Wednesday, 24 May 2017

Final Vids!!

Here are the links to the final animations we did so that you can have a look and see how it all worked out.






Oops!!

Well I completely forgot about this blog because its been a very busy holiday and term due to many side projects/societies i'm a part of, but thats not very important. So lets play a little bit of catchup!

Now last time I put a post up was about the prop making. A lot more naturally progressed and it turned out to be what is mine personally, the best animation we did. It turned out really well. But I'll go through it all in the correct order. For the soap we changed the idea of a square of paper with the face on it to individual pieces. Like different eyes, mouth movements etc. Before I post a photo showing you what i'm on about. I'm just gonna talk about the sets as you'll be seeing it all in the same photos.

The stage was originally planned to be made out of wood, but we found it was a pain to get the resources, there wasn't room for us in the Glass centre besides a little corner. However while I was sat in our studio drawing it out, I realised that there was a load of cardboard and these weird table looking like polystyrene things near me that Ros said we could use. So I cut out two pieces of smooth cardboard (you know the strong nice stuff, not the flimsy stuff) that was the length of the table like things and used strong glue to stick the cardboard and polystyrene together. This made the stage. I then cut out two side pieces of foam and painted it black. I then the same again for the top of the stage roof. I then got some black cardboard and attached Velcro to it so we can remove the back for camera angles. Then I just made a fancy front for the stage. To get a curtain I got a bit of wire and pushed it through the foam to get two wire hooks on both top ends of the stage. I then got a piece of dowel that sat on both the wire and found some really nice red cloth that would act as a curtain. I glued the top of the cloth so it had a place where the dowel can slide in. Put the dowel on the hooks and the stage was done.

 



The desert environment was made out of the same foam stuff I used on the stage but painted and staggered to give it a sense of depth. We made a tray thing out of cardboard and this was used to hold the sand. Anyway rather than try and explain this, I think its better if you just see it.


Going back you can see how the characters ended up. Vanessa had this amazing idea of using string wrapped about wire to make the hands and arms. It worked really well and in the final cut you can see how this ended up

Monday, 6 March 2017

Stop Motion - Making Props

Thursday - 02/03/2017

Well because we had all of our Smudge and Click work done, when it came to Thursday we had nothing to do for Ros and there was no point in doing the sound when its a one person task. So we cracked on with Niels work instead. Sadly I wasn't here to take part because i've been ill but i'll make up for the time I aren't there.

(quick update on that: The doctor said they're just 3 serious flus that i've caught one after another, theres no cure besides, painkillers, rest and some time. Thanks to John and Ros for helping me find a doctor. Anyway back to the real stuff!!)

Matthew had bought soaps from Tesco which were exactly what we needed and the best part. They are instantly recognisable as soap. To make the arms stand out more, because lets be real. Wire is quite thing and won't stand out as much. We used string and wrapped it around the wire and used knots to make little hands. We talked about putting Plasticine around the wire but the problem with that is that Plasticine can be quite heavy for a weak wire. So it would pull the wire down due to gravity's physics. There was also talk of silicon but that can also be quite heavy, doesn't bend easy and would take time to make. Once again, we're trying to keep the prop building simple so that we can focus more on the story and animation side.











Monday - 06/03/2017

Today we have started to make the desert part of the animation, this is the part where the two characters have their showdown. We're using real sand and we're going to try and make some kind of set out of cardboard. More info and photos to go with that later!


Smudge and Click - Editing

With the smudge and click all done in terms of photos. All that is left is to edit it and this task was laid to me. Now this actually took some time because I tried doing it in after effects and found that it put each individual photo into a separate track which was a massive problem because it made my job of changing each frame extremely hard and drawn out. I needed them all the be on one track so when I adjust one, the rest move accordingly. Now I'm sure there is a way to do this in after effects but:

A) I couldn't word what I was trying to do so I couldn't google it to find a tutorial on how to do this

B)I didn't really have the time to wait and ask someone at Uni that would have knowledge to do the task i'm trying to do

So out of frustration like everyone does when something gets on your nerves, I had a bit of a rant about it to my flat mates. Now the two I was speaking to; Isaac and Lewis. Are both studying media and they both said well how about you use Premiere Pro because it can do exactly what you need. So I spoke with the group and they said if its easier go with Premiere. Also with it been adobe, they all link in so i downloaded Premiere and cracked on. Within the hour I had the video fully made and edited to the point that all that was left was sound. I changed the contrast and made the video black and white because it helped to make the sand fully black rather than black with orange sand where the light was passing through. So I uploaded the files to Google Drive ready for Lewis to put the sound.

Next update will be the sound and probably a link to the finished video!

Stop Motion talk

Hello guys!! Another late upload but better late than never!

So i'm gonna talk about Monday last week (27/02/2017) Matthew and Vanessa had come up with the idea of a soap opera with actual soap the week before. So as a group we sat down with some soaps that Lewis' mum had given to us and thought about how we're gonna bring it to life. We thought about using wire for the arms and the faces will be done my faces drawn on paper, cut out and then attached to the soap then switch them out accordingly.

Then Niel came round and brought up a good point, will the audience watching understand that the soap we have. Is actually soap. The soap we had was more of a luxury soap, the type of bar you'd find in a fancy soap shop. For some silly reason I didn't take a photo of it to show you so i'll try my best to describe. It was a lime green colour, the shape of a rectangle, and the soap was semi-transparent and inside it had what looked like white flakes of other soap. Anyway, Niels feedback about the soap not looking like soap made us think what we could use so that the audience look and it and think. Yeah, thats a bar of soap. What came to my head was traditional bars that my Nana uses such as the Imperial leather bars and the Dove bars. We talked about how different soaps could be used for the  of a type of soapy character shall we say, this conversation drifted off quite a bit and to be honest we all did this a lot from the original topic of how can we make the soap look like soap. So going back, we talked about how we could maybe use Plasticine but the thing is Plasticine looks like Plasticine and theres no way really to try and make it look like something it isn't so that idea was scraped. We thought about using silicon but that would be a long process and we wanted to keep the idea and resources simple so that we don't over complicate it and end up with a video that we aren't happy with or didn't make sense. We were actually talking for a fair time but we drifted a lot, so I aren't going to go into it because I feel it would be a bit pointless.

After this talk, I spoke to John about using the facilities in the glass centre to make a stage for the animation. We grabbed our coats and then Me, Lewis and John took a trip down and spoke to the technician about what we can and can't use, whats available and what day to come in so we aren't in the way of students that are doing their work there. Then we headed back up and talked to the group about what we're gonna do for the soap thing. Matthew said he's going to tesco and he's going to grab some classic soap and then next week we'll start making things and trying animation techniques out with the soaps themselves to see if it works.

That's all for this update!

Thursday, 23 February 2017

Smudge and Click Story Board





Smudge and Click

Double upload!!

We got the full brief for this project last week. The topic was on Myths and Legends. I thought of the idea of a book opening up and greek mythology creatures coming out with stories explaining what they are, however I didn't think of how we were going to do that yet, I just came up with the idea. So Building on this, Vanessa said explained a tale about the adamastor (adamishor) which is a Portuguese tale that originated from Greek mythology. Its said that when explorers went to leave the cape to explore the Indian ocean, they would encounter a giant like man that had the power of the sea and would destroy the ships in storms and with his hands.

(for more information on the Adamastor I recommend looking at the wiki of it. I know its wikipedia and not a reliable source but it gives plenty of information going into the background of the monster and which stories he appeared in. Link)

We all really liked this idea because none of us besides Vanessa knew of this story and it was an interesting idea that was quite different. So we all sat down and talked about how we could show this story, we kept with the book idea and the thought of things coming out of it. Nora said we could use sand which was a good idea as it gave it more of a magical feel. Think magic sand flying around and making images to tell a tale. So we came up with the story that a captain has to leave his wife for the seas, the ship comes in, it gets loaded and they set off. Then the captain notices a storm in the distance and tells the crew. They hit the storm and encounter the giant know as adamastor, the ship gets destroyed, it ends with the monsters eyes and then all the "magic" sand goes back into the book.

A week later we've come in and have cracked on with making it, we experimented with different types of books till we were happy with the choice. Vanessa and Nora worked with the sand making the shapes with the sand, Matt is taking the photos and going through with Nora and Vanessa to ensure it goes as smooth as we want it to. Rather than me getting in the way and trying to help when realistically there were limited jobs, Vanessa and Nora suggested that I do the editing and Lewis does the sound, which was a good shout as it means i'm still involved but not in the way. Too many Chiefs and not enough indians kind of thing. I've still sat through to see how its all going, taking photos of whats going on to add to blog.
 
       


















The plan is to get all the photos taken so its just a matter of editing it. We felt that if we tried to do it over numerous days, it may be harder because other groups need to use the equipment and it may be hard getting in when everyone needs to use it. So we said today to everyone that if we can just have it for the day we can be done and out the way. It also means the consistency of the sand and images doesn't change and flows throughout the video. Thats all for today, next post will be whenever we start the stop motion work for Niel and/or get the pixelation and Smudge & click finished and edited.

In a bit!!

Arran

Pixelation and Intro

Hello!!

This is the blog for the Harryhausen group (2017) which is made up of 5 of us; Vanessa, Nora, Matt, Lewis and Arran. I'm Arran and I'm gonna be updating this with photos and information on what we're doing and have done throughout the project.

So,
This post is a little late but for the pixelation task we went to the beach to film for our short film we had to make. So we decided to do our film based around the physics of magnets but show it in terms of people. The roles we had for this group were me acting and abit of shooting, Matt did acting, we had Vanessa doing the editing, Nora did the storyboard and directing and Lewis did the shooting.

So the story is Me and Matt meet each other and we try to greet each but find we can't because we're both negatives. So we try to break the barrier and end up getting into a fight. Matt goes to throw a stone but ends up being dragged to Vanessa, because she's a positive. It then ends with Matt saying sorry and Vanessa looking a bit mad and done.

I'll upload a link/video once it's fully edited and done