Evaluation

Evaluation

 

 

To begin with we all chose different companies or animators to do our research on. I had chosen to do my research on two well-known animators Ray Harryhausen and Willis Obrien. Ray Harryhausen famous for his form of animation as ‘Dynamation’ and creating the armature for film ‘Mighty Joe Young’. He was working under Willis Obrien’s tutelage. Willis Obrien’s is most famous for his film King Kong which was later re-crated using CGI. Doing some research would allow us to get a better idea of how stop-motion animation works and would allow us to get an idea possibly for our work. Different techniques would also help us think in different ways for our animations. For the research I studied these animators and I also watched videos which I later uploaded to my blog.

As a class we created armatures and were shown step-by-step on how to create them properly by our teacher. He showed us an example of his work from when he did it in university and we all thought it came out well. But the majority of the class had different ideas on how they thought they wanted their animation to turn out, only one or two students decided to carry on working with the armature and to the benefit of these students they got help from the teacher. I decided not to carry on with this because I thought it would’ve been time consuming and not what I really wanted to do with the animation.

For my planning I began by uploading videos of what inspired me and I also wrote down some ideas that I had. One of the main videos that inspired was an animation called ‘manipulation’, this gave me an idea on how I wanted to animate my animation. The ideas came to my head as I watched the videos the more videos I watched the more ideas I had. I had three ideas at the end one which was an advertisement for a holiday company of my choice. This idea would have a man involved in many activities, activities that you would do in a holiday. It would’ve began with a plane flying across the screen, this plane is drawn on a plastic sheet and the plasticine man would be doing these activities. The other idea I had was to create a fighting scene but with this idea I realised would be difficult to create so that was abandoned quickly. My final idea was to have the plasticine man jump out of the plane and land and just wave to the crown. With this idea I wanted to show to the audience my animation skills so no real storyline was behind this. I wanted to show how smooth the movement of the animation could be. Creating the figure out of plasticine was not as difficult as I thought it would be, didn’t take long. I did not really have to make a background for the animation it was going to be done flat, only thing that was 3d was the plasticine man. Creating the plasticine man I wanted to create more than one because of the idea that I had. I wanted to make different size figures for the zooming in and out of the animation. By the zooming and out of the animation I mean that when the camera zooms in I want the plasticine man to be the same size but his surrounding to stay the same. Zooming in the camera and the man staying the same size with the background getting bigger is what I wanted to achieve.

Animating the work was not as difficult either because of the space and figures I was using. Because I was working on a flat surface I did not have much problem with things falling over I just had to focus on the movement and make sure it was as smooth as possible. I began with the plane drawing and had it moving across the screen with the clouds also moving to give that illusion of the plane flying. When the plasticine man was introduced it was simple, I simply had him appear from behind the plane and jump off of it. As he was dropping I didn’t have much trouble moving him down and the clouds moving as well to also give that illusion of him dropping. The only problems I had that I would realise later on in the animation process that I made a mistake in one of the frames by not remembering to move one of the sheets. This was an even bigger problem if I realised towards the end because it would’ve meant that I had to delete all the frames to go back and fix that one. Other than that animating was not a problem, very time consuming because of how I was focusing on the movement and how smooth it should be.

When I showed my final animation back to the class I received good feedback that I did not think I would get. I received comments like the soundtrack of the animation was simple but effective because it made it clear on what was happening with the plane flying and the man falling from the sky. Visuals were clear but the sound is what really helped with the animation. The simplicity of the animation was praised because it was easy to follow and did not have a whole lot going on. It was as long as it was because it was supposed to be a mini advertisement for a production or a holiday website but due to it being changed it didn’t happen. The length of it also made it look as if it was an ident, this made me think of where it could be shown for the placement of the animation. I was also told there was an interesting use of 2d and 3d animation and how it worked well together e.g. when the plasticine man falls from the sky but lands on a 2d floor was well thought out I was told. The pace of the animation was also commented on by the audience, the fact that it was really fast made it that bit more interesting because it meant that you had to pay attention to what was going on or you’ll miss it. The bit where I cut 3-4 times where the plasticine man was falling was well animated I was told because I was thinking about the height at which he was falling. This was animated in cinematic way because of the way I thought about it. The animation reminded one individual of another animation called manipulation and this was good because that was what inspired me in the first place to think of animating in that particular way.  I also received some negative but that was my fault when I thought about it. The most negative feedback that I received the one that the majority of the class kept saying was the concept of the animation and how it did not have a storyline wasn’t good. I had to explain to the class that this was something I thought about I also was told that the text at the end where it said ‘superman’ was actually part of the animation and did have relevance to the concept of it. This was so that I could refer the animation back to a well-known superhero.  There were some frames that seemed really fast and jolted the flow of the animation but I believe I was the only one that noticed but it is something that I would fix. The biggest and main problem was the lighting of the animation, there were certain times it went from a dark white to a bright white and this made it look unprofessional. But I chose just to have two colours, black and white for the simplicity of the video to make it easier to follow. The other colour that was shown in the animation was the plasticine man which was a creamy skin colour type of colour. This was so that the audience would know that it is a human and again it is a simple colour to animate with, if I was to choose a bright colour the audience eyes could only be glued to that object and nothing else so I was not looking for contrast I was simply looking for it to blend together.

The target audience for my animation I would say would be about from 8-40. A broad audience like this because of the simplicity of the animation and there is not a lot going for it to be aimed just a specific age group. But the reference to the old animation called ‘manipulation’ could aim it at an older range but overall the animation would make a broad audience smile. The gender of the animation is both male and female the content and what is going does not really make it one sided. Cultural experience also makes the target audience bigger, having an understanding of the character superman would help. Superman is a well-known superhero and the majority of people know him so this helps with the target audience. Socials groups also has a broad audience, from professionals to school kids.

My animation would be broadcasted on YouTube this is so that the audience can view it whenever they want at any time and place. It could also be screened at an animation festival, this will have a wide audience because animators from all over can come and watch.

The animation overall I think came out as I planned. It did not come out exactly as I planned but with a few adjustments there was a good outcome. In the future I would focus on my planning and preparation for the animation as this is key to producing a good animation, this is key to producing anything good so it is something that I would be focusing on in the future. Time management and organisation would’ve really helped with this assignment. The research I did at the beginning I believe also helped me because it made me think outside the box instead of just having a normal idea I was able to experiment with them.