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.