Design process of stop animation

At this point we realised we had underestimated how much work we had to do. After watching other groups taking pictures for their stop animation, it was obvious the most time consuming efforts were yet to come! We came up with the idea of a flower growing so we started with making our set and also making our flower and set out of clay and card. PROBLEM... as a group we are not the most creative bunch of people, we agreed to simplify our designs in home it would look more effective in the end result. Rhiannon was hard at work making the film set and I attempted to make some flower resembling objects out of clay along with a toadstool and some fluffy bees.

Importance of sound

“Sound effects play an important role in conveying action. Music helps express emotion.” Michael Geisler I agree with the above statement, when watching a film or animation it is effective to include the suited sounds to build emotion and suspense in regards to what is coming up. For example in horror movies, the observer is often scared with the music leading up to a scary scene and it gets them guessing what they are about to witness. Without the music or sound effects a scene is often left lacking an essential component. Many films have been made famous for their striking sound effects, such as; Jaws, James Bond. Regarding to soundtracks, certain music can trigger certain emotions within individuals e.g. heavy rock music could make someone feel angry or energetic. This contributes to many scenes of films to put us in the film and make it real to the person watching. )

Phenakistoscope

This was an early animation device that used the persistence of vision principle to create an illusion of motion. In 1832 Joseph Plateau created this device, it consists of two discs mounted on the same axis. The first disc had slots around the edge each one inch in measurment. When viewed in a mirror through the first disc's slots, the pictures on the second disc will appear to move. As a group we used the idea of a balloon rising into the sky, it was essential that all balloons were identical in size, colour and shape. Their position within each of their segments however did alter slightly to create the illusion. We had to also make sure each segment was exactly the same size.

Minion Flip Book

I thought this was cool :)

Thaumatrope

Today in class we made a thaumatrope using; card, scissors, string, pencils and a pin. The aim of creating this was to make it appear that the drawings on either side of the card were moving/changing in some way. I decided on a spider in a web for my design, the reason for this is that it was one of the easier options when trying to get both webs on each side exactly the same, if I had not done this the thaumatrope would not work. I also had to ensure the holes in which the string was threaded through were evenly punctured either side, this is essential to even out the weight of the card so it would be able to spin. Symmetry was essential for success in this task.

Claymation

Clay animation or claymation is one of many forms of stop motion animation. Each animated piece, either character or background, is "deformable" usually clay. Shooting a 30-minute movie requires making approximately 21,600 stops to change the figures for the frames; a full-length (90-minute) movie, 64,800—and possibly many more if some parts were shot with "singles" or "ones" (one frame exposed for each shot) (Wikipedia, 2014).

Benefits;

Fun

Motivating

Interesting

Modern

3D

If it can be imagined it can be made, anything is possible

Audience can relate more to the characters

Negatives;

Time consuming, creating characters

Highly sensitive process (slightest accidental indents on clay can ruin the process)

Cost- claymation is not necessarily an expensive process as the oil based clay is re useable and relatively cheap in comparison to other animation methods

Last Animation I Saw

Tangled... life changing film! This is a story of a girl with magical hair, it plays on the fairytale of Rapunzel and everytime the main character sings it makes people young and beautiful. I thoroughly enjoyed the film and would watch it again, the graphics were amazing and the music made the film very happy go lucky and easy to watch. My favourite part was the lizard named Pascal :) xx