Experimenting with after effects

Today we had an after effects workshop where we were taught how to us puppet tool and enable characters to move in after effects, I really enjoyed this session and had so much fun, we were given a skeleton to animate, and had a little mess around with it, I only managed to save oen of my videos, and unfortunately this one is a little boring, but I made it! :)

My Music

Just realised I havent got a link to my animation music on here! it's by a musician called clutchy hopkins, the song is called 3:25. Inspired me to use the words "Sneaky, Curious and Travelling " to help me make my animation

Today I tried for my the first time to create a stop animation using adobe after effects on my own, Im not very confident on it yet, and I just did a quick little video of me moving round my morph desk buddy, it is a bit jumpy because I kept having to move round and wasnt using a tripod, just because it was a practise. I finally managed to download a trial version of cs4 after having so much difficulty it has been such a stressful 24 hours!! its a bit blurry on here, but i'm still not really sure about all the exporting/importing/settings in after effects! i really dont like using it! So here it is.

StoryBoard

this is the storyboard for my animation narrative, as you can see i went with the cat being squished by the door idea, but i extended on it to make it obvious how the cat travelled over to that side of the room, and then eventually was squished by the door. I am deciding on a name for it although I am quite liking "Curiousity killed the Cat: Cat vs Cake"

Narrative ideas!

Now that I have my three words I need to decide what I want my narrative to be about. Because I believe that the music has a kind of sneaky feel to it, I wanted it to be basically someone doing something sneakily and creeping around, I also wanted my animation to have a little bit of a comedy factor, have a funny twist to it sort of. I decided that because I wanted my animation to be something creeping up behind something I focused on the area of animals that stalk their prey. These kind of animals are very crafty and sneaky, and "Travel" to catch their prey, and I thought that I could picture a narrative like this going well with my music! 

Theses pages, basically just say what I said above them, I made a list of animals that stalk prey, well actually it started out with a list of animals that remind me of creeping around, which is why a mouse is on the list (I'm aware mice aren't really predators) anyway, then I noticed it turned into a list of predators, so I decided to think of connotations to do with each animal, for example I put a fox, and foxes have connotations of being sly, quick and cunning (ie Quick like a fox, sly as a fox) or I chose a cat, they have connotations of curiousity, being sneaky etc (is curiousity killed the cat). The idea of using a cat for my narrative did stick in my head, because they have the sneaky factor, and the curious factor, and they do tend to link in the the word travelling especially when they are stalking prey, they seem to make a very slow, and long dedicated journey to make sure their prey don't hear them. I also thought a cat would be quite fun to animate, and they have quite obvious character, they tend to strut around confidently, and I also think that the confidence factor links into this music.

 Even though I liked the cat idea, I decided to experiment with other animals, I had written down owls on my list, seeing as they are birds of prey, so I did some drawings of an owl and then thought up a little storyboard narrative idea...here below. Basically there are two owls on a tree, one is asleep and the other one is in love with the sleeping one, he gradually sidles closer to the sleeping one but in the end he goes too far and accidentally pushes the sleeping one off the branch! I do like this because it has the kind of comedy factor I was looking for.

Above are narratives about a cat stalking a mouse, the mouse is innocently eating a piece of cheese and the cat quietly sneaks up behind it, and eventually eats it. The second narrative is about a little spider, he's hanging from the ceiling next to a girl who is unaware of him, the spider is curious so begins to get closer to the girl, she begins to notice and then screams one the spider has landed on her, and he gives her a cheeky little wave, he only wanted to say hello bless him! 

I then decided to focus on the cat idea, so I did a few narratives including cats, one was that a cat snook up on a bird whilst it was sitting in a tree and then ate it.

This one involve a cake! I was trying to think of something a cat could do in the house that was mischievious seeing as I wanted it to be a curious cat. So I thought that it could be curious towards some kind of food, and I decided to use cake, because i can't imagine a cat saying no to some cake! The first animation is the cat spotting the cake, and wondering what it is, deciding to go in for a closer look, and also to see if it's food, it decides to climb up the chest of drawers, but unfortunately it get's trapped in one of the drawers on the way up, failing to get the cake. I thought this idea could maybe link into "Curiousity killed the cat" phrase. The second narrative is basically the same idea but i just included some stairs, so that the cat could be coming down them as a bit of a variety. I think that the background would be made of cardboard, so i don't think that stairs would be a good idea in the end, but it is good to consider different options.

This is again a cake vs cat idea (actually i quite like the name of cake vs cat!) anyway, the cat spies the cake, and wants to get a closer look and eat it maybe, so makes his way towards is, but instead of getting stuck in a drawer, he gets squished by the door as it's opened by a person. I think this would be quite a funny twist to the narrative. I liked this idea, but I had to consider how it would get in the way of the door in the first place, because the door is ont he opposite side to where the cat walks in from. So I considered this and wrote it down (as you may be able to see from the photo) and I thought that maybe the cat could creep onto the other side of the dresser, possibly to get a closer look/better angle to get at it, and then instead of climbing up the drawers, it is actually going to try and jump on top of them so just as it is about to get into position to jump it gets squished against the wall by the opening door! I also thought that this would be quite a funny effect especially if I'm doing it with plasticine! 

Now I have to make a proper storyboard, I am going to do this by printing out the storyboard templates we have been provided with and hand drawing my narrative idea out, into a number of frames so that my narrative can be understood and makes sense. 

Three Words!

So the music that we had been given, in my case "Clutchy Hopkins" was supposed to make us think of words that were to help inspire us for a narrative for our animation. So what I did was repeatedly listened to the track, and then made a list, I think took this list and expanded it into a mind map to explore it further like so...

This is my original list...

and again...then I decided to expand it into a mindmap

In the end I managed to choose my three words.

My three words are "Sneaky, Curious and Travelling" I think that they link in well to my music, because I believe it has a vibe of being sneaky, and incognito, sort of someone moving around or creeping up on someone without them knowing, thats what my music reminds me of. And also the face that the music continues to do the same notes, makes me feel that the narrative is based on one storyline, and following one story. It also reminds me of progression too. The word travelling can link into anything really, whether it's a journey in a car/train or whether it's just someone walking. In a way that is one of the reasons why I decided to choose it because it can make my narrative quite open if I wanted it to be. Next stop: Narrative ideas!

Let's get going!

So I've decided on using plasticine for my animation, I think it's one of the most interesting techniques to use. I'm just hoping my computer and camera will be able to handle the amount of photos that will be taken! I am a bit nervous about doing this at home in the holidays away from sheffield and help at uni, Im worried I'll do something wrong!

So this is a scan of the plasticine I managed to get hold (in the post) I've been struggling to find any round here in Sheffield, I'm starting to wonder if they still sell it. In the week I am going for a look around children's toy shops again, just to see if they've got any in stock. It's times like these I wish woolworths was still here. This plasticine is from a shop back home, and obviously I will need more, so if I HAVE to I will just have to wait until the end of this week when I go home to find some. I do enjoy plasticine/sculpted stop motion animation, I think that it can be amazing when made well. Just look at the wallace and gromit series be Nick Park and Aardman Animations!

inspiration towards stop animation.

at this stage it's likely that I am going to use stop animation for my final piece, So I have been searching the internet looking for research, and animation videos that I find inspiring. When I did graphics Design as an A Level my tutor showed our class this music video by Sia, it's called "Breathe Me" and even after 2 years, I still love it and the lasting impact it had had on me, I just think it's amazing, such a simple idea, and it looks to simple and yet it's got to be so complicated doing thousands of photos for a 3 and a half minute long music video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSH7fblcGWM


unfortunately I can't actually embed this into my blog, embedding has been disabled boo. But just follow the link and prepare to be blown away!

inspiration

reaaally leaning towards stop motion for my animation. and I just love this video.

love the simplicity of it but it is ridiculously amazing!

This is a music video by the band The Prodigy "Warriors Dance" which is made with stop motion, thought it would be good for inspiration seeing as I want my animation to feature characters

Update...

We've been taught in sessions how to use adobe aftereffects...and I'm finding it quite strange to use, in some ways its very similar to photoshop which is great, because I know my way around most things on photoshop, however i think that it is just the fact that the layout and colourscheme of aftereffects is different and this just seems to throw me off. I've had two sessions on it so far, I'm learning slowly, but I'm not looking forward to making my final piece on it...in my last session, which was today everything just seemed to be going terribly wrong no matter what I did, Oh well! Ad Astra Per Aspera!


(latin for: To the stars through struggle)

Also, we were given a session on creating an animation, last friday. we had to draw several basic characters, literally anything we could think of, then we had to pick one of he characters, draw it from a different angle, and then work in pairs or groups to come up with an animation using each person's character. We needed to create a basic story board that showed a beginning, a middle, and an end. the animation had to be 36 hand drawn images, boy was it hard and tedious! I really dont think my animation will be hand drawn, as I doubt 36 pictures are going to make a very long animation, and I was sick of drawing when I got to about 25! Anyway my chosen character was a cat, and my partners was a bird, so we decided to do an animation of a bird sitting in a tree, and then the cat sneaks up on the bird and eventually eats it, Think it ended up quite successful, I think we are being taught how to make it into an animation in after effects in the next session so i can't wait really, i want to see if i can actually make an animation!

here are some of my characters...

and some more, i quite like fancy top hat man

This is mine and my chosen character, and my partner's bird character, then just noted on the animation's story.

basic story board.

Rayograms

we had a session where we were given the chance to create our own rayograms by bringing in stuff to use as our "negative" I really enjoyed this session, because it made me realise how much i missed processing and developing prints in the darkroom, because i did AS phtography and really enjoyed it. I brought in objects to "photograph" such as necklaces, a whisk, jewellery, pens pencils, stencil etc. I made about four prints, and am really pleased with the way they came out :)!

This was my test print, so that I could see which amount of time was best to expose it with, i exposed each part for an amount of 5 seconds, so the lightest part was only exposed for 5 seconds and the darkest side of the print was exposted for 20 seconds, So i decided to stick to an exposure time of 20.

This is my favourite print i love it! it's just two of my necklaces that I bought in, quite like the bird theme, i wanted to make it look like they were flying.

here's the whisk, i thought it would make quite an interesting shape, and i think it did, it sort of reminds me of a lightbulb...

here is another of my necklaces, i wanted to use this one because i liked it stencilled effect, and knew it would be interesting as a silhouette. 

Searching for stop motion videos...

The other day I started looking online for stop motion videos, just for some inspiration and to see what can be done with the technique, it is amazing!


This is a stop motion inspired game of tetris! it's amazing I'm sure it took ages to do!

This Is Where We Live from 4th Estate on Vimeo.

This is made for a company called the "4th estate" it's amazing!!

Guess Who from Kirsten Lepore on Vimeo.

This one is by an animator names Kristen Lepore, I love it, it's so good how shes managed to make all of the guess who characters sing the song, and it's such a random song choice too!