SWOT Analysis

First I made a SWOT analysis that I thought about myself, this was quite easy for me to pick out my strengths and weaknesses, however I found it hard to think of threats.

Personal:

For my personal SWOT section my strengths would be that I am determined and optimistic about situations, however I can be impatient and get easily sidetracked my other things. To target these weaknesses I feel that as long as I always involve myself in things that really interest me it will stop me getting sidetracked or I will force myself to keep focused. To help me with my personal skills and not face the threat of losing motivation I will try to work with people who are patient and possibly they will be able to rub off on me a little more.

Interpersonal:
My interpersonal strengths involve enjoying working as a team, taking role as team leader and being able to take time to listen to others. Listening to other and empathy has always been a strong point of mine, which is why I think I work well as team leader, although my weaknesses would be sometimes I have lots of ideas that I really like and I find it hard to pick just one. I feel to help further my interpersonal skills it will be good to work in animation production groups.

Technical:

Technical skills are something that are only gained through the amount of time I have been studying aimation, which is only just over a year. My skills would be that I am a quick learner and I am good at managing projects and time, but I understand that I lack 3D skills and I struggle with walk cycles. The next steps to help with this would be to simply practice more with walk cycles, refer back to my animation survival guide and have more of a go at Maya.

Artistic:
My artistic skills involve coming up with characters, playing with colour and background design. My weaknesses within art would be that I'm not very good at life drawing and I find it hard to draw hands and feet, which is quite important in animation. To improve these skills would mean to partake in more life drawing classes and even just sit outside and draw what I see, I think this is something that will come with time.

I teamed up with Magnus to find out a objective view on my SWOT analysis, which was quite interesting finding out from an outsiders perspective.

Personal:

Seeing that I got 'open and warm' as my personal skills was quite nice as it reassured me that people think that I am someone who is approachable. A similar weakness to my own SWOT analysis was that I am sometimes impatient, which I know is something I need to work on. The opportunities for me would be that I am open to new things and I think this is also true, as I'm someone who's always up for new opportunities.

Interpersonal:
For interpersonal skills, Magnus put 'inclusive' and 'welcoming', because I put that I was a good team leader this demonstrates that I am able to include and never leave anyone out. As a weakness I got 'too trusting' and that is something I never would have thought of, but thinking back to production teams at college it was something that did happen to me on occasion. I usually left too much responsibility to people who weren't committed to what they were doing and therefore I was let down. To target this weakness would be to still trust people, but possibly don't over trust people with big responsibilities without me being directly involved. 

Technical:

For weaknesses and strengths, I got 'Stop Motion' and '3D', which I completely agree with, although I wouldn't say I was completely capable with everything in stop motion. I simply need to practice with mediums more which will come with creating lots of diverse animations. As threat Magnus outlined that CG may takeover a lot of the animation industry and this may be a thing, however I don't believe that it will fully dominate the industry. Still, to combat this I will just need to make sure I am confident in lots of areas of the animation industry so that I will be flexible.

Artistic:
'Painting', 'modelling' and 'colour sense' have been a strong point in my artistic skills and I agree as someone from a fine art background this has been what I have practiced the longest. An opportunity that I really liked was to possibly look at miniatures in film, which is something I am actually really interested in!

Mike Mignola & Richard Starkings Talk - 3/11/16

Going to see Mike Mignola was a really good experience for me as even though I'm not that interested in creating comics it's still beneficial to hear about the creative industry and how he fitted into it. Mike Mignola explained that he was a 'workaholic' and that he was always thinking about stories, drawing or doing something along those lines all the time, which really made me think about what kind of people are successful and how determined they are. He also talked about always being true to himself and that whenever he created something he needed 'to do something that's me'. I think that this is something that is really important as sometimes your own needs and interests can get lost along the way. 

A really good tip I got from this talk was that one of Mignola's techniques was to go 'through books and circle parts that I could use to piece together a plot'. Coming up with a story is something that I sometimes struggle with, so I found this technique to be something I'm going to try in my own storytelling. He went on to say he went through folklore books and took parts he liked and parts he felt would be good to draw and this helped him create HellBoy. He also explained that you need to 'get a beginning and an end, then a good few bits in the middle with markers, then just fill in the blanks'. I really liked this tip and he even explained 'I never planned to be a writer, I became a writer so I could draw'. I found all of his tips to be inspiring and that you don't need to be the best idea person you just need to want it and be determined.

Some of Mike Mignola's inspirations were Frank Frazetta, Barry Windsor-Smith & Ray Bradbury.

I've put a few of their artworks below just to get a feel of the kind of inspirations he likes.

Overall, I really enjoyed this talk and I found it to be really inspiring even though I'm not very interested in the comic book world. I understand that you have to be open to every part of the creative industry and it's good practice for me to research different kinds of practices and how they work and can work together.

Going to Doncaster! - Channel 4 Pop-up Experience 2/11/16

I got the amazing opportunity to go to a Channel 4 event in Doncaster where I got put into a TV Production workshop, I was selected with 150 others from the country to attend this event. I really learned a lot on this day and I got the chance to show my talents and be more confident in myself. I also met a lot of inspiring and amazing personalities that has really helped with my networking skills.

I got the the chance to network with lots of people from Channel 4 and got lots of tips about the industry, including how to get into TV and where to start.

The challenge we were given was to create a 1-2 minute long film that related to something we were all passionate about. I got into a group of 5 with people I had never met, which came down to what roles we were interested in. I selected the role of 'Editor', but I also ended up creating the storyboard and was the camera operator.

To the right is a preview of one of the interviews we conducted and as we only had 2 hours to film and edit the film, it was quite a challenge to get good content and make it look good. The people I worked with were really great and only by chance we worked really well together, even though we had never met before. We took the hashtag YESICAN and made a film based on this theme, where we explored the idea of where you are born stopping you from reaching your dreams and gaining opportunities.

After making our films they screened them for all the Channel 4 judges, staff and other participants to view and above is a preview from the film that we made!

I also got the opportunity to hear from Channel 4 staff about how they got to where they were now and what struggles they faced. This was really inspiring as it opened my eyes to way that life can work out differently to how you might have planned it and this isn't always a bad thing. One of the main things I took away from this is that employers are mainly interested in the experiences you have instead of what you 'know'.

It turned out that as a team we actually won the competition they held and above is a picture of me and my team with one of the Channel 4 judges. This means that we get to go to Channel 4 HQ in London to go behind the scenes and meet with lots of producers and people in the industry. This is an amazing opportunity and I'm so excited to go to London, I wish I could do it all again!

Painting on Glass! - Possible Practitioner

As part of my PPP I want to look at interacting with Paper Panther as my practitioner/organisation, they are really inspiring to me. Above is a video of them painting onto glass to create animation and as this isn't the most popular way to animate I feel it would be interesting to get to speak to them and ask them why they would choose this. They make really beautiful animations and I feel that this is rare for a studio these days to solely create animation that they like instead of following the most popular trend. As I love to paint with oil, I would also like to find out a little bit more about the technique.

Who Am I Now?

Things I've Learnt so Far

• Photoshop animation.
• The Principles of Animation! I knew nothing about these when I first started university so I have taken time to study and consider them within each new animation I create.
• How to juggle multiple modules at once, I had done so in the past but not with modules that run throughout the whole year!
• This past year has forced me to present on my own to a class as well as show people on the big screen my work, this has been something I have had to develop and learn as I'm not the most confident person when it comes to showing animation; something still new to me.

Things I Want to Know More About

• Stop-motion animation
• Model Making
• Set Designing for Stop-motion
• The animation industry
• Animation Studios and the behind the scenes!

Skills That I Think Are my Strengths

• Determination and motivation to do my best
• Organising my time
• Researching and collecting information to inform my narrative/essays
• Staying positive
• Storyboarding

Things I Would Like to Improve

• Life drawing - I need to develop these skills to become a better rounded artist
• I would love to expand my animation skills into other mediums away from digital
• Social skills, meaning I want to be able to go out and talk to real animators!
• Building models for stop-motion
• Sometimes I get scared to try new things in case they go wrong

Practitioners That Demonstrate my Interest in Animation

• Nick Park
• Suzie Templeton
• Tim Burton
• PES
• Marc & Emma

Websites That Demonstrate my Areas of Interest Within the Creative Industries

• Vimeo - Best way to find shorts and current animations
• Skwigly - Current Animation News/Articles
• Animation World Network
• Pinterest - For inspiration and DIY tutorials
• Stopmotionanimation.com  - Forum that gives advice around different elements of stop-motion

Banana Magnet Task - Animation/Graphic Design/Illustration Mashup!

For this task we were put into pairs, medium sized groups, then large groups to work up three different pitches.

My first pitch was as pair coming up with an Alien Suit that turned a human into an alien by water activation so they could observe other lifeforms. I found this quite challenging as a pair as we only had two of us to come up with a whole pitch, however it did go quite well as our idea was chosen as the best for our table to work on and pitch to the class! Working in a medium sized group worked reasonably okay, however sometimes the message got lost between the different people, this could be down to communication skills.

Our final pitch was 'Dog Latex', which the whole class had to work on together and after seeing everyone's pitches in the lecture theatre I think our class actually meshed the best. My part in the class was to make the little dog animations at the bottom of the screen and I also complied dog footage that other recorded to make a 30 second clip to go to the final edit to layer. I feel as though I had quite a large role in this task and surprised myself at how much I threw myself in and really got involved. This task was really enjoyable to me and I preferred to work in a large team where there were lots of ideas being thrown around and so many inspiring people around me.

Evaluation of Research In PPP1

Over the course of the year for PPP I have collected a series of research and I wanted to do a small evaluation of this an dhow it has helped me to learn and discover more about the animation industry.

As this is a year long module I've been working on it for a long period of time and I tried to look at many different angles of animation and different kinds of practitioners. I did this so that I would be able to use this module to expand what I knew and also learn about techniques that may not be taught to me on my course. I looked at not only practitioners but also the advancing technology and different books around my subject. 

I have learnt from all of my research about techniques like puppet making and what goes on behind the scenes of quite a few methods of animation. By doing this it has allowed me to see the ways that animators work and has given a little bit more of an insight into what kind of roles there are and what these roles have to do. I really liked learning about these kind of things as I think it's important to understand the amount of different roles there are instead of just 'animator'. I also really liked that I could look at any kind of animation that interested me and there really were no constraints as to what I could look at! This gave me lots of freedom to look at everything I wanted to.

To improve my overall research I feel like I could have looked at even more techniques and possibly some tutorials too so that I could learn a little more into how they do it. I did look at a couple of tutorials here and there, but next time I could look at more and possibly in more detail to really get how they create these animations. It might have also helped me to look at even more different animations and really out there ones so I could really see the extent of the animation industry and how crazy it can be.

Next year I can apply what I learnt through PPP, that I definitely want to look at more stop motion, claymation and puppet making next year as after researching this it really inspired me to have a go myself! I now know that I want to stray away from digital and maybe only use it as a combination instead of just fully digital and this way I think I will progress more in my own animations.

Book Review - KRAZY!

I took a book out of the library that I have been looking at just to explore different areas of the industry and this book explores anime, comics and video games. One of the things that I enjoyed about looking at this book was that it had so many examples of different artists to look at and this is something that is sometimes hard to find when you just want some easy inspiration. Even though the book says that it looks at anime on the cover it has actually a lot of really cool illustrative artists that have really fun work.



Below I am going to discuss a few artists that I liked in the book!









PHILIP GUSTON

I liked this illustrator because of his very detailed yet messy style, which I thought was fun and stood out to me. His work is quite abstract and tells a story in only a drawing and I love the comedic style he uses in his art.



LOTTE REINIGER

This artist was one of the most different in comparison to the rest of the book and I liked her because of this. Her work is cut out and she uses silhouette animation which I find really interesting! Silhouettes are something that I would love to try in the future and her work is really detailed and beautiful to me. Below I have put one of her animations and watching this kind of animation that created quite a while ago is so inspiring as it is still great and really well done. I love the different layers she uses and the style of the cut out where each part is connected.



MOYOCO ANNO

This last artist is a manga artist, and I don't normally go for manga as I prefer different styles, however when I saw her work I thought it was beautiful and not the normal manga style. I like it because her drawings of characters are a little more realistic rather than cartoonish and I really love the colours and the way she paints her manga. As you can see below her characters are really detailed and this is something I always love in artwork. I feel like she uses watercolour to create her pieces but I'm not too sure, anyway the colours are great.

 

Only Yesterday - Studio Ghibli - US Release

Only Yesterday is an old animation, but it is only just being released as a US version! This just shows me how animation is timeless and even though this animation is around 25 years old, watching the trailer you would think that it's brand new. I absolutely love Studio Ghibli's art style and I love how they are so great at creating emotion with their characters and their beautifully painted backgrounds, I feel like they make the audience want to be there too and this is a really great as an animation as it really takes the viewer into a different world.

 

I have put below a few different scenes form the animation that I really liked and they really inspire me to create my own backgrounds that are of high standard like Ghilbi's. When so much effort is put into the scenes it makes the world that the animation is set in feel more real and like it's an actual place. I have done a little research into Ghibli's backgrounds before and I found Miyazaki likes to base a lot of his worlds of places like Italy and is completely in love with England so that might be why some of his settings are very green and feature lots of farming and fields like the second image and some are very warm and feature a lot of the ocean like places like Italy.

Anomalisa!

"Anomalisa" Trailer from JoePassarelli on Vimeo.

This animation excites me so much! A lot animation that is created for film is usually made for children or a young audience and especially stop motion where we see films like Coraline ect. I absolutely love film and to know that film and animation is now coming together to create a more serious genre is really exciting to me. I understand that some people don't see animation as a serious genre, however with films like this coming out I feel like it will start to inspire more people to love it as an art form or to create more serious animations that can be taken seriously by the film industry. This is the first ever stop motion to feature a sex scene and it may be bizarre and a definitely out of the ordinary, but to me this is just another stepping stone into the idea that animation is evolving! I have not yet got to watch this film but I am awaiting the day for it to come out so I can watch it, maybe I'll write another blog post once I have because I can't wait! I really love how they have used only one voice actor for every character and one other one for the female character, I feel like it makes the animation really personal and after reading a lot of reviews on it, it has been said how emotional and great this film is.

Skyfall Title Sequence - VFX

I wanted to look at a more technical side of animation that can be used in a 3D aspect as I haven't really looked at much of this. I looked at the Skyfall title sequence, which features a lot of scenes that are very surreal and as it's such an iconic film series I thought it would be a great modern example.


Skyfall - Opening Title Sequence from Best Of Cinema on Vimeo.

Even thought a lot of the scenes are beautifully put together, I do think that the soundtrack in this title sequence really is what brings it all together and without it, it definitely would not be as effective. This really shows how important your soundtrack can be and possibly even better to decide on this before you go into production. Below I have put a few stills that I really liked in this sequence and I like them because they are scenes that couldn't exist without 3D animation. They are really detailed and also show how realistic you can make animation feel even though it has been created through a computer. This is something that I am not really interesting in pursuing in the future, however I still think that it is important for me to look at the current industry to see what is out there.

The Art of the Title - Down the Rabbit Hole 2016

The Art of the Title is a website I am really new to and had never really heard of it before but now I absolutely love it for inspiration! I found a title sequence for Down the Rabbit Hole which is a Dutch festival and I really loved this title sequence because it's really detailed and psychedelic and this is something which I think would be really hard to animate.

Down The Rabbit Hole 2016 from Agent Pekka on Vimeo.

The transitions used here are really beautifully done and the use of colour has been really thought through, I feel like it would be easy to use so many colours and take away from the shapes and the action in the animation but here they managed to not do this. I particularly like the scene where it turns into a floating cloth. Below I have put the ideas and concept art they had for this animation and I really love looking at this kind of thing because it would take such a long time to plan this kind of animation.

Building Puppets in Animation

I watched this short documentary about building puppets and I found it really interesting and found out a lot that I had no idea about before. Building puppets and creating animation this way I found would be a really cool method and I really enjoy filming live footage as I love filmmaking. I would really want to try this method one day and I don't have the same high quality materials that they have in this video, I could maybe take the tips such as having a flat mouth which can be covered by hair or pieces of foam and create my own equivalent. However, in tho video he explains that you may think they use really good tools to create the puppets, but he explains that they don't really use that many tools and mainly use their hands and scissors. I have seen them here use foam, wire, beads, cardboard, cement used to glue shoes and material for the fur of the characters. They also use patterns and keep them so that they can replicate puppets again and again for when they cut the foam and this is really clever so that if something happens to your puppet or you can to make another one with a similar structure you don't have to start from scratch again. These puppets seem to be mainly made out of foam which is all glued together and I really loved watching this to find out more about puppets which we may not get to really cover that much.

Claymation!

In animation I really love the idea of stop motion and favour it over over methods so I wanted to look at claymation which is a form of stop motion. I have never really seen in detail how they animate clay but I have had the experience so far of creating my own clay model, but I didn't get to animate with it.

Sonos - Claymation from 1stAveMachine on Vimeo.

I really liked this example of claymation because it was different from the usual character and narrative animation, and instead uses claymation to create a different effect. I think this kind of animating shows how animation doesn't have to always be used in this way and can be used in different ways like this one. I love how they use pastel clay to make all the different flowers and it makes for a really stunning animation.



Morphology from Peter Sluszka on Vimeo.

This is yet another animation where I really liked it because it was different. The effort that must have gone into this animation is unreal and I would really love to see the making of this video! I like it because of the super detailed form that the clay goes through and you can see that the time was really taken to create this little clip. This kind of ting inspires me to experiment more with clay because of the fact that you can literally create anything out of it and it can morph and move in ways that no other material can.


Share The Joy. Répandez la Joie. from SHED on Vimeo.

Finally, I just waned to share this one because I thought it was quite cute and had a nice narrative. This kind of claymation shows how you can create your own little world and characters in it and I like this animation because it really made good use of characters and the emotion they are feeling throughout. As the characters keep swapping legs this is something that is really easily created in claymation and it shows again the kind of wacky things you can do with this medium.

Cut Out Animation

Looking at different techniques in animation is something that is really important if I want to think about the different ways I can approach future projects and the more I learn about and know the more I will be able to try. Cut out animation is something that has a few different ways of achieving it and I wanted to look at the different methods and how effective they are.

The first method is the standard cutting out bits of paper and moving them each time and taking a series of photographs. This way is quite old but it still works really well and I looked on vimeo for a few examples of cut out animation that have used this method. I found a really interesting behind the scenes video of this method and I wanted to share it just because I think it's sometimes useful to see how they've done it to get a better understanding. Something I personally really enjoy is to paint and after watching this video I saw how the animator paints her characters such as the bear and then cuts them out so I'd really like to try this method in the future! I also found it interesting how to move the really little parts of the characters with a toothpick and I've never really considered how careful you have to be with each tiny layer.

Making of 'Paper Plane' from gianluca maruotti on Vimeo.

I found this animation and I thought it was a really cool use of cut out along with using a stop motion setup and feel to it. I really like how in some scenes they have the paper moving like it's blowing in the wind. It's also really stylised in the way that it uses a black backdrop and then colourful layers on top that really pop and stand out, this is a really nice look and they don't really try to hide that it's all cut out pieces of card either. In most cut out animation it is usually quite flat and 2D looking but I thought this animation was great as it uses paper as a prop and makes 3D objects from paper. I also really like the sue of real time footage that they use and I feel like it makes the whole animation seem more real.

Early Morning Life : Paper cutout animation from S A R A N yen P A N Y A on Vimeo.

Concept Art in Animation

Something that I am starting to get really interested in is the different ways that you can create and design a whole world and the characters that live in it. I particularly have start to enjoy drawing up all the different backgrounds and making them in different styles digitally. As digital painting is something that is very new to me I wanted to have a look at different concept art for famous animations to see how they had originally looked at the idea.

First I thought I would look at a modern example; Kung Fu Panda 3!



I really love the character sheets for this animation, mainly because they are really expressive and it really show the volume of this character. I like how they have him not only in different action positions, but also like he is reacting to something and it really brings him to life.



This is a concept of a place in the animation and I thought this was absolutely gorgeous, the colours are so bright and I really want to be able to create worlds like this of my own someday.

Next I looked at Yellow Submarine, the Beatles animation which I wanted to look at because it is such a lovely colourful animation that is quite different and crazy.

 I also thought this was an interesting animation because they had to design characters that looked like real people and I found that they did a really great job of capturing each other the band members.












 Here is a little concept piece that was created for the animation and I really like the style here of the different layers. It really looks like each drawing is on a different layer and is put on top of each other and I want to maybe look into how I can create this same effect possibly using a digital method.

Copyright!

One of our seminars was all about copyright and I am going to go over what I found out, which was helpful in the way that I can start to understand how copyright could apply to my own artwork.

Important Points: 

• Author has a right to protest if their work is defamed or changed
• Copyright can be transferred, or sold to another party - they need to be legally transferred
• Copyright can go out of date (Life +70 years)
• To gain permission - contact the owner directly or contact the organisation or company who represents them
• You don't always have to ask for permissions but it's crucial if it's for commercial use
• Non-commercial, educational, research or private study does not require permission

Alternatives to Copyright

• Copyleft - A for of licensing and can be used to maintain copyright conditions for works such as computer software, documents and art - an author may give every person who review a copy of a work permission to reproduce, adapt to distribute it
• Creative Commons - non-profit organisation that provides a legal framework to allow people to share and remix legally
• Attribution by CC - Lets others distribute, remix, tweak and build as long as they credit you
• Attribution Share Alike - Like copyleft
• Attribution No Debrivs - Allows redistribution as long as it is passed along unchanged and credits you
• Attribution Non-commerical - Others can change and use your work but can't make money from it
• Attribution Non-commercial Share Alike - Other can change your work but cannot make money from it as long as they credit you too
• Attribution Non-commerical NoDebrivs - No money can be made, no changes and they have to give you credit

Previously, I did know a small amount about copyright due to studying Media Studies, however I definitely didn't know there were so many types! I think that it's really important to know about these different ways to protect your work and protect yourself from facing copyright issues in general. I also found it rally interesting how you could post your work to yourself that has been dated and this is proof you created it first as I had no idea that you could even do that as a way to cover yourself!

Elliot Lim

 Elliot Lim I found through watching the PPP presentations and he is an artist that I had actually never heard or seen of before! I was really attracted to his work when I first saw it so I really wanted to do a little more research on him and look at his work further. He is a freelance director, designer and animator and I liked his work before of the minimalistic style and his use of transitions in his animations that I thought were so creative and clever. 

Something that I am passionate and love is creating and designing backgrounds and after looking at Elliot Lim's animations I wanted to look more at his static work. Below are a few of his pieces that I thought were beautifully done.

The reason I really like these scenes are because they are really minimal and use very simple shapes to form the scene, however there is still a lot of detail in them too. The grass in the first image is almost square and sharp, but this style is really appealing to me as it's very modern and sleek-looking. I also really liked the colour palette that has been used in these scenes, I feel the greens, blues and greys work really well together and in keep with the style of drawing. These scenes have been created digitally and this is something that is quite new to me as I have never drawn digitally before coming to university, so looking at other digital artists is helping me think of new ways that I can explore the way of drawing.

Chloe Batchelor

Chloe Batchelor is an illustrator, animator and director and I really loved her work when I first saw it as it was so fun and vibrant! She is really great at designing different characters and this is a skill that I think I could improve in my self, so looking at inspiring artists such as Batchelor is great for research.

I looked at some of her sketches instead of just looking at her final pieces so that I could get some inspiration for my sketchbooks and her designs are really simple yet full of character.



I really like how she mixes up her shapes and sizes in the sketches and doesn't just stick to one style, these sketches I thought were really fun and when looking at other styles in the industry this seems to be quite popular. Below I have put another example of her sketches and I think they are so simple yet original, I really want to work on creating my own characters that are as silly and fun as hers. I have found she uses very simple hands and feet and this is also something I prefer as they aren't something I enjoy drawing in general!



Here are a few of her official pieces and I love the bold colours and colour schemes that she picks out as they seem to work really well wth the simple shapes she uses. The colours she uses aren't the generic colours that you would use, for example blue or purple hair, yet they make her art seem more much appealing and eye catching.





Finally, what I have notices about her work is the spray effect she uses to create shadow and I think this is a really effective way of adding shadows that aren't too harsh so this could be something that I try out for my self.

Disseminate Presenations

Today we had our disseminate presentations and this session was so interesting! Everyone got to go over things that interested them and it really gave me some inspiration into different types of animation that I haven't really thought about yet. Some animators that were mentioned interested me and I am going to look into more and maybe write about them on here if I find I really like their work. The ones I wrote down were Elliot Lim, Andreas Hykade and The Late Night Work Club. I also really liked how the presentations were all different and no one talked about the same things and I feel I definitely learned some cool stuff today! I've just stuck a few images below of the animators work I wrote down cause their work is really nice.

Drop Dead Fred Credits

I wanted to look at this animation that is used for the opening sequence of the film Drop Dead Fred because it's nostalgic and I love how messy and silly it is. I also remember seeing it as a child and always remembering it because at the time I found it to be funny and a title sequence that I didn't fast forward because it was boring. In this animation you can tell they have purposely made it look very hand drawn and as if a child had drawn it and because it's a film about a childhood imaginary friend it fits really well. A lot of films actually used to use animated credits and I think it's a shame that films now go for putting plain text in over film. This hand drawn style is another thing that is starting to become a less commonly used technique and I think that even though people are opting for quicker options to animate this technique is one that cannot be replaced and sometimes is the most effective when considering the message you want to send. What I can take from looking at this animation is that hand drawn animation can create a really nice effect and even in this particular one they use cut out animation as well as hand drawn. This then leads on to thinking about ways I can use more than one technique to work together in unison to create future animations.

And below are a couple of visual examples I liked!






Drop Dead Fred Opening Credits Animation. by TheRealEdison

Coraline Sets

Coraline is one of my favourite stop motion animations so I thought it would be a good idea to look into how it was created and the production process it went through. What I particularly like about this film is the aesthetics of the whole world and the atmosphere they create within the two parallel universes. Being able to create this effect is something that is vital in the storytelling so that the narrative is portrayed in the right way, so I also want to look into the ways they created both worlds. The largest set on the film is the orchard set and it came to being 60 feet long, which is due to the need for detail as well as space for the animators to move the puppets. What I also found interesting was that the sets include small trap doors, swing away walls and completely break away so that there is space to animate and they used around 150 different sets. I looked at what the sets are made out of for ideas that I could maybe use if I come to make my own at some point and I found that the trees in the orchard used painted popcorn as the leaves! I really like when average things you wouldn't think of can be used in sets and manipulated to fit the scene.

Box Trolls - Using 3D printing for animation!

For the film Box Trolls there was a new step in stop motion animation as they were able to utilise the new technology of 3D printing in order to speed up the process. Feature-length stop motion films always feature the technique of replacement animation, where the faces and limbs are replaces over and over with different parts to create slight movement. The parts are pretty much the same but they a slightly different and traditionally stop motion animators would have to make every single part. Now there has been the uprise of 3D printing and for the film Box Trolls, the animators were able to push the printers to create the parts for them and print them ready for production. In this film there were up to 52,000 faces printed and needed for the final production and this was even with some characters being added in using CGI. I found that for the faces of the characters they split the faces into two parts, the top part of the face and the bottom and I found this really interesting as it would create lots of different emotions without having to always build a whole new face. I liked that this also allowed for just the change of the mouth if needed in the shot. For this film however, they could animate every part of the face much easier using 3D printing without the need to repaint every single face. The fact that technology like this is evolving and pushing animation forward really interests me and I only can imagine what else stop motion will be able to do using 3D printing.

Adventure Time - First Stop Motion Episode!

Adventure Time have recently released their first stop motion animation as a new episode called 'Bad Jubies' and I really enjoyed seeing the same characters but in a different medium. After looking at the behind the scenes of this episode it really interested me into how they make the characters move, in the clip below it shows the characters on cranes when they are jumping into the air. I liked being able to see  how they did this and it would be great to investigate further into how they edit out the crane, however I noticed that it's coloured green which may be how they select it out in post. What I also liked about this animation is that Jake as a character is a shape shifter which would be quite difficult to animate using stop motion, I did notice in this episode that he does not shape shift as much. This is clearly because it's hard to animate, however I would like to see more of adventure time episode being animated using stop motion and pushing there boundaries. Finally, I liked the way that the character of the storm was animated, this was a really nice use of a different material and the animators managed to pull it off really well using a cloud-like material instead of clay.