Model Making and Story planning

One of our tasks during the creative sessions was have a go at creating some clay characters which could be used for our final animation. At the time I had no idea of what to create for my animation. Therefore, I attempted to create something that I thought was at first, easy and child frriendly.

However, I expereinced that in fact, it was not easy to make, becuase there were other aspect of the body I did not take into consideration when planning an this resulted to the figure not looking like a rabbit or stand up properly.
After creating the clay model I was confused to what I was going to base my animation on. Therefore, I began to do some planning on current issues within the world and could be educational to a group of children. The idea of saving the environment stood out to me beacuse I believe it is highly important for children to gain an understadning of how the earth is reacting to our actions and to promet the ideas to them becuase they are the future to saving the planet.
bellow is a rough story board of my animation.

Importance of Sound

"Sound effects play an important role in conveying action. Music helps express emotion."

Micheal Geisler

Whatever you see in the cinema, watch at home on your TV or listen to on your radio, has the use of sound effects and music. Flueckiger (2009) identifies that sound effects and music are everywhere now and they are essential to the making of any film or interactive media product. The use of sound, helps the creator to communicate to his/hers audience the type of mood and atmosphere that they are needed to experience from watching the phootage. Without the use of Sound it is difficult to create the same affect. 

Holmes (1999) believes that sound effects and music in the background can have different roles within a film.

1) A Narative Role which is a way of storytelling, this can be direct or subliminal. Direct is usually dialoge or narrative sound effects that can lead the audience to an off screen event. Subliminal is usualy sound effcts that the audience is unaware of, it plays on the moods of the audience.

2) A Grammatic Role where the sound is constlantly on before or ofter the picture to create  a form of continuity or connective tissue for films.

 

To test out the powere of sound watch this short animation clip bellow, first with no sound on. When you have finished play it for the second time, but now with the sound on. Hopefully you can realise the different in the way it caputes the mood of the audience and the atmosphere within the short clip.

 

To Conclude

I strongly agree with this quote by Micheal Geisler because I do believe that sound can be a powerful tool which is able to create specific meaning and emotions to moving images. Sound is a natual stimulus for as humans and to integrate it within films, TV and other interactive media is a useful tool.

Reference

Holmes, T. (1999) http://filmsound.org/articles/roles_of_sound.htm

Flueckiger, B. (2009) Sound Effects: Strategies for Sound Effects in Film. http://www.zauberklang.ch/Flueckiger_Continuum_SoundEffects.pdf 



Stop-Motion and Camera-less Animation

For this week our group was set a task to create a camera-less animation. The first one that I created was called a Thaumatrope, which is a round disc with two different images on either side and when spun with the two pieces of string the the two images creates the illusion that only one image appears. 

Here is a short stop-motion film clip of the creation of my Thaumatrope. As you may clearly see that my Stop-motion creation was not a slick as the the animated movies' such as Chicken Run. There is about 100 frames all-together within this short click. By evaluating my work I easily identify that creating such animation needs a huge amount of patience. There is the need to make sure that the camera is in the exact position and angle every time a new frame is taken so that the frames flows and the image doesn't jump about as much. the movement and remodeling of the next frame needs to be only a slight different from the last frame to ensure that the caption is moving evenly.

The second camera-less animation that I created was a flip book. This is created by drawing a series of pictures on different layers of paper which is then 'flipped' rapidly to create a moving image. Below is a short clip of my flip book creation.

Again there is still much work to be made to ensure that the images flow smoothly. The difficulty was to draw the exact same image every time and for every frame. It was majorly time consuming and many retakes were made to ensure that every image was seen. The lighting was often changing which affected the filming. The making of camera-less animations was fun and highly enjoyable to watch afterwards. However, due to the time consumption and the accuracy of the images, I  can now understand why many animated films are computerized.