Friday 27 June 2014

3. Stop Animation Guide

To make a film with iStopMotion you will need a good idea, lets use a generic theme of a "Goody" vs the "Baddy".



Equipment:

  • Camera
  • Mac that has iStopMotion installed onto it.
  • Materials that your going to be animating, like clay, or for something easier you can use lego.
  • A clamp so the camera will stay in the same place. (This is particularly important because if you get it wrong the animation will look scrappy)
  • Flat surface to work on.
Characters:

Depending on what you will be using to animate, like clay or lego, you will need to get numerous characters to make your film. For our theme, we will need a Goody, a Baddy and a Prize or Princess, depending on the exact story.

Set:

The setting depends on your personal story, but for an example lets use one of the green lego base pieces. Then you will need to build the setting on top of that that fits your idea.

Camera Shots/Movement:

The camera should be positioned so you can see the entire scene, and so that the shot is not affected by shadows or changing light. The clamp will be used to keep the camera in the exact same position, otherwise the scene will change position and it wont look as effective. To shoot the scene you will need to take 3 pictures per frame (so take 3 pictures before you make the new scene).








Editing:

The editing software we will use is iStopMotion, it is an easy way of making stop animation videos. To do it you will link the camera to upload each picture and put them in the right order, making sure that the pictures are in the right order. Then you can press play and the animation should look smooth. If it is jittery and slugish, then you should try increasing the speed of the animation. Or you can do the shots again, and take more pictures per frame, about 5 or 6.


Sound:

Sound is up to you, it depends on your theme and what you want it to sound like. But to import a song you only need to download the track, and drag and drop it onto the sound section at the bottom of the program. Then you can move it from place to place to set it to start in different places.

Exporting:

To export your final animation you need to click on "file", and then save the project, this is just to keep it safe incase anything goes wrong in the exporting process. Then you click on the "file" button, then go down to "export", and then click the "as movie" selection. It will then ask you where to save the exported version of the video to, choose somewhere you will be able to access easily. Now it will start to export, once it is done you will be able to watch your animation.


SO LETS MAKE AN ANIMATION!!!

You're going to want to begin by getting all of the set and characters that you need (shown above) and then you will need to set up your location with the beginning scene. Now you need to adjust the camera angle so that you can see the entire set and the characters you want on screen. Then you can start producing your animation! You will have to take three pictures, and then move your character incredibly slightly, and then take another three pictures






























2. Development of Animation

Animation has developed significantly in the few years it has been around, there have been numerous pioneers, the first being Joseph Plateau he developed the Phenakistoscope. The Phenakistoscope used a spinning disc attached vertically to a handle. Arrayed around the disc's center were a series of drawings showing phases of the animation, and cut through it were a series of equally spaced slits. The user would spin the disc and look through the moving slits at the disc's reflection in a mirror. The scanning of the slits across the reflected images kept them from simply blurring together, so that the user would see a rapid amount of images that appeared to be a single moving picture. Plateau was significant because he was the very first main pioneer of animation, he was the father of a generation that would span hundreds of years.




Another notable pioneer of animation William Horner, He created the zoetrope in the year 1834.A zoetrope is a device that produces an illusion of action from a rapid succession. It was basically a improvement on the Phenakistoscope. The Zoetrope consists of a cylinder with slits cut in the sides. On the inner surface of the cylinder is a band with images from a set of pictures. As the cylinder spins, the user looks through the slits at the pictures across. The scanning of the slits keeps the pictures from blurring together, and the user sees a rapid succession of images, producing the illusion of motion.







Emile Reynaud created the Praxinoscope in the year 1877. the praxinoscope was a major improvement on the zoetrope. the improvement was that the narrow viewing slits were replaced with mirrors so that the animations could been seen more clearly and gave a better effect. the way the animation device worked was that  it used a strip of pictures placed around the inner surface of a spinning cylinder. Emile Reynaud also created the first public animation that was seen by many people. this was important to animation because it lead to more and more public animations, and got the public interested in animation with this device and also the animation films he created.
Eadward Muybridge Known as the 'father of the motion picture', his early photographic experiments laid the foundation for modern cinema, with his study, The Horse In Motion made in 1882, regarded by many as the first ever moving picture. Developing his keen interest in photography whilst recovering from a stage coach crash in 1860, Eadweard Muybridge moved to America, joining a San Franciscan photo business. Quickly gaining reputation for landscape work, he was appointed director of photographic surveys for the U.S. Government in 1868, conducting studies of numerous remote areas, including the newly purchased Alaska. It is said that his work sparked the creation of the cinema experience that all of us know and love.






Thomas Edison was  the inventor of the Kinetoscope. This device was used in stop motion animation. The Kinetoscope is an early motion picture device, but not a movie projector. It was designed for films to be viewed individually through the window of a cabinet containing its components. This invention was the basic introduction that would become the standard for all cinematic projection before video. Watching it creates the illusion of movement by conveying a strip of film bearing images over a light source with a high speed shutter. This was incredibly significant because it was the first step to projecting animations onto the big screen.







The Lumiere Brothers patented the cinematograph, which contrary to Edison's "peepshow" kinetoscope, the former allowed viewing by multiple parties at once, like current cinema. Their first film, Sortie de l'usine Lumière de Lyon, shot in 1894, is considered the first real motion picture in history. So from then the use of animation in cinema increased dramatically.











From 1931-1932, George Pal worked at UFA Studios in Berlin where he became head of the cartoon department. Then, he set up his own film studio elsewhere in Berlin. His credentials attracted orders from companies for animated advertising. Instead of the cartoon approach, he developed his own take on making inanimate objects move, even dance, using the still evolving art of stop-motion photography. Advertisements featuring, for instance, Overstolz cigarettes, outfitted with faces, arms, and legs, were shown on theater screens strutting and singing as if drawn by a cartoonist. These "puppets" without strings would later evolve into animated characters made of wood who would have names and star in their own films. He was so significant because his take on animation was so different from other styles and previous Pioneers.





DEVELOPERS


Wills O'Brien was a key developer in the animation world. He developed the film King Kong and various other credits. 16 years after his ground breaking work on "King Kong", Willis O'Brien worked as Chief Technician on another gorilla picture for Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Shoedsack called "Mighty Joe Young". A young Ray Harryhausen would animate most of the animation, but O'Brien did come up with the designs for the film. At the 1950 Academy Awards, O'Brien was awarded an Oscar for Best Visual Effects. This along with "King Kong", are often considered his greatest achievements.








Ray Harryhausen was an American visual effects creator, writer, and producer who created a form of stop-motion model animation known as "Dynamation." His most memorable works include the animation on Mighty Joe Young, with his mentor Willis H. O'Brien, which won the Academy Award for special effects; The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, his first color film; and Jason and the Argonauts, featuring a famous sword fight against seven skeleton warriors. His last film was Clash of the Titans, after which he retired.










Jan Švankmajer is a Czech filmmaker and artist whose work spans several media. He is a self-labeled surrealist known for his animations and features, which have greatly influenced other artists such as Terry Gilliam, the Brothers Quay, and many others. He made a huge amount of revolutionary animated films and played a significant role in the development of animation. He has inspired numerous other Directors and Developers to do what he achieved, this making him have a major impact on todays animation credits.







CONTEMPORARY WORK

Stephen and Timothy Quay studied illustration in Philadelphia before going on to the Royal College of Art in London, where they started to make animated shorts in the 1970s. They have lived in London ever since, making their unique and innovative films under the aegis of Koninck Studios. Influenced by a tradition of Eastern European animation, the Quays display a passion for detail, a breathtaking command of color and texture, and an uncanny use of focus and camera movement that make their films unique and instantly recognizable. Best known for their classic 1986 film Street Of Crocodiles, which filmmaker Terry Gilliam recently selected as one of the ten best animated films of all time, they are masters of miniaturization and on their tiny sets have created an unforgettable world, suggestive of a landscape of long-repressed childhood dreams.


Tim Burton has created huge amounts of animated movies, being one of the most well known and well respected directors of all time. Burton has worked repeatedly with Johnny Depp, who has become a close friend of Burton since their first film together. He has also worked with musician Danny Elfman, who has composed scores for all but two of the films Burton has directed. Actress Helena Bonham Carter, Burton's domestic partner, has appeared in many of his films. He also wrote and illustrated the poetry book The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy & Other Stories, published in 1997, and a compilation of his drawings, sketches and other artwork, entitled The Art of Tim Burton, was released in 2009.
















Friday 20 June 2014

30. Annotated Drafts

 The beginning of the ident is me and Laurence admiring the weather. Here it begins with a fade, so the shot is a little bit darker, but after a few seconds it becomes normal brightness.
 This is where Ben notices the plane crash in the sky. We decided that we wanted to make the realization of the plane crash really cheesy and over the top to add to the humor of the scene.
The plane crash was the most difficult bit of the ident. We had to find a good enough animation of the plane crash, and find out a way of filming it. In the end we decided to use a camera, set it up with a tripod so it was steady and film it so you couldn't see the edge of the screen. The end result is very nice and looks like it fits with the scene.
There is then a close up of Ben's face. We decided to make it that both Ben and Laurence find it hilarious that a plane has crashed. Which is very contraversial. The target audience being late teens to young adults means that they would find this funny.
This is the same as the previous point, just a close up of Laurence instead of Ben.
Here there is a wider shot where Ben and Laurence look to their friend, the E4 logo and smile. To do this we put the logo in photoshop, made sure the background was transparent and then drag and dropped the logo into the Final Cut software, then repositioning it to fit our needs.
The final shot is of Ben and Laurence shrugging to the audience. This makes the ident seem very random and funny.































I used the software Final Cut Pro to edit the video, consisting mainly of cuts and fades. We used a Canon Legria Camera, and uploaded it using the Log and Transfer function. The editing process was fairly easy, considering the product only had to be around 15 seconds long, however we still had to make sure that it was done to professional standards. After editing the entire thing together we discovered a major continuity error, of one of the actors swapping sides on the bench, so we decided to re film this small section to consolidate the professional nature of the Ident.

Focus Group Notes and Analysis



Me Laurence and presented our pitch to the class, here is some of the feedback:


WWW:

Good idea for your ident.
The idea is flexible and can have different spin offs.
The use of the E4 logo as a character makes the audience have an emotional link.

EBI:

Perhaps have a soundtrack under it with some sort of voice over.
Make sure there is no bad cuts, make everything smoother.

18. Proposal

33. PowerPoint Bibliography



19. Final Storyboard


16. Storyboards





5. Research Proposal

Thursday 19 June 2014

23. Script

Shot of Laurence and Ben sitting next to each other on a bench.
They look at the sky.
Ben Points to the sky.
Shot of a plane crash.
Close up of Ben's face, laughing intensely.
Close up of Laurence's face, laughing intensely.
Zooms out and shows Laurence and Ben laughing together, they look to the side of them and the E4 logo is sitting next to them.
They turn to the camera and shrug whilst smiling.

24. Expansion of Concept to Suite

Our concept is very flexible, the idea being able to be morphed and changed in several ways. There are numerous aspects of the ident that we can adjust to make sure there are several different types of ident. These include the location it is set, same two people sitting on the same bench, but with a different background every time. E.G:  A beach, cinema, shopping centre. Anything incredibly random, this will make the ident consistently funny and original. Also, the footage that is being seen by the two characters can change depending on the location, so instead of crashing planes, it can be something different, but still as catastrophic. This will keep the underlying theme of complete random behaviour and its not coming away from the corporate identity theory too much. Catastrophic events that could be used could be things like a car crash, (although this might be too controversial) an explosion of some sort ect.
Overall the original concept can be expanded quite a lot in terms of setting and actual event that happens, however the ident will always have the same sort of ending with the two characters looking at the E4 logo and looking to the camera and shrugging. This will ensure a consistent theme and it will be really effective.

10. CV




27. Pitch

21. Location Recce

The single location we used was in the school playground, where there is a patch of green, a tree and a bench. We found that this was the best and most suitable place to film our ident because it made it look like it was a park, which was where we wanted it to be set but we couldn't get an actual park because there are none nearby.

25. Notes From Client


4. Annotated Research Ben Davis

1) BARB Viewing Figures



Here we can see that the mostly viewed programme in this particular week is The Big Bang Theory, with a huge 2,315,000 views with over one million more than its closest successor. This means that to achieve maximum views they would show The Big Bang Theory Lots of times. Also the same programmes got in the top ten despite the fact that they are both repeats. Hollyoaks is all together viewed the most because it is showed every night. This means that Hollyoaks is E4's most popular soap channel.
In this weeks top ten, Hollyoaks is the most viewed, followed by The Big Bang Theory once again. This backs up the fact that E4's most popular programmes are Hollyoaks and The Big Bang Theory, which means that E4 should show those the most to gain the most views. These statistics indicate that having an ident that reflects both comedy and more reality situations will work well with the majority of the viewers.
I used this research to help me find out the best target audience range for my logo and E4 rebrand. It is clear that the most watched programmes are the genres of comedy, soaps and reality. So I took this further and researched the statistics of who watch these sorts of channels the most, I found that it was equal on gender, and in terms of age it ranged from young adults to middle aged. So i will direct my E4 rebrand towards this audience range.
2) Corporate Identity of E4

Firstly it is important to look at the audience of E4, it is for predominantly aimed at working and middle class people between the ages of 16-34. This means that things that appeal to those who are in that age group will be effective in entertaining the audience. Another Corporate Identity aspect is the logo and colouring they use. The logo is unique to them and consist of the colours White and Purple, the core being Purple. This is a multi gender colour that appeals to both male and females. White is a plain colour which works well with purple.


E4 also has a new ego, a robot named Eefer, he represents the channel and has a body which is the E4 logo but has arms and legs. This is effective at gaining popularity because it makes people become emotionally attached to the character and therefor the channel itself. It is also effective because it has more of a personality than the previous logo, then making it more enjoyable to watch and more funny.

I am going to use this research to choose the particular theme and colour I'm going to use in my rebrand, the colours purple and white will stay the same, and I will change the logo to match the age range and broadcasting themes accordingly.


3) Previous E4 Idents

The idents E4 use are mainly set in British locations showing the unusual behavior of Eefer and the the members of the public. From this we decided that it would be appropriate to keep that general theme and make our ident set in an open location and doing an everyday activity with an E4 twist.

This Ident example is Eefer walking through a cafe, which in itself is a normal daily activity but the fact that Eefer is a robot in the shape of the E4 logo makes it surreal. So we've used this and adapted it to come up with our own surreal ident idea. I will use this research to make sure my ident is completely random and flexible to create other indents from it. I will be staying with the theme of an every day activity and then add a completely random occurrence to it. This will stick with the channels ethos and keep it funny.

4) E4 Themes.

The overarching theme that E4 puts out is comedy, with the majority of its broadcasted channels being comedy shows. This is also reflected on their idents, all of which make the audience laugh when watching them. Below are a few of the channels broadcasted on E4, and almost all of them are comedy. With this research I knew that I had to make the ident comedic, with a slight hint of drama, this is because the majority of channels are of those two genres.


5) E4 Style Guide

The style guide talks about various things to do with the channel, almost all of it being about the logo. Things include, the logo, the logo as a sticker, the size of the logo, the colour and the positioning. It also goes into the typography for the E4 channel as a whole. From their style guide we could get a good idea of how our logo and ident should look and be made. The colour purple was imperative to be used, so we made the main part of the logo Purple. Also the size was important, according to the style guide it could be no smaller than 8mm on the screen, this was to make sure everybody would be able to see the logo, so we have made it around half the size of an average person, this fits with our ident theme.



















I will use the style guide to help me get information about fonts, colours and other general information that I will involve into my ident. However, I will not stick with certain aspects, I will change the font to more childish, to reflect the type of comedy broadcasted.

6) Logopedia


















I used Logopedia to help me get a brief idea of what sorts of logos are in use, showing me what to avoid and sometimes things that inspired me. The colour schemes of E4 logos in particular were always purple, meaning that I stuck with that theme, which reflects the E4 corporate identity theory. I looked at other logos, rather than just E4 ones. From this it helped me draw up several different drafts that I could perhaps develop on, and overall it helped me come to a conclusion.

7) Colour Conventions

The colour convention of E4 is Purple, the design of the logo itself is very very simple, just a 4 inside an E, as displayed in the image above. The colour purple is multi-gender because it appeals to both male and female viewers, therefor fitting in with E4's corporate identity theory. The colour purple is eye-catching for the audience, so naturally it attracts those who are less inclined to look into things with more detail (16-34). The design is so simple because it fits perfectly within the corporate identity theory. I used this research when choosing things like the colour scheme of my logo and ident itself.

8) Surveys

The final piece of research we decided to use was a personal survey that we had set up. This was to get an idea of what the members of the public would like to see. We made sure that we gave the survey to the correct age range of 16-34 year olds and both genders, meaning that only those who sat in the corporate identity theories target audience filled it out. Our results showed that the majority of people preferred the comedy side of the channel, despite this there still was a large amount of people that preferred the drama side. We asked questions like "What time do you normally watch E4" the results showed that the majority of people watched E4 at around 7pm - 11pm, which is actually prime time television. From this research we decided to make our ident mainly friendly to those who are more mature, meaning they can take the kind of humour E4 strive for.








Tuesday 17 June 2014

Animation Timeline

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
21 Dec 1937

In 1937 Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs became the first full-length animated movie. It was also the first produced in full colour and the first to be produced by Walt Disney.










Mr. Bug Goes to Town
1941

This was the first full length animated musical. This was revelatory because it mixd extensive amounts of animation and music together.







Elbert Tuganov Founds Puppet Animation Division
1 Jan 1950

After his staff grew to 20, it was decided that puppets would make their way into his studio. He made a number of films for both adults and children. 







The Smurfs are Introduce by Pierre Culliford
23 Oct 1958

Pierre Culliford introduced the Smurfs first in a comic strip in a Belgian magazine, Spirou. Later it was translated into English and was made into a childrens cartoon by the Hanna-Barbera Productions 







A Computer Animated Hand
1972

Produced by Ed Catmull, the short demonstrates a computer animated hand, as well as human faces. The film was inducted into the national film registry in 2011.






Star Wars Brings Great Special Effects
25 May 1977

Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope is the first of 6 films in the Star Wars film series. It was written and directed by George Lucas. It relied heavily on the computer for its special effects but in the end came out with impressive results. 





Tron
1982

Tron marked the first ever film to have computer animation to be used extensively in the movie.









Jurassic Park Creates Realistic Animals
11 Jun 1993

In 1993 the first Jurassic Park film was released. It was praised for its use of CGI and being able to create realistic animals.  








Toy Story Begins
22 Nov 1995

Toy Story was released in 1995 by Disney/Pixar. It was the first Disney/Pixar film made, as well as the first feature film made entirely with CGI (computer-generated imagery) basically meaning, it was made 100% on the computer. 






The Polar Express
2004

The Polar Express was the first film to use motion capture for every single one of their characters. This meant that they could achieve a better look to human characters, their movements reflected the actors and the way a real person walks.