Final Animation

So here it is. I hope you enjoy

Compositing is hard work

Having finished my stop mo section I could get on with the final task of compositing all the footage in After Effects. This was a lot harder than I had imagined and I think in all I have spent around 30-35 hours on just the compositing alone.


I had to create the theatre so it was in a 3D space, This was like making a scene in Maya I found.

I then had to add the groups bits of animation and line them up so a character wouldn't seem further away to another, they also needed to be proportioned correctly as they all seemed to be different sizes.

Then came the task of joining each sequence together. I did this by creating a puff of smoke every time a character swapped places. I used stock footage of ink being dropped in to water. Each piece of footage had to have it's background keyed out, which took a bit of time to get right. Half way through the production after adding more footage After effects seemed to slow a lot making it very hard to keep a consistent work flow going. It also made watching the footage back a nightmare, as I would have to wait around 20 -30 minutes to render. I think they may be a better way of keeping the file size small but as it had an abundance of footage and photoshop files, pictures and effects on each of them which slowed the program right down.

Me and Kyle managed to get the live action shot, so it was time to add that. This proved a bit of a chore as I don't think we got the lighting right in the green screen room at uni. This resulted in having to do extensive work on keying out the background from the footage.

After that it was time to add camera moves and lighting. From trying out many camera moves it seemed clear that nothing really worked. Zoom ins on the characters did not work especially, as the action was to fast, by the time the camera had zoomed in it was time to zoom out again. We decided it would be best to keep it all from the same angle as it would add the feeling of being in the audience.

The lighting I used was just ambient lights and spot lights. This was just to add more depth to the scene and also to add a theatrical aesthetic.
I also did a few frames of rotoscoping on a section that went from live action to animation.

Heres what it looked like at the end of all my hard work compositing.

The green man lives!

Heres my completed section of stop motion.

I did the shoot using a DSLR for the main stills and also had a mini dv camera for low resolution video feed. As I didn't have enough lighting I had to set the dslr to a slow shutter-speed to allow more light in and the whole shoot suffers from light flicker.

Also as the shoot could only be done very late at night, I think it suffers from me getting really tired half way through. But I will just have to take that as learning process.

I think the light flicker actually works within the context of the brief as it is a mistake in animation, and a very common mistake in amateur stop motion.

I am quite pleased with the first half of the animation, up until he turns around. I didn't use reference for the action. I acted it out as I was animating, which I found to be very helpful as I could also feel how the movement was going to go.

I thought it would be interesting for you too see the video feed footage as well as it makes it look like a different shoot. I almost prefer this footage instead of the high res footage and would of used it but it is very low quality and would of proved hard for chroma keying.

Stop motion section

While undertaking the heavy duty compositing job I realised it was a shame there was no stop motion in it and decided that I would get a bit done for it as quick as possible. To go with the theme of children's animation I drew up a character that resembled Aardmans Morph and drew the armature inside it. I knocked up a quick wire armature and used plasticine to flesh the puppet out. I was really quite pleased with myself as the actual time it took me to make the armature and sculpt the puppet was only around an hour to and hour and a half. Once it was finished I planned out the animation for later that evening.

And the finished puppet on his stage

I also used tie-downs for this puppet which was a first for me. I had to plan how far he was going to move and drill holes in the right positions. It is definitely what I will be using to secure my puppets down in future. I had to find a blue bed sheet as well for doing the blue screen. I ended up having to do the animating in my living room as I had to suspend the bed sheet from the ceiling and tie it to a bookshelf , then where it was curling up at the bottom i had to weight it down with a rock.

A day with Hereford grammar school

On friday we did a workshop with Hereford grammar school. I started off doing a stop motion workshop with the help of two of my classmates which turned out to be so much fun, they also did a flash tutorial and then came back to finish there stop mo films. I had made a lesson plan but but decided to ditch it and just let them play, which turned out for the best. It was great fun helping them out and also watching them create, children have no fear of messing up or going wrong! Damn them! All but one of them had never done animation and it was also great getting to help them create there first ever piece. I thought I would post up some photos I took during the day and post there final films. Unfortunately we didn't get the chance to get any sound on them.

And a nice group shot of us all

And finally the films

This one was done with the help of my class mate Ben Smallman

Deciding what to do

After we had written the brief, we took a look back at the mind maps, to pick a subject matter. We decided on picking a character from the "Things kids would like to be able to do" which was a wizard/magician. We thought this was a great choice as it could lead to all sorts of possibilities for the short story of the project.

After a session on developing the story we gave each other certain roles to play. Everyone would produce at least a 5 second piece of animation of a magician of there own design and also so we would have different animation techniques. we then put together a storyboard just so we had a guideline of the kind of action that was going to take place.

With knowing what everyone need to do, we all went off to work on our bits of animation. I had decided that I was going to be the compositor for the project and animate and design the actual stage it is set in.

This was a quick test shot just to see if what I had in mind would work



I originally wanted to animate and design the set so it was fully articulated and to almost imitate a real theatre stage. But after receiving everyones work and doing a test composite I found that the whole thing was fast paced and there would be too much happening at once for there to be other things animated at the same time as the characters.

Creating our own brief

After we had done our mind maps on why we think children like animation, we then set about writing our own brief for a short/ident promoting animation for children at BCU using what we had found out in the previous sessions. We needed to make it fun and to show what can be done at BCU, targeting 7 year olds and potential future students.

The first brief was far too vague and wasn’t really clear on what we were doing.

We then started again using the knowledge of previous modules briefs as a rough guideline but with our own learning points.

The final brief:

BCU - Animating for children

Produce a 20-30 second Animation combining a variety of styles and techniques promoting animation at BCU specifically children’s animation. The style of animation is to be targeted at younger children, while the advert itself is aimed at prospective students and professionals interested in the animation course and animation for children at BIAD.

The animation must showcase different techniques of animation while tying them together in a unified way, utilizing knowledge of what children like in animation and what it means to be a 7 year old. Explore what makes animation interesting to a 7 year old and why they like it. Why would you like it when you were 7?

Use your mind maps to explore what we discussed it means to be 7 and look back on your own experiences to gain an insight into the 7-year-old mind.

Design a character and think of ways he or she can interact with other characters and scenes created by other members of the group. Think about the target audience and what they do/ play/ create/ like, refer to the discussions we have had.

Get inspiration from animations you enjoyed as a child and think about why you liked them and why they work. Incorporate this research in the design of your character and scenes.

It must be lively and attractive to both target audiences but more towards children. Make it fun while you could also showing the processes behind animation, for example showing the mistakes that can happen, and the creation of new characters by existing characters- A character given a pencil and drawing himself a friend.

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Short Case study

Teenage mutant Hero turtles

This was one of many favourites of mine. The cartoon was based on Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird's early 80's comic books. Teenage mutant ninja turtles is about a group of 4 normal turtles that accidently fell down in to the sewers in a puddle of glowing ooze. This causes the turtles to become humanoid. At the same time a man named Yoshi, who was a ninja master and been in the sewers around rats, was exposed to the same ooze. Which also turns him to humanoid rat. Yoshi took on the name of Splinter and brought the turtles up as his sons.

From wikipedia

"The initial motivation behind the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles animated series was that, upon being approached to create a toy line, Playmates Toys was uneasy with the comic book characters' small cult following. They requested that a television deal be acquired first, and after the initial five-episode series debuted, the California toy company released their first series of Ninja Turtles action figures in the summer of 1988. The two media would correspond in marketing style and popularity for many years to come."

This seems to be the case with a lot of the old 1980's cartoons I used to watch. But it goes show that there strategy

worked well, as I had pretty much every Turtle action figure available.

I think the reason I liked it so much was that there wasn't anything else like it on T.V and that as an imaginative child, I one day maybe able to grow my own mutant turtle. There is always an adventure in each episode. There is a villain to provide the never ending conflict. And there is always a happy ending. I think one thing that made the characters even more interesting is that they all have there own character traits. Each had there own specialized weapon, different coloured bandana and personality. This would result in children having a favoured ninja turtle.

What it is to be a 7 year old child

One of the things I have thought about during this module is that being able to use personal experience is a great thing, even if it's for something you haven't had happen to you or something that would never happen to you, for example : being chased by a dinosaur, you could draw upon a certain experience that made you feel really scared, like being chased by something like a dog or a group of bullies or a cow in my case. It can all be used as inspiration.

I think to get the audience engaged with your story they need to be able to relate to it in certain situations and be able to believe it.

To start this module of we talked about what it's like to be a 7 year old child and what we could remember it was like for ourselves at that age.

We brainstormed the kinda of things we liked to do, what we were like with friends and parents, what kind of television and movies we enjoyed and why we liked the things we did.




I think after doing this exercise we all found that we don't look deep enough in to research and that we could benefit from mind maps a lot more.

We then put what we had found about ourselves at that age and mapped them to a psychologists reports on a 7 year old. We weren't far off from what they thought and would presume that children today would be the same.