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!