Realtime UK

I attended a lecture from someone who. Works for realtimeuk and it was very insightful into the world of animation! It explai ed how competitive the industry is and have me a greater understanding of what I still needed to do to ensure my animation was complete!

Some of the videos that they should us, were, well incredible, and I never expected myself to do anything like that! I didn't even realise animation could be that complex and detailed. It did really fascinate me!

I'm glad I went!

Video, done, finished, ready!

youtube link (just incase) youtube video

Quick Evaluation

I am overall very pleased with my attempt at my own animation, i feel that some areas could of been better, for example, at some points the clay people became quite cracked, this was due to the vast amounts of movements that the characters were put through.. some of the movements seem quite sharp, which i could of changed.. HOWEVER, i wanted to animation to have a more of a 'do it yourself' kind of look as i think it adds to the effect.

I think changing my idea was a better idea, it allowed me to develop a more interesting concept, which didnt repeat itself! I didnt loose out of too much time doing this as it was just the basics that i changed, - the story board, which i had done before i had any introductions into animation software. When i had these introduction it became alot clearer to me that i didnt want to focus my whole animation around after effects, because well its confuses me! (getting the hang of photoshop was hard enough) but in time i think the idea of after effects will grow on me and i will be able to produce better quality animations!

I did enjoy the brief in some aspects as i was challenged and enjoyed myself when experimenting with the playdoh people and stop motion, but i have learnt how time consuming it actually it doing animation!

DONE! - Nearly

I just need to add the lighting...

link taken from youtube, as i couldnt upload my video straight to blogger...



Click here if video fails to play (youtube link)

After Effects..

as i wasnt able tp upload eny evidence of the workshops i attend on after effects (never had a computer/kept crashing when trying to save) i thought id show some evidence of me trying out some after effects technquies in my animation after id used stop motion

i used after effects to both, add the music to my animation and slow the speed of it down.. as when it exported in 'icananimate' it seemed very fast, and therefore no longer fit the music.. as well as cutting its self down to only just 20 seconds!

Youtube Channel...

i found this channel on youtube full of claymation videos, where characters interact with eachother!

http://www.youtube.com/user/mamshmam?feature=watch

Here's one of the videos!

When uploading and rendering the animation, it sped up the sound and animation.. this made it drop back down to 20 seconds, however left a 10 second blank ending... strange! 

Thankfully it still ends at 20 seconds! 

I am fairly pleased with how well it has turned out and how the music fits with the movement of the animation though!

I will go and see how to fix the 10 second black screen!!

THREE WORDS

DANCE

OLD

CHEERFUL

testing...

before adding the music to see how it fits..

After adding music.. i think it fits quite well..

New Story Board

abit more understanding...

Although i havn't yet added my new story board to my blog, i thought it would be a good idea to show all the practices i have been doing! i know what i want to do, and these are not my idea, but i wanted to do these to try and experiment with using playdoh, as well as enjoying myself. Hey, you never know i might like these better than my idea!

THIS IS SO HARD

Background..

So i have the background i want, now i just need to make my character work...its hard because of the movements the character needs to make... hmm.. i may have to resort to giving my character no legs?

experimentation

To fill you in...

So I decided to change my idea completely and scrap my original story board and idea for a completely new one (I'm aware that this isn't very sensible in terms of research I have done). I then it will be a lot more beneficial to revert my idea back to the themes that I first came up with... Which make it fit better with my three words as well as motivates me more.

Why have I changed my mind?

Well mostly because after I did trials of my plan, I felt it looked childish and amateur-like (yes I am aware I'm not a pro, but I don't want It to look to naff)

Secondly after effects is my worst nightmare, after being to the workshops, having my computers crash on me several time (sometimes not even log on, and be no computers left) -reasoning for the lack of after effects workshop evidence, most of it didn't save!!

Thirdly, I didn't feel as it was as interesting and fit the music as well, I think reverting back to he dea of stop motion has made me more motivated

Having fun whilst doing work?! surely not?

TRUE. doing this is actually pretty entertaining... however i just need to make the movements fit the music, so coming to terms with the clay movements is what i aim to do here!

The chase...

I decided to play around again and develop the previous stop motion...

HAHA.

Even though there a some mistake in this animation, and i am using the built in camera on the mac so its abit naff, this little experement made me pretty happy, and brightened up my mood, the movements of the little Doh man seem to give him character!

When I exported the video it turned it black and white so i used QuickTime to a screen recording however it slowed it down a lot when i play it, If this was my final aniamtion i would take it back into another piece of software to speed it up!

PLAY, doh.