenos Aires and Baden. This is some of Blu's best known work and shows why he is so popular around the world.

Character loop ideas

I started off by thinking about how my character would move and how it would look on screen. I drew the first character on the left hand side, I liked this idea but I wasn't to sure what would make him insteresting because there wasn't much I could do with him except to make him walk I wanted something that was more exciting, I did think about is eyes popping out but I thought this would be too hard to do. Two of my other ideas came from the bouncing ball exercise where the character or clock would roll while their face or clock hand would move. I liked this idea but I thought it would be quite simple and boring over a number of frames. I then came up with the idea of a moving zip, I thought I could add this to a charcter and make this its mouth. I was having trouble thinking of how my object or character would move. I thought about a balloon and how it is quite a simple object to draw a number of times but could be more interesting. I combined the idea of the zip and the ballon and started to add deatial to these ideas and I came up with this charcater.


I combined all of my ideas together to make one idea. I drew a basic shape of the balloon and the zip as I knew what the movement would be in these. I added the blue strip and head antena to make him look more exciting. I put these on him because they could also move if I wanted to add anymore movement or the eyes could blink after some time. All of these factors would make up a larger amount of frames.

Bouncing Ball Exercise

This bouncing ball exercise is my first piece of animation to start with I got together 32 pages all the same size ready to start planning my frames. I numbered all the frames and using a template I drew the action line on the last frame. This was so when I got to frame 31 I will be able to trace over the same line so each frame shouldn't move around to much and look simlar. Then I traced the key frames out I did this because at these frames it was important the ball was in the right place it would also make it easier when going through adding the other frames as you would have a rough idea where the ball should be and what it would look like and it makes the action look smooth. I added the inbetween frames this was hard because I needed to see where the ball had been in the previous frame to make sure it would work. The line was starting to move over time so not all the frames would be perfect.


Once I had drawn all the frames out I filmed the ball using the software Istopmotion I stuck the book down so it would move as I turned the page. On Istopmotion I recorded each page on page 32 I recorded it a few times to make it clearer and that when it was played in a secquenes it wouldn't move on too fast. I exported it to final cut and copied the clip 5 times to get a continous video of the ball. I think the video turned out well with the ball looking realistic and the cloud slowly moving along. Through out the clip the flower does move a lot if I did this again I would make the flower open up but I do like the style of it where its hand drawn.