Stop Motion Animation (Artist Models)

Stop Motion Animation (Artist Models)

Linked to this page is another practice animation i did with artistic models re-creating a simple funny scene from a comedy movie for a younger audience.

Pratice animation 2D (24 Frames Per Second)

Pratice animation 2D (24 Frames Per Second)

Linked to this BLOG is one of my first practice animation in a 2D stop motion animation with simple drawn characters being moved single frame. However there is no storyline of point to it or it does not have narrative.

The Development Of Animation Techniques

The development of animation techniques

Contemporary uses of animation

Animation in its evolution has produce many kinds of types of products from films to games in this report I will explore prime examples of these products and review them in greater detail. A big influence for an animated music video is “Pearl Jams, Do The Evolution”.

Although the video was not commercially realised to the public due to its graphic content the realism in the anime style graphics precedes some of the other music videos. The animation technique used to create this video was part hand drawn and part computer generated using software to add shading and scenery.

Furthermore the audience for this music video is teenagers to young adults more importantly fans of the music as well as the graphics style and the grungy feel of the animation the music ties in well with the theme of the animation as it links to the title of the song. As does the animation itself as the animation is telling a story about the evolution of the earth. 

ADVERTISEMENT AGENCIES use animation to promote products to a specific audience through the use of colours and moving images these are mainly used to promote children’s products as the use of a cartoon style in animation appeals to a much younger audience.

For example the “UM-BONGO” advertisement uses a range of vibrant colours and cartoon drawn characters to promote to a younger audience a fruit juice drink.

The colourful cartoon style of the and silly antics along with the tropical setting appeals to children as bright colours and cartoons catch attention from a younger viewer. The technique used to create this animation is computer generated as the frame rate is smooth and dose not have a similar frame rate to stop motion animation. The animation is drawn but then edited and created on a COMPUTER WORKSTATION.

A more up to date advertisement that has the same format as this is “The Hive” central HEATING SYSTEM, which is an application you can use on your phone to change the temperature of your home while you are either indoors or outdoors.  The style is the same only this advertisement has less colour and has less colour and a much smoother frame rate due to the improvement on the software after the past ten years.

Television is a giant canvas for animators as there are hundreds of cartoons and skits through out the television world these have a massive impact on the views and have become a part of television success for a lot of companies. A big example of this is a very famous household name that I am sure you will know.

“The Simpsons” has become one of the most recognised cartoons through out TV history as they have been going for a long time first shown on the Tracey Ulman show but quickly found its way to becoming a massive success in the media industry. The animation techniques for this show was originally hand drawn frame by frame but later became generated on a computer. Also some CGI was used on the official Simpsons Movie.

The target audience for this show is children to middle aged people from all genders and variety of people. As I said it has become a household name this links to family’s as well as the show tackles family issues and common family problems which families can relate to making it such a massive success. The style is Matt Groening own personal style of cartoons that he created years before.

The film industry as well as the television industry is a big world to enter as animators use programs to create animations of whole movies this is one of the earliest forms of children’s movies to the point where in film animation is used pretty much all the time.

A prime example of film is Walt Disney Snow White the technique used for this is hand drawn animation and roto-scoping a technique in which we trace human movement and animate it into the scene. Further more the Multi-plain camera was used to create depth in the scenery to create the illusions of foreground and background.

The target audience for this movie is young children at the time it was based towards both genders however it is more commonly known to little girls however it can be related to both genders still to this day.

The theme is fantasy as it tells the story of witches and princess and the entire typical fairy tale genre.

The first full animated movie and still one of the most popular of all time.

A more modern version of this is the “Princess  & The Frog” a similar universe to that of Snow White only with the use of more modern technology the “The Princess & The Frog” was the last old school way of animating before it all moved on to computers meaning it was drawn bit by bit and animated piece by piece.

Animation coming from pictures to movies, music videos and TV series spawned a new generation of event that made whole new FRANCHISES this is the digital media world of animation this animation spawned video games and applications that we use for practical uses. Video games are the main examples of digital media.

 A prime example of excellent video game animation is a video game titled “Pac Man” a classic arcade machine game that spawned a massive range of other games the basic premise of Pac Man animation was coding the animation was fairly simple.

However complex at the time it was used to create movement for basic pixels on screen to interact with the keys and buttons being pressed by the player. The animation was produces by computers and designed on computers this then spawned the genre known as 8-bit the theme and style is 8-bit as there are limited pixels on the screen.

The target audience was children to young adults and certainly older as games are now produce by hundreds of companies. The target audience are known as gamers, which is a range of age and gender.

Proposal 2D Animation

Proposal 2D Animation

Idea

For my 2D animation my idea is to use cut outs of photographs of me and my friends and colleagues. Furthermore I will be using an assortment of other cut outs of different characters from different sides of entertainment this will mainly be arcade game related and video game related.

Animation Technique 

I will proceed to move the images in sync with each other as there will be multiple characters also there will be multiple pictures of the same model, as I will need to create emotion in the movement of the characters. I will be using a range of audio from music to forms of AUDIO RECORDED from me and the other people in the animation the animation will be scripted, as it will follow a small storyline to do with the characters in this animation.

Audience

The animation will be suited to a younger audience there will be no violence in this animation it will be linked to a much younger generation however some of the characters in this animation will link to an older as they are old models.

Theme

The theme of this animation is to link to video games as it will link to a wide audience of a younger generation of “Gamers” as this is a huge audience currently.

Style

The style will be video game like in the premise that it is set also with the characters being 8 bit, 16 bit and current generation they will all link to the cyber theme with an old arcade feel.

Length

A minuete long as it will be an in-depth advertisement for a web show it will be telling a story therefore there will be multiple advertisements it will have a series of adverts to promote the web show rather then fitting the full story into one singular advert.

Stop Motion Animation Proposal

Stop Motion Animation Proposal

Monster Revolution Advert

Idea 

For my 3D animation my idea for this animation is to used found objects to create the idea of a story and movement to these inanimate objects the found objects I will be using for this animation is cans more importantly they will be a popular brand of energy drink known as “Monster” the story of this animation is that the single “monster” can is the main character and protagonist of the story as the unpopular cans of energy drink want to wipe out the existence of the branded cans one by one. There will be other cans of energy drinks in this animation, as they will play sub characters to the animation.

Story
The monster will fend off against the cans in a last attempt to save the rest of the energy drinks from being wiped out.

The whole story of this series of adverts is the main protagonist is ambushed by other cans he then goes through a series of montage training like so many action movies he then plots to get his revenge on the cans by attacking their base and finally killing the king of the energy drinks reclaiming his freedom and saving the rest of the cans.

The whole animation will be scripted to tell a story of the main character however the end result will be an advert for the monster energy drink to promote the taste of monster to the audience to tell that monster is the best energy drink as it is a drink that I enjoy myself.

Music

I will use different forms of music depending what is happening in the scene this can range from tense action music to sympathetic music if the scene is sad or not.

The style will be quite mature to link to consumers of the drink in traditional style of the monster FRANCHISE this being quite extreme and dark.

Length
The advert will be thirty seconds long however the adverts are a sequence of adverts telling the story as a whole but are split into parts to tell the story better to create a series which will all be thirty seconds long.

Influential Animators

Influential Animators

In this report I will be looking at three different influential animators and will be talking about their importance and how they have impacted the film industry.

The first animator I will be looking at is none other then Walt Disney. Now a household name found in possibly every home in the world this man started off doing adverts with his animations for other companies to earn a living and was quite successful for a while. Later he left this occupation to create his own animations.

In 1928 he released his first animation titled “Steam Boat Willie” this was the first animation to have synchronised sound this success sparked the Disney FRANCHISE with this new Micky Mouse character with this success Disney worked on a few series cartoon one of these was known as “Silly Symphonies”.

As well as being an animator he was revolutionary as he invested to create the multi-plain camera this devices created the idea of depth perception in cartoons meaning the character is able to occupy spaces from all areas the character is able to from the foreground image to the background frame by frame. This works by having different parts of the scene on different layers then moving the character accordingly to create the effect.

Walt Disney is probably the most successful animator of all time as he has attempted many techniques from being the first animator to make the first full-length movie animation and then adding colour .To using the technique of tracing an actress to create a human movement animation this technique was called roto-scoping.

The next animator I will be looking at is none of other then the just as famous warner BROTHERS best known for their work on Looney tunes.

Founded by four BROTHERS in 1918 it did not officially become warner brothers until 1933 as the company before was an independent unnamed company.

The first cartoons Warner brothers made in there NEW COMPANY was of course the Looney tunes however it didn’t start with our classic characters rather an unknown character known as Bosko however after the creator of this animation left he took bosko with him warner brothers re-branded bosko as Buddy in Looney tunes.

It wasn’t till the 1940s where they introduced the more main characters that we still see today around this time warner brothers started to get noticed for their comedic use of animation.

Norman McLaren was born in Scotland and studied art and Glasgow school of art. When he started animating he actually painted the FILM FOOTAGE he had frame by frame. His earliest work was named “Seven Till Five”.

His work was inspired by the thinking of Eisenstein and the attitude he had in society. He was one of the earliest animators to experiment with the idea of pixilation. McLaren worked for the General Post Office Film firm and moved to New York just before the strike of world war two.

One of his most famous pieces of work is simply called “Dots” in which ink dots move and create motion his animatons were always unique and lacked very little point to them his work was very strange and mystical it left audiences interested in his mind.

in later years he did movies and became a teacher in countries with poor poverty.

Edweard Muybridge

Edweard Muybridge

Edweard Muybridge born Edward James Muggeridge raised Kingston England born April 9 1830.

Edward muggeridge left school but with a sense that he did not accomplish much and wanted to make his name known. He decided to leave England to move to America to start a career. He started out as a bookseller and then proceeded to learn photography in which he became excellent is this field and started out as a photographer mainly doing landscape photography.

Around the time of these events was the time of the industrial revolution in which invention was starting to grow as well as the growth of America. Upon his travels across America in a stage coach there was a unfortunate accident in which the stage coach crashed. Edward now Edweard Muybridge was recovering from the crash during the six months of this incident his vision became blurry and distorted. He could see double a so a single person would have a copy in them selves as a sort of 3D effect.

Shortly after this Muybridge starting his photography again after his recovery this then made some very odd and dark photos in this sort of self made fantasy universe he had to create. Later on Muybridge started to experiment with 3D photography having two images side by side to create a 3D effect on the viewers eyes.

Further along his career a WEALTHY MAN by the name of Leland Stanford approached Muybridge asked if he could capture the movement of a horse through photographs to create a sequence of photos in which the horse temporarily leaves the ground to better understands how it moves.

Muybridge attempted this but his first attempts failed and continued work with other projects he was working on in his mobile PHOTOGRAPHY STUDIO “Helios Flying Studio”.

Muybridge later married a 19-year-old woman who was currently married to another man. He paid for her DIVORCE and married her soon after. However all was not well and good in there relationship as his wife was having an affair while Muybridge was away on business.

Muybridge came back and had heard the news he then proceeded to follow and kill the man he successfully did so and was brought to trial four months later but was not convicted.

After the murder of the man and the death of his wife nine months later Muybridge’s mind soon turned into this world of darkness and false reality his photography became more dark and chaotic.

Leland Stanford contacted Muybridge again to get this sequence of photos both obsessed with the possibility of moving pictures Muybridge paid engineers he knew who worked on rail roads to make electronic SHUTTERS for his cameras to capture a 500^th of second for a single movement.

A set up of 24 cameras were used with wires to close the SHUTTERS once the they were trample on by the horse the wires were set up along the track so the horse would capture the wires.

A few attempts of this and the photo of a horse leaving the ground was found sceptical at first by critics Muybridge quickly realised that he could use the sequence of photos as proof to show that the horse does leave the ground.

Using a device called Zoopraxiscope  he was able to show audiences the motion of a horse while turning glass disc in a machine to create an animation. Most of his work was painted onto to make the pictures move better and to make it easier on the viewers eye.

With this new technique of moving pictures he then proceeded to move onto other motion sorts of works. However this work was seen as a dark fantasy into his mind as most of the pictures were of naked models mainly women. People quickly questioned his motives and class him as insane and quite “purvey”.

This was also questioned before in his early career with the lengths he would go to get a shot. People thought of him as old insane man however they also thought of him as a creative man even though he was quite and egotist with his work and was very boastful towards him self.

A lot of his work includes himself naked which notably is some of his best work on record. One effect he has is the ability to freeze water in a shot, which is something that revolutionised how we saw pictures as a whole.

One notable part of his work is that he was able to create a 360 rotation of his whole body, which is used today in modern day cinema today. Matrix uses scenes of 360 slow motion, which create a similar effect. This photography is called Time lapse photography.

He inspired many Etienne-Jules Marey and many others to proceed with this type of photography he amazed the scientific community but not the artistic side as they were very sceptical of his work. Later on Leland Stanford released a book about Muybridges work and claimed it as his own which also gave Muybridge a worse reputation.

Edweard Muybrigde was not the inventor of animation but more a visionary of what it could be He died at 74 years old in the place he was born Kingston England.