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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
