Process and Production - Week 10 - Final.

This week was disastrous. I've been working on my animation rather late recently and on Monday night my animation decided to betray me and crashed and corrupted. As you can imagine I was rather devastated. But it is something I can learn from, always, always double up your saves, make more than one in multiple places. Lucky for me we managed to salvage what I had done, but I am unable to edit it, as its no longer in a photoshop file, meaning half of it isn't finished being coloured and there is a part that I was planning on editing so that it moved in a much smoother way, which i cant change anymore. I am very disappointed as I was so close to having the animation finished. 



I also planed on giving a background to the waiter as he did his eye roll, but alas this seamed not to be. 

With out any further ado, here is the animation its self :-

As I mentioned it needed a lot more doing to it, and it hurts to think that I cant do anything about it. One thing I did manage to do though was add sound to my animation which I feel worked rather well, as it adds that little something extra that it needed. I'm overall happy with the drawings them selfs, and would have loved to have seen the whole thing actually finished but am happy with the fact that we managed to even get it back. 

Pixilate

This I actually found to be really enjoyable. I found working in a group to be really fun, helping other people with there work was really exciting to do. Creating the animation was easier to do than I was expecting as well, It was taking a series of images and having people move slightly in each frame, similar to how stop motion is made. I decided as we where working with rather a large group that I wanted everyone in the video as it was a dance, having a lot of people was fun as everyone had there own things to do, giving diversity with each person. 

My idea involved having my helpers (Helen, Suzy, Emily and Leah) to dance in an uncommon way, as doing silly dances never fails to make me laugh, so I thought seeing them a little more extreme would be really fun to watch. 

Here is the finished animation, as you can see I've added some pretty exciting music to the finished project, which I feel gave it a little something extra. Originally with out the sound it was good but was lacking in the upbeat tempo that the sound track adds. As you can see with the first version here, it lacks in something that the second version really has.

Here's one of the stills from the animation, I wanted to point this one out in particular as everyone is facing towards the camera and each person is doing something different. 

If we do this again, I would like  to do this with a green screen behind it so that I could edit the background to be something different.

Process and Production Week 9 - Rounding up.

This week I found to be very stressful. I have been working on my animation pretty consistently but had a lot of trouble with the part of the animation where Mr Chef has to fall over. That took a lot longer to animate than I had been expecting. Because of this I've been working none stop so that I can have the animation finished for Wednesday, as the deadline is on Thursday next week. I finished all of the backgrounds I needed, and now just need to colour in the animation.

I had to take reference from real life for the part of the animation where the waiter picks up the bottle of wine, and have used images of my hand picking up a bottle so that I can see where the fingers would go when picking up a bottle.

I found this to be extremely helpful, next time I animate I will make sure to do real reference as having this to compare what I'm drawing with what is true to life to be extremely helpful.

I also finished off the other backgrounds as I mentioned before, I'm happy with how they turned out as I feel that I've done the change of view well, and I like the amount of detail I have put into the work.

Process and Production - Week 8

This week was another independent study week, so I've been working on my animation all week, and have around 7 seconds done, 4 of which have colour. I've gotten to the point of the animation where the chef has begun to fall, this started after 4 seconds and I aim to have him falling for a good 10 seconds if possible, which should round up to 14 leaving me with another 10 seconds to finish the remaining animation. I need to change some aspects of how he falls though, concentrating more of the ease in and ease out of his stumbling around the kitchen. This Tuesday we have a class crit, and I will be getting feedback from my piers with there opinions on how they feel my animation is progressing.

I thought I'd discuss an animation that inspired me to create this kind of animation. The way Ratatouille was made, its style and how the characters where designed, really inspired me to create this animation. They way Gusteau designed was one of my favourite designs. He has a very rounded design, being bottom heavy with a very small head, which I think is a good design idea.

I also really like the way the kitchens have been designed, I've looked at some of the concept art and really loved they way they had been designed, yes they are a lot more modern compared to the drawings I have done for my kitchen but I still liked the way they have been done.

Animation History - The Golden Age.

From 1930-1950 animation was at its all time high. This was considered the 'The Golden Age' of animation by many people. This was the time when Disney, MGM, Fleischer and Warner Bros were on the rise and animation was highly acclaimed in pop culture of the time. This was the time when animation icons where being created and being recognised more and more. These where characters like Mikey Mouse, Bugs bunny, Pop Eye and Betty Boop. 



During this time animations such as the Merrie melodies and silly Symphonies  where being created, both using music predominantly to create the animations, which is very similar to the older animation technique, such a steamboat willie.

In 1937 Disney realised its first full length animated feature film. Which happened to be Snow White,  this was completely hand drawn, and lasted for 1h 28m, which wasn't a common thing for animation back then. The film was financed due to an animated shorts success realised earlier by Disney, The Three Little Pigs (1933). The film was the first commercially successful film of its kind. It was done in technicolour which was a new thing regarding animation. It took 1.5 million cells to actually create the feature.

Animation History - The silent Era

The silent Era

Animation developed into the silent era. The 20th century began the showing of cartoons theatrically. This happened in France and the US more than anywhere else.  Bray Studios made one of the biggest impacts. During 1906 the one of the first stop motion animations was made using photography, this style of animation focused more on funny faces.

Gertie the dinosaur (1914) was another prim example of silent animation. This animation was done using live action and mixing it with animation. This animation was done in front of an audience, and had a man stood in front of the animation so that he could interact with the animation. This animation differs from the last as this one as it used more appealing characters, so that it could be more of a family orientated animation.

1919 to 1930 brought on animations such as Felix the cat and steamboat willie. These animations contained music and sound effects, to create the atmosphere, and if dialog was used it was usually done in some form of gibberish sound, or the animation gave some form of written dialog.

As you can see both have similarity's, but both where made at different times, the Felix animation was realised in 1919, where as steamboat willie was realised in 1928, 9 years later, after the realise of the Felix animation.