Stop Motion Experiment

Whilst I was researching stop motion I came across a stop motion animation which had used sticky notes. I really liked this idea so I thought I would try this out myself and create a small animation of my own. As I had said in my mindmapping at the beginning of the project my song reminded me of growth. I therefore decided to look at a the growth of a tree. This small animation shows the cycle of the leaves on the tree. I really like this technique so I would like to take this further and try and create a more successful stop motion animation.

I thought I would have a look at some of the different effects I could add to this video. I quite liked this white version of the same animtion as it makes it look like white paper.

Workshops

During the project so far I have attended a number of different workshops to help with the development of my animation. I really enjoyed the rayogram workshops but I don't think that this technique will be suitable for the animation that I am aiming to achieve. I also enjoyed the stop motion workshop where we used 3D objects and created a small animation. I would like the experiment with this technique further. Here is the animation that my group created in the stop motion workshop. Sorry for the bad quality!

I also atteneded a workshop where we looked at a more taditional animation technique, cel animation where each frame is drawn by hand. At this stage of the project I think this would be the most suitable technique for the kind of outcome I am looking for. There were also a few workshops held where I learnt some of the basic after effects skills. However I saved some of the small examples which I had been playing with and saved them wrong so when I came to add them to this blog there weren't any images, just multicoloured squares. Still need to get hang of these after effects skills I think! Once I'd had some more practice I realised that using cel animation and adding the drawings into after effects wasn't that confusing and decided that this was the technique that I will be using for my final animation.

Storyboard

Girl walking along

She sees love birds in tree

Begins to cry at the thought of being alone. Zooms into thought bubble

Dreaming... Falling in a day dream

In her dream she meets a boy

Boy gives her a flower

She hugs him to say thankyou

Zooms into characters. She gives in her heart

Another Story Idea For Animation

Girl walking along and sees something that reminds her of love which upsets her because she is alone
Maybe she sees a mother and baby or two love birds
She cries and begins to daydream
We go into her thought bubble where she comes across a boy
She might blush or shy away
Boy picks up a flower and gives it to her
They hug
She then hands him her heart
Butterflies or love hearts could appear around them

Story Idea For Animation

Using the character sack boy from my intial character ideas.
Character sitting on top of an earth which is very small in relationship to the character
He sways to the music
Surrounding space consists of various moving planets and stars
Shooting stars flash across the screen

Taking Character Design Further

Storyboard Research

I decided to look at some example of storyboard as I have never worked properly with these before in design. I found this basic storyboard which I really liked. Even though there are only 8 scenes shown the viewer can easily see what the story is about.

Here is another example which I found during research. At first I thought this storyboard looked a little more details but I couldn't easily work out what the animation was going to be about. I would like my storyboard to flow a little easier than this example which seems to jump dramatically from one scene to another.

 

Animation Research

I have really enjoyed researching different kinds of animation. Here are some of my favourite videos which I came across.

I really like this stop motion animation using real people. This is also a good example of how music can be used along with the animation.

I especially like this video as the idea of using sticky notes is so simple but I think this animation is the most effective. I dont think this technique would work for the character ideas which I have come up with so far but I would like to try this technique if I have time during the project.

Character and Scene Research

After listening to the song I have been given numerous times I have decided that a small cute character will be suitable for animtion. I browsed the internet for some ideas on what kind of character to use, here are some of the example I came across.

After listening to the music I also decided that a simple background for the scenes would work best. Here are a few examples of the kind of background which I think will be appropriate for the animation.

Initial Animation Idea

My initial idea for the animation was to show growth in all life forms. For example seeds turning into flowers, caterpillar turning into butterfly, babies into children etc. I decided it would be more interesting to show a smaller aspect such as the growth in love. I think the music is quite dreamy so I could show aspects of falling in love in the animation. I want the scene to be quite bright but simple, which will give a happy feeling which also comes across in the music. I think I will be using the character ponzi which I have draw below as I think they look quite cute which ensures they are in keeping with the story and scenes.

Character Design Ideas

 

Rayograms

I attended some workshops where I created a number of rayograms. I really enjoyed using this technique but I am not sure whether it will work for the kind of animation I am trying to achieve.

This was the test rayogram where I exposed the paper for five seconds while to blocked of the rest of the paper. The darkest bit of the image was exposed for 25 seconds which I think has worked successfully for this certain object.

This is the outcome when exposing the paper for 30 seconds. I decided to leave it another 5 seconds to ensure the black bits were are dark as possible.

I then experimented with various other objects such as these necklaces.

I think this is the most successful rayogram that I produced. I used the plant from my first experiment and broke off the individual flowers.

Using various objects

3 Words...

The brief states that I must come up with 3 words which I believe relate to the music I have been given. Here are the words I came up with CHILLED, STARRY and FREE. I assigned each word a colour which I thought related to it.