After struggling for ages trying to create the music for the animation I decided to instead put in ambient sounds and sound effects. It took almost an eternity to make it as the only music software I have is garage band and it was difficult to judge the exact timing when having to click play in garage band and then quickly flick screens to watch the animation with the music playing.
I then added the beginning and the end by simply drawing it out and photographing it again to get the continuation on the look of the animation.
As you can see in the final thing there are quite a few new elements I added in such as the bird living in the tree and instead of it getting stuck in the rubbish and dying I thought it would be more interesting if it flew up to its nest and then have the monster shoot some rubbish at it and then it unfolding whilst falling down.
After having some severe doubts about my project I decided to take a little break and think about how to make it better. I added a background and decided that I could possibly animate the background and I also figured that maybe the animation would look better simply because I had now had a little bit more practice. But before starting…:
Anyway. That was some time well spent!!
Here is the almost final whole scene one with some music which I have no claims too!! But I wanted to see how it would look if I had created the music I really wanted playing:
After making this there was a range of things wrong with it!!
The background needs to be lower down for one. In the coloured pictures the background being slightly too high looks good because the red light underneath the table really shows up but when its desaturated it just looks like its badly made…. Another problem with the background is that it doesnt look like the wall is slightly ruined at the end until it gets coloured in. I also don’t like the way some of the falling rubbish falls so quickly. Some of them look good but not all of them so I need to take more care when photographing this.
Also the pans that I put in are too quick and so have no real effect and it just looks sped up. Then there is the problem with the pretend time lapse of more rubbish coming in along with the change in the background in the begining which I wanted to make look as though it was getting darker. Granted this could be helped with AE (but I don’t have this on my lap top so will have to do this in uni). It still needs work. The flow of the animation only becomes right after about 13 seconds in.
I was so excited to start working on the first scene!! I set everything up how I wanted it and put up a white plastic sheet behind the set to create a plain background. The lighting took ages to set up however and actually taking the real shots took some time to get to.
At first the lighting was way too bright on the bin and the can was overexposed.
This lighting was a little bit better however the can was still over exposed and I couldn’t understand why until I zoomed in really really close on it and realized that it was the white plastic that was placed just in front of it that made it look overexposed when in fact… it wasn’t. So I removed it and placed it somewhere else.
In the end I decided to put on a red light just next to the table which also helped prevent overexposure and made the shadows look better.
After taking these tests with the lighting and figuring out how many pictures I needed to take to make it look like the bits of waste were falling into the bin and not just slowly placed in (about 10 pictures.. but this also depended on how much of the falling action we saw of the waste) I realized that the background looked nothing short of shite… It was just way too plain. I figured that if I drew a load of bricks and stuck them on to the plastic sheet using tape this would solve the problem. However the bricks A, took ages to draw (so I spray painted some of them black), and B didn’t stick to the plastic very well and fell off after a while.
What was I to do now? Well… I thought I might as well just draw straight onto the sheet.
So! After all the lighting and bricking was done I was ready to start the actual thing!! YES! Here is a little bit of the first scene:
And here is one with some very emotional music quickly put together in Garage Band…
Here is a test of the new improved model. With this one I can make it look as though it spits out rubbish as its going along. Also the legs are easier to move and bend so that I can animate the legs better.
After purchasing a very bright light and finishing (except eyes) I did some more tests. However I found the legs incredibly difficult to move and trying to have a close up of the leg movement whilst walking and destroying a plant was impossible. I decided a new model would have to be made… This will probably set me back a day or two for staring the actual shoot.
I liked the way the leaves moved as the monster moved across the ground. I tried playing with the focus and it turned out really well. However I think I will have to do at least two or three pictures for each time I shift the focus a little bit. I need to be more aware of how many photos I am taking whilst I am photographing….
I need to play around with the lighting a little bit but I quite like it how it is now. Kind of like an autumn morning… Also I need to check what it all looks like in black and white.
Not a lot is written about female animators. The film and animation industry is very male dominated so I thought it would be good to look at some female animators.
Lotte Reigner (1899- 1981) was a pioneer in silhouette animation:
Faith Hubley (1924- 2001) and her husband John Hubsley created an independent animation studio called Storyboards:
Mary Ellen But was the first american to make abstract films and the first person in the world to use electronically generated images in film.
After much rage and almost seeing my lap top to an end I managed to get the videos working!! YAY! I had to put it into two parts… no not because it was too big to upload but simply because Frame by Frame wouldn’t let me export it as one. What can you do??? Not use frame by frame… Anywho:
After making this I realized… I need to take a whoooollleee lot more photos and have so many more frames then I had earlier anticipated. No problemo though! Also. Need to get some lighting kit out.
