We looked at animation at uni. In groups we were set the task of doing a charcoal wall animation inspired by BLU. It was a slow process but we created quite a good animation as a group!
The set up at uni...
I decided to have a go at doing a drawn animation my self as I have never done it before! The below was what I ended up with as it is Halloween soon! I quite enjoyed doing it and it turned out okay!
I have done some animation since I tried the light box, The most resent is in the editing process so will post about it later.
I didn't do much animation from Christmas as I did an art course at the local adult education for 10 weeks as I never did art past GCSE. Here are some pics of a few things I did..
This was the first weeks task.
My first go at painting with acrylic!
Experimenting with using a sponge.
My favorite from the course, its huge about A2. done with charcoal.
Not done on the course but because my Mum owns chickens and really wanted a panting of one!
Birthday present sorted!
Testing how hard a chicken was!
These were only a few because I didn't actually finish a few but I am happy with how they turned out. Considering not actually taking art or any thing since Year 9.
So for a while I wanted to try some hand drawn animation because i had a light box, I looked at peg pegs but for £9 including postage I wasn't really wantingto buying one. So I just taped some mount board to the light box in a hope that I would be able to keep the layers of paper in the same place.
Background cell..
Taking the photos after...who needs a peg bar...
An embarrassing attempt in my opinion... still got to start somewhere.
Needs a lot of work but I do quite like the finished effect just not what actually happened in it!
So yeah i decided i would like a pegbar as it was difficult and not ideal the set up I had ,it did work though!
I spend about a pound on mine using wooden dowel and a ruler,,,
I did realize a clear ruler was not ideal to photograph!
I am terrible at updating and at the moment doing animation related things.
However I have just finished a Christmas contract and now have less hours work so more time to animate! lets look at the positives!
Over Christmas I didn't do an awful lot I did try some low in/out which I finally got round to editing... didn't take long at all...
Not perfect by a long way, But lightnings good and I took a good number of photos I will do it again with different materials but if I didn't get round to uploading this, I think I would carry on putting other animation stuff off.
Over Christmas however I did design a Christmas Gromit! who got runner up, winning me a rather swish Wallace and Gromit Calendar!!
Gromit... is that you???
I have also started a 10 week painting and drawing class which is interesting...more on that later.
I have also got a place at UCA on their foundation Art and design course :)
As I am now too old to actually enter Besty, I ended up making a animated tutorial of how to make an animated film. I actually quite enjoyed this and spent quite a bit of time planning and preparing to get the best effect i could with limited resources.
This was my very rough plan and I had more of an
idea of the look and feel I wanted in my head!
A wild hippo appears!
Other then the plan. the first thing I did was the end screen... I found the biggest price of paper we had in thehouse and I first painted a wooden border as I wanted it too look like a pin board. I then used some memo paper to make 'post-its' that would pin to board, the idea being they would have links to other sites and previous best entries.
Getting a feel for the space.
I then had the task of thinking of things to draw on the back ground that you would perhaps pin to a board and also things that link to Besty such as tickets, ID tags and initials.
Also added made by Buffy!!
Now to add colour..
Okay so just chucking pencils at it didn't work..
After quite some time and trying not to just use the same colors I finished the back ground, and I quite liked the overall look. I decided to use the torn cardboard look for the title its actually really tricky to tip it so it looked half decent!
The finished look minus the 'drawing pins'
The next thing I did was to draw all the paper equipment I planned on using
Before
After
I had to draw a lot more things then I originally thought. I really enjoyed drawing everything to look cartoon like with bug outlines and bright colours!
I spent quite a while thinking about the background color and the look I wanted to achieve, I decide on brown paper, I would have liked a crumpled look but I think that would have been difficult to get other paper to lay on it well. following on from the torn cardboard I chose to ripe the letters and words out of paper just because I liked the look of it. I did end up rippling some letters in half and loosing some so had to do a few multiple times.
Testing how it would look and losing a 'L'!
Even though I use a camera for my animations in the tutorial I decided to do on a smartphone so to speak because it is instantly recognizable and very popular, and also easier in terms of drawing and animating in.
Set up and Shooting
The set up was a bit of a predicament because I wanted to have a downwards shot but The tripod I have wouldn't have allowed a perfect down wards shot or space for me to shoot from so I decided to used the tripod but instead of opening it I though I would just lie it on my desk and tie it on however this didn't feel secure enough so I tied it to a piece of wood then my desk however the wood was fairly light so with my coin counter at one end and a 5lb weight at the other i felt confident enough with it to have my camera on it!!
A success although I ended up with it the other way around then sat under the desk!
tied securely to my desk.... I hope
A mid production shot!
All was fine with the set up so I began to shoot it which was actually quite quick and had a lot of human interaction ie my hand. The above shot was of the animation being made in an animation!
Editing
I used premier pro to actually edit the animation and audacity to record the sound! I also added a watermark style logo of the sponsor as I was asked to put this in after the actual animation.
mid editing.
I have to say I'm rather proud of the overall look and smoothness of the animation and had some very nice feedback...
'I have watched the video. This girl is very talented! The video relies on graphics to convey a message. It's very impressive for someone who has taught herself to animate'
