Finished Animation

 

I am fairly pleased with this. I think that I have been able to show a story through the animation. I think it generally fits in well with the music, as I tried to make each scene beginning and end in time with the rhymth of the music. I had no trouble picking the section of music to use. After listening to it I felt that the beginning was the only part dramatic enough to fit with my animation and I think that the quieter end works well as the image fades away. 

I think I was able to show my three words in the animation which were heat, tension and western. I think the vibrant colours of the sunset and the lighting (I used a lamp and also placed my animation next to a window) really give the animation a feel of heat. I think the characters and general storyline make it clear it is a western and I think the camera shots and the way they go with the music give a sense of tension.

I put quite a lot of effort into trying to keep the movements smooth but it wasn't quite as good as I had hoped. One problem I had was that my camera moved every time I pressed the shutter button to take a photo. I needed a way of keeping the camera still when I took each photo.

I feel it is slightly rushed at the end and doesn't quite flow as well as the beginning. It seems to end fairly abruptly. I think I could have improved it if I had a longer amount of time for the animation, or if I had cut out one of the scenes.

I think maybe a slight amount of movement would have worked better in some of the panned scenes but I wasn't too sure how to make it work using the effects in After Effects.

I would have liked to have more time to experiment and find some tips for making my stop motion a bit smoother and less jerky. Overall I really enjoyed this project!

Almost finished...

I'd almost finished my animation, when I realised it had gone slightly over the 30 second time limit, meaning there wasn't enough time for the final scene. I looked deleting or shortening some of the scenes but I felt it was already slightly rushed towards the end so I decided the best thing to do was to mix together the eyes scene.

This meant the film is shortened by about 3 seconds which gives me enough time for the final scene, the silhouette which slowly fades to black. I increased the contrast of this photo to really get across the impression of the sun setting.

Cactuses

 

The 3 scenes with the cactuses. I think these have much more expression than the main characters.

More scenes...

These are the close ups of the eyes. I made them very long and thin to keep all focus on the eyes.

This is the scene where the guns are drawn. I used a black diagonal line to create a split screen effect and to try to show they have both drawn the guns at the same time, but they are not near to each other.

Effects

These are still images which I have added a panning or zoom effect to using Adobe After Effects. I think the stillness works because they stand very still in Westerns.

Stop Motion

Over the Easter holidays, there have been a lot of stop motion animation films on the TV that have given me inspiration for my animation.

Also, some stop motion films I have on DVD that I watched:

Models

Here are all the models I created from plasticine.

 Making the cactuses

I tested out adding spikes to the cactuses using real twigs and metal wire but I decided they looked better without.

 Small cactuses for the long shot.
 

Large cactuses.

Eyes and eyebrows for the cactuses.

 Character 1 - based on Zorro

 Character 2 - based on a Mexican Bandit

These are the close up eyes. I created all the close up shots by sticking plasicine onto a board so they are all 2D rather than 3D.

 Guns

 Tumbleweed made out of hay.

These are the cut outs which I will use for the final scene which will be a silhouette.

No more cell animation...

After doing a small practice run I decided that my previous idea of using cell animation and stop motion together would be too time consuming. It would also have taken a long time to get the drawings to the high standard that I had envisaged and I wasn't sure about whether I would be able to merge the two techniques together in one animation, or whether it would look disjointed.  I therefore decided to go with stop motion as it would be easier to get the detail into the images and I really liked the 3D effect I'd seen in my practise run. I'm sure that I can make this animation interesting by using various camera techniques on the plasticine figures that I intend to make.

 

 

In some places, the images don't flow together very well so I will have to improve this by moving the frames so that they line up better.

New background

I was going to make a background using a photo of a sunset but I decided that it would look better if I created my own painting. I did use some photos I had taken of the sunset to try to get the right look. These are of British sunsets and I think that Mexican ones might be brighter, so used really vivid colours to depict heat.

 Here is my painting. I will move the background as the animation progresses, showing a different part of the painting, to try to show a change in time.

Here is the overall scene I created. I used a slab of sandstone to represent the desert as a lot of images of Mexico I have found seem more stoney than sandy.

Adobe After Effects Workshops

Unfortunately I had a lot of trouble downloading Adobe After Effects CS5 at home because my laptop doesn't have a 64-bit operating system which CS5 needs to run, so I had to get CS4 and none of the CS5 files would load on this.

This means I couldn't open any of my animations, except this one which I had already converted to a Quicktime file and saved in the workshop.

 I had never used After Effects before and I found it was really useful when creating animations and fairly easy to use once you have the basics. I think I should have no trouble using it to help me create my final animation and I hope to use some of the effects it can create.

Research

To research my Mexican theme I watched various Western films and looked at other media done in the style of a Western. I discovered that there are some specific camera techniques that are used to build the tension in the gunfight scenes. There are lots of close ups of hands, eyes, faces and guns. They linger on shots for a long time and there is no speaking, just meaningful looks with their eyes.

 

As these techniques are typical of Westerns, I will use similar shots I will use similar shots for my animation, such as close up eyes, hand next to the gun, tumble weed and the two characters standing face to face.

Practise with plasticine animation

Background

 

This field is outside the back of my house and at this time of year they're not growing anything on it, so it would be good to use for the desert scene. I hope I can do it at either sunset or sunrise to get the sky a bright orange colour. I should be able to angle the camera so that the trees aren't in the pictures, just the sky and the field.

Story Board

I want to make the cactuses out of modelling clay and the prarie dog characters will be drawn as they are more complicated and detailed.

Stop Motion Films

I have decided I want to use a mix of both stop motion and cell animation for my piece so I have looked at some films that mix different types of animation together. I think that combining techniques will allow the detail of the cell animation but the speed of stop frame.  I haven't been able to find many examples of animation combining the techniques I want to use so I will have to experiment first.

 

I think these are both effective pieces which are enhanced by the mixture of different techniques.

Characters

I have decided to use either a vole, coati or prarie dog as the main character in my animation. Here are some sketches and images I did to try to design the characters.

I decided to use Prarie Dogs and the Cactuses I had created for the cell animation as I feel these fit the best with the Mexican/Western theme.

 

I hope to be able to show a lot of emotion in the characters faces, especially with the cactuses.

Story Board Idea

Using the three words I have chosen (Heat, Tension and Western), I thought up this story based on a western theme. I will use a Mexican animal for the Mexican connection and I have created tension but putting them in a stand off situation and having close ups of the characters. The setting will be a desert and feature a sunrise to bring in the idea of heat.
 

Cell Animation

For our cell animation workshop, we got together in pairs to create an animation using characters we had designed. I sketched out a few character ideas from my Mexican theme before chosing to use the cactus.

We had to create a story with a start, middle and end, where our two characters interacted. Our story involved the cactus dancing at the beginning, then getting angry as the scorpion comes over to him, then him squashing the scorpion.

I am pleased with how this turned out and I think the animation flows well. You can see the emotions in the characters. I sped up the ending where the cactus is squashing the scorpion to make it more realistic.

It took us 2 hours to draw out the 36 frames we needed so it is clear that it will take a LOT of time to create a whole animation this way. However, I really like the way it turned out and I think that I would like to try to include a small amount of cell animation in my final piece.

Len Lye

Stop Motion

Today we used the software "iStopMotion" to practise creating our own animations. We only had 45 minutes, so it is far from perfect and my hand is in a fair few of the shots but I had a lot of fun with it! We managed to get fairly realistic movement and portray a story in a short amount of time.

 

It is a fairly quick but effective method of animating. I definitely think it is something I will consider for my final animation.

Rayograms

For our workshop today, we created rayograms which involves placing objects on light sensitive paper.

Rayograms were popularised by Man Ray, hence their name. Here is one of his films which feature many of his rayograms:

During my foundation art and design course I worked in a dark room so I knew some of the principles but I had only used negatives so this was quite different.

For my rayogram I used twigs. First I created a test strip to see how long I needed to expose the paper.

 

 This shows strips of 5, 10, 15 and 20 seconds.

I decided I prefered the darker strip so I exposed a whole piece of paper for 20 seconds. 

I held some of the twigs up above the paper and this makes them look brighter and unfocused. I think if I had done a lot more of this it would have looked very interesting and the blurred lines make it seem spooky, but I didn't have enough hands to hold anymore!

I'm not sure if rayograms will work for my animation as I want to create a story based idea and rayograms are much more abstract.

This is my only previous experience with animation; a film I made with a friend during my Art Foundation course. It is certainly not as good as I would have liked, but it shows some animation and film we created to go along with this music. I certainly hope I can improve my skills a lot during this project!

Music Videos

I have looked at music videos that have animation in to see how they mix together the sound and animation.

"I will follow you into the dark" by Death Cab for Cutie. This just uses static drawings but as the pages of the book are turned they seem to come to life.

"Just the way you are" by Bruno Mars. This uses stop motion and digital animation mixed with film. The animation related to the lyrics of the song and the animated drum and bell beats in time with the music. There aren't any lyrics in my piece of music so I will have to link my animation to the sounds and rhythm.

"Harder Better Faster" by Daft Punk. This uses anime style animation and the movement of the objects go really well with the beat of the music.

"Hit that" by The Offspring. This mostly uses film but the faces of the person and dog have been digitally animated. The movement in the film, such as walking fast, matches the rhythm of the music.

"Feel Good Inc." by Gorillaz. This mainly uses cell animation with a small amount of film. The characters sing and dance in time with the music.

Three words...

The words I have chosen are:

Tension

Western

Heat

Concierto de Aranjuez

The song I have been given is "Concierto de Aranjuez (Part Two Ending)".

After listening to it a few times, I put together a mindmap of all the things the music reminded me of.

 

I think that the Mexico theme is probably the one I will focus on as I get a sense of this most strongly from the music. I need to research the best way I can represent this theme using the different animation techniques. 

I made a mood board and found images of lots of different things that remind me of Mexico.

 

 

Though Spaghetti Westerns were made in Italy, the stories were usually set in Mexico around the Mexican Revolution.