Final Evaluation

Year 9 Creative Media Animation Project – Term 03 2011

Mr Andrews

Post Production reflection/evaluation:

Respond to each of the following dot points (using complete sentences or paragraphs). You should include as much detail as possible in your responses.

· Discuss whether your final animation clearly reflects your original concept and planning and describe any elements you had to modify when creating the project;

I believe that my final animation does clearly reflect my original concept, for the reasons that the storyline I originally wrote is (predominately) replicated throughout my final movie the scenes are pretty much identical to those that I designed in my planning, and the animation, for the most part, follows the storyboards that I drew. However, while saying that, there where number of small alterations and changes that I made through out the process as my animation skills developed and I gained new inspiration, or as time ran out and I had to move more effectively and more efficiently in order to finish. Some of these previously mentioned changes include completely changing the first establishing frames of the move from shots of the sea and the coast with the camera honing in on the town to a simple shot of the camera zooming in on the box that was my set. This alteration was necessary for two reasons; firstly, that creating my initial mental image would have been quite complicated and time-consuming. Secondly, that when I attempted to align the camera in a way that included my whole set, the complication arose that the edges of the box were visible, and so by purposely allowing the audience to see that it was a box in which a figure came to life I remedied this problem. I also slightly altered a number of scenes in which my planned camera positioning was not suitable. In addition to this, I slightly reworked the second half of my animation by adding in an establishing shot of my second set rather than have my character regain consciousness immediately. Another major change that I made to my animation was omitting the second last scene of my animation, the newspaper scene, because I ran out of time after I had finished editing my scenes and so couldn’t finish it, my to my regret.

· Explain how your animation skills developed during the project (i.e did you become more efficient?; did the quality of your animation improve?; did you have to use a variety of techniques? etc);

My animation skills improved greatly throughout the unit, and this is evident throughout my final movie, as initially the movements of both the camera and the characters are quite jerky and uncoordinated and boring, simple, particularly any walking cycles as I found it very hard to work out which positions I needed to put my character into. However as I progressed these skills developed and I began to add more life to my characters, through how I created their body language and such, as demonstrated where I managed to make my character not just walk but sneak as well as pant from the exertion of running. I also adopted a wider variety of camera positions to relay to the audience subtle messages of power in each character, by angling the camera down of the little boy and up on the dark figures for example.

· Describe any problems or difficulties you encountered during the animation process. These may include; technical difficulties, corrupt or missing files, difficulty using the editing software etc;

This term has been far from easy, and I have encountered a number of problems, however I am lucking enough that none of them have been major and I have managed so far to avoid losing extensive amounts of work. I did have one USB go corrupt, however I was lucky enough that it was early in the unit and so I only lost two short animations that I created in class, which I would have had copies of if they had uploaded to blogger, and also my character profile. In addition to this, I encountered a problem with the camera that I borrowed out for the weekends before and after camp, as I constantly flicked in and out of focus and changed lighting as I attempted to film with it. One major problem that I did encounter was my time-management skills, as I ended up being very stressed in that last few lesson left as I didn’t have time to finish everything. As a result of this my animation is not as good as it could have been if I had used my time more wisely and worked more effectively in the first weeks. One thing that could have present a major problem for me was the fact that I lost my USB on the last day, however I fortunately had everything backed up on my computer which I had brought to school that day.

· Explain whether you made effective use of storyboards and planning to streamline the animation process;

I do believe that I did in fact make effective use of my storyboards and planning as I not only drew up quite detailed storyboards that depicted each shot, line, action and camera movement as well as sound, but I also wrote out the plot and designed my two sets as well as a character profile. I know that I did do enough planning because I was constantly aware of everything that needed to be done and what I needed to do next – I never had to stop filming and think, “Right, done that. What do I do now?” This is demonstrated by the fact that I was aware I needed to film my final scene before I changed my set to create the ‘Alternate Wold’ because it needed to be filmed in the original setting.

· Describe any time-management issues you had during the project and describe the steps you used to improve in this area;

As I previously mentioned, I encountered a number of time-management related problems in this unit, as I began to run out of time in the last few weeks as I was sick for a bit and we had camp, not to mention that I had missed a week of class earlier in the term to go to Griffith. Because of this, and the fact that I admittedly did not work as effectively in the early weeks of our assignment, even though I did make my characters and set at home, I had not enough class time to finish my animation. In order to rectify this problem, I organized to borrow out laptops from the library and even managed to get the required software on my mac at home. However even this did not prove to be enough as in the last fews days I still had to make my soundrack and edit approximately 300 or more frames, so in order to finish, I cut out the newspaper scene as I didn’t have time for Mr Andrews to Show me how to make it. Because of this, I did manage to finish, however a much better solution would have to use some foresight and relies how much work this animation would actually involve so that I would get right into it in the very beginning.

· Discuss whether you undertook adequate and detailed reflection to throughout your project. Have you provided enough evidence to support your work? (Look back at your blogs/journals and think about whether it looks like a whole term worth of work);

I do believe that my reflections are suitable and sufficiently detailed, however I do believe that I should have done more and added more detail to them because there is some work missing, such as the two animations I lost on my USB. In addition to this, I believe that it would have been better if I had done daily reflections, rather than weekly ones, as I tend to forget what I have don in the beginning of the week.

· List any other software skills, techniques, tricks or shortcuts you have learned during the project.

During the project, I have learnt a number of new skills and techniques, as well as developed various previously existing ones. One skill that I am particularly proud of is my new found ability to edit frames with speed, because not only did I learn how to import and export frames from iStopmotion, but also can not edit between 30 and 40 frames in ten minutes. As well as this, I learnt various little techniques such as moving the camera and the character in my scene with the ice cream, rather than every individual ice cream scoop in order to create the illusion that he is falling.

Discuss your feelings about the production task:

· Are you satisfied with the final result?

Yes, I am reasonably satisfied with the final result, because it is finished and it looks good, and have grown really fond of my main character, as he is quite cute in the animation and there are some sections that look absolutely fantastic. I am also extremely proud of the fact that I managed to edit it and how good the edited scenes turned out, as I did not expect them to look as good as they did considering the amount of time I had to do them.

· Did the animation process require more/less time than you had thought?

The animation process required significantly more time than I had originally thought as I was not initially aware of how long actually filming the scenes took, in fact, I almost gave up at the start because I was that slow. I also greatly underestimated the actual length of my film and the amount of animating it required, so all in all I was utterly unprepared for the amount of work this unit involved.

· Would like to change any aspects of your final project (style, soundtrack etc)?

There are a number of things I would like to change in my film – I would really like to re-animate a number of scenes that ended up jerky because of my faulty camera, as well as the scene at had a show from my hand. I would have also like to spend a bit more time editing the frames so that I could have maybe added extra effects to my film, and also spend a bit more time on the soundtrack and putting the final product together, as it ended up being very rushed.

· If you could start the project again what would you do differently?

If I could start this project again, I would choose a simpler concept for my film, because that way I could focus more of the quality of the film and developing and bringing life to my characters through body language and such. I would also start filming as soon as possible in order to give myself maximum time to finish the film and to ensure that everything is not rushed at the end.

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Soundtracks

In order to add small sounds into my film, such as when the characters are talking, when my character screams, and small sound affects like a 'plop' when his ice cream falls, I created a few soundtracks in GarageBand, one for each scene that required sound affects. These sounds were all recorded of my voice, except for the screaming, which I hired my little sister to do. I also created and introductory soundtrack and a soundtrack for the first scene of the film one here using already existing loops and tracks. For the second part of the film I found a royalty free song on the internet calle gloom horizon, and it is a really dark and scary song so it suits the alternate world perfectly and I'm really glad I found it.

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Editing My Scenes

In order to create the dark and gloomy atmosphere and convey that by falling into his ice cream my character has landed an alternate world, I had to photoshop every single frame in the second half of the film, which was quite a time consuming and difficult process. Fortunately, Mr Andrews helped me to solve the problem that I had previously encountered last lesson, where I could not successfully import the frames, by saving the files as a BMP.

To create the dark and dreary affects, I first rendered some clouds, and then added a layer mask, so that I could paint out the centre part of the clouds with a soft brush so that you will still be able to see what is happening. After this, I added a small amount of noise to the layer as another cool affect and changed the blending mode to multiply. Then I added an adjustment layer over the top and dramatically decreased the saturation so that you would be able to see barely any colour in the image.

After finding that simply copying the foreground that I had created over each frame that I had exported into photoshop didn't work (the adjustment layer and the layer mask would get lost in the process), I found a much quicker method of simply copying the image underneath the foreground, after which all I had to do was export it.

To create the orb of glowing light in the second last scenes and to make the unconscious figure's face glow, I used the same method that I used the method before - selecting a circle with the elliptical marquee tool, filling it with yellow using the paint bucket and editing the layer properties, by adding an inner and outer glow. I then simply copied and pasted each frame underneath, moved the orb slightly each time, and exported each image.

Overall, the process of editing each frame was very time consuming and difficult, however this improved as I progressed and became faster, and all in all I am very pleased with the final result as it looks even better than I had imagined.

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BAD NEWS - A Media Fiction

I found this film clip on youtube and its a really great animation, but most importantly provides some great examples of pre-apocalypse newspapers, which is quite similar (although more complicated) to what I would like to do in my second last scene.

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Photoshop

For scene 9 I need to photoshop in the glowing orb which attracts his attention to the body on the sidewalk, as this is quite an essential part of the story. I managed to find a really good image of the sort of orb that I am picturing in my head, and have used it to help me create an orb in photoshop. I would post it here, but much to my annoyance, each time I try there is an error.

To create the orb in this image I used photoshop, by first selecting a circular shape using the elliptical marquee tool on a new layer, filling it in with a yellow colour using the paint bucket and changing the blending mode to pin light. After this I went to layer styles and added both a drop shadow, and an inner and outer glow. It was really quite a simple process, however the problem arose that when I attempted to paste the image back into iStopmotion, the program would crop the image and squash it.

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Scene 9

I don't really like the start of this scene, because I attempted to make my character appear as if he was panting from the exertion of running away from the hooded figure, however this doesn't really convey on the screen, he just looks really weird. I do however like the part where he spots the glowing orb (which I have yet to photoshop in) because it is really smooth and its actually quite funny when his mouth drops open.

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Scene 8

I would have to say that this is one of my favourite scenes, because although it is still jerky because of the camera, I am really pleased with the way the camera appears to follow the boy's eyesight, revealing the hooded man, whose hood then slips off, because it looks really cool. I also really like they way I made my character bring his hands to his face and scream, because the action is quite life-like.

I initially had a few issues with the running section of this scene, as I found it had to figure out each pose my character needed to make and how to get the timing right. Fortunately, I found this great image on google that shows you how to animate a running cycle at 12fps, so I used this as guidelines to bend my character into each shape, which worked really well, much to my surprise.

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Scene 7

I had the same problems with this scene, where the camera zoomed in and out and the lighting changed randomly, so this scene also looks jerky and flashes, which is really frustrating because I spent a lot of time and effort trying to make it look good. I really like the start though, because i managed to make him blink and appear to regain consciousness, as well as convey the fact that he is curious about his surroundings and slightly scared. I will need to edit both the previous scene, this scene and my remaining scenes in order to make them look dark and scary, so I hope I have time to do this.

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Scene 6

This lesson I did actually start filming scene 6, however I am not really happy with it because the camera was stuffing up the whole lesson and zooming in and out slightly and lightening and darkening the image. The first camera I got would not stop wobbling however, and the second camera was the same so I had to stick with it. As a result of this, the animation is really jerky and appears to be flashing, but there is nothing I can do about its because today is the last lesson and I don't have time to re-film.

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Scene 6

When filming this scene, I had some issues with the camera, as last time I filmed a close up scene it ended up being quite bad quality, so Mr Andrews suggested that I use a camera from the art department. Unfortunately, the first camera I collected didn't work and we realised was not compatible with the software, and so I had to return that one and collect another one. This camera did in fact work, however, to take a single frame you had to take a picture, process it, see if it was any good, and if it was, then import it. I found this much to time consuming and hard to line up the camera correctly, and so I decided that I would just use the IPVO point to view, however by this time there was only about 5 minutes left to the lesson, so I didn't get any actual filming done.

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Second Backdrop

I finished altering the backdrop to make my second scene, and I am really pleased with the end result, as it looks almost exactly as I depicted it in my planning and, most importantly, looks creepy and scary. I managed to do this by drawing over the windows and the steps to make them looked cracked, 'graffitiing' the ice cream shop sign, redrawing the name of the shop so that the remaining letters were hanging off, and making the doors and the shop its self look utterly destroyed. I didn't take as long as I thought it would, which was really good as well.

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Scene 5

This scene took me a really long time to film, particularly in the start as I made him appear as if he was falling by moving each individual ice cream scoop each frame on the black cardboard, as well as moving my character. About halfway, Dannielle made the ingenious suggestion that I simply move the camera and I realised that by moving the camera and my character while leaving the ice cream in the same place the process would be so much faster - and it was! I am really pleased with the result, because not only do he appear to be actually falling, but the scene looks even better than I had expected and most importantly, did not take as much time as it would have.

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Final Scene

I decided that I would film the final scene of the boy waking up back in the real world and walking off with his mum now, because I need to change the set o make it look dark and scary so I will not be able to film this later. I really like this scene because it is funny how the mother just walks off and the boy chases after her, and I think the twist at the end where the ball rolls into the puddle and sinks down is really cool. As well as this, the animation is really smooth, particularly in the rolling ball section so I am very please with the overall result. Now only have to film him falling, make my second set, and then I can film him in the dark world - i'm excited!

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Scene 4

I am unsure about this scene, where my character falls into his ice cream, because although the camera movement at the beginning is really smooth, the actual section of him falling is really quick and because of his wire frame I couldn't make him sink down as I had initially planned. Another issue is that I didn't film this scene in DVPAL Widescreen, a fact witch I didn't realise at the time, so it is a different size to the other scenes. Mr Andrews advised me to leave it for now and go back and re-film it at the end if I have time, however I don't think I will and I decided that I was going to alter my original set rather than create a whole new one, which means I won't be able to do that anyway.

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Week 5 Reflection

Respond to each of the following points (using complete sentences or paragraphs). You should include as much detail as possible in your responses.

1. Describe any problems or difficulties you encountered during the planning; I did encounter a few problems during planning, as I was initially stuck for an idea, and although I love the storyline that I came up with it is quite complex and will take me a while to film. Another problem that I encountered was that I left my storyboards and planning in Bali when I visited my dad over the holidays, and because of this it took me a while to finish drawing my storyboards because I didn't know which scene I was up to and I didn't end up finishing by the start of term so it ate into my filming time.

1. List the steps you took (or need to take) to improve in this area; The problem of my storyboards being left in Bali was fixed quite easily as my dad scanned and emailed them to me, however next time it would be better if I was more organised and didn't forget things so easily.
2. Discuss whether you planned your project effectively (did you do enough planning); I believe that I did plan my animation effectively, because as i mentioned in my reflections, my storyboards are quite detailed and depict pretty much every little action that my characters make.
3. Discuss how the use of storyboards and shot-lists assisted throughout the filming process; Storyboards and shot lists have been of great assistance throughout the filming process so far as they have helped my to keep on track and use my time effectively as I am aware of how much I have done and how much I need to do. They also assisted me in that I didn' have to stop filming at various points and think about what do do next, and they also kept me content with what I had filmed so I did'n't change my ming and redo scenes.
4. Describe any problems or difficulties you encountered during the filming process. These may include; time-management and organisation problems, damage to your sets/props/characters, misjudging the amount of time required to animate. Throughout the filming process I encountered many problems, particularly in the area of time management and organisation. Both making my characters and sets took much more time than expected as I took the time to experiment with different ways to make them, and so didm't begin filming when I should have. Another issue was that my USB went corrupt and so there was a short period in which I didn't have one, where I lost a test animation and part of a scene, which I had to re-film. Another issue that arose when I was filming was that my character was not very stable on his feet and falls over quite frequently, which really slows down my animation progress. At t=my current rate I don't think I have enough time to finish my film, and so am going to start taking laptops out more frequently in order to get it done.
5. After reviewing progress so far, describe any aspects of your animation, which need to be addressed. i.e do you need to reshoot any scenes; are any additional shots required; are there any scenes which worked better than expected. After a rewiew of my progress, I realise that two of my scenes had been shot in iSight full, rather than DVPAL Widescreen, and although it would be best if I re-film these, I don't believe I have the time before I have to alter my set. One scen that did turn out better than expected was the talking scene, scene 2, as I actually managed to make my characters' mouths move, a feat which I did not originally believe possible.

Discuss your feelings about the production task:

1. Are you satisfied with your result so far? Yes, I am quite satisfied with my result so far in terms of the quality of animation as it is very smooth and so looks really cool, however I do believe that should have filmed more by this point and so am behind in terms of time-management.
2. Would like to change any aspects of your film? If I had the time, I would have liked to spend more time on my character's walk cycle so that I could make it more realistic and less jerky, and even increase the frame rate to 15fps rather than 12 so that I could make my film event smoother.
3. If you could start the project again what would you do differently? If I could start the project again, I would like to get into the filming process sooner so that I could have more time to improve the quality of my film and redo scenes if I required. I may even choose a simpler idea, because that way I could focus on my character's a it more and making them more alive, or at least do my animation with a partner.
4. List any skills, techniques or tricks you have discovered during the project. I did learn a few skills during the project, such as how to create a sturdy character, how to make my characters talk, effective ways to move the camera and how to make my character move realistically.

Discuss whether you undertook adequate and detailed reflection to throughout your project. Have you provided enough evidence to support your work? (Look back at your blogs/journals and think about whether it looks like 8 weeks worth of work).

I dont really believe that my blog looks like 8 weeks of work, because even though i was away for a week, I didn't really do much in class over the first few weeks and my reflections aren't as detailed and there aren't as many as I would like there to have been as I have been working really slowly.

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Scene 3

I found that scene 3 was quite fun to film, particularly because of the massive ice cream, my only issue with the scene is that when I held the ic cream scoops by a piece of fishing wire in order to make them fall, my hand created a shadow on the bottom left corner of the scene which i did not realise at the time. Making the ice cream fall was really difficult, however i managed to do it and am pretty thrilled with the result. Another difficulty I had was making my character walk towards the camera, which is a lot harder than it may seem as you can't really tell what you're doing, and my character fell over more times than I thought was possible. As a result of this, his walking is a little bit jerky and he wobbles from side to side, but you can still tell that he is walking so I am content.

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Scene 2

For my second scene, where the boy buys an ice cream from the ice cream stand, I found a pretty awesome way to make my characters talk - by making a whole in their faces with a pointy object (generally a pencil) and changing the shape each scene. This week I unfortunately forgot my USB one lesson, and so I saved my work to the desktop, however didn't manage to find it again. I did eventually manage to find it, but that was, much to my chagrin, after I had finished re-filming the scene on the weekend. I decided I would include it anyway, because it is actually a very smooth section of film.

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Scene 1

I finished my first scene, where the camera zooms in on the box and the little boy walks to the ice cream stand, a feat which I am very proud of because it is quite smooth, although slightly jerky at times. It took a bit longer than I had planned, so I am a bit worried about my time-management, particularly sine it took me a while to begin filming as i did miss a week of school, however hopefully my filming process will get faster as I progress through my film.

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Filming

This week I started filming my animation, which was very slow at first, but then as I got the hang of it I worked more effectively. I decided that I would change the beginning of my film to a section of the camera zooming into the box, because when I first started filming the issue arose that the edges of the box were visible. This way the audience is aware that it was filmed in a box and that a little wire boy simply comes to life, which in my opinion is pretty cute. One thing that made it quite difficult when filming was that my little man continuously fell over, and so I had to continuously re-align him. Another mistake I made was bumping the camera a number of times, which considerably slowed down my progress in filming. I guess I will have to start being more careful!

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Set 1

This lesson, Mr Andrews helped to show me a few different ways to create my set in photoshop, from rendering buildings and and windows as well as textures and such. I also looked on google for some tutorials in creating a street scene, however unfortunately didn't really find any that suited my purposes. After a lesson of experimenting I changed my mind, and decided that I would much rather draw my set, because that way I could create it exactly the way I like it, rather than be limited in my knowledge of photoshop and what it can and can't do.

I drew the set at home on a piece of A3 paper, which did take quite a while, however it was worth it because the end result looks absolutely fantastic.

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Creating my Character

For creating my characters, I had initially planned on creating them fully out of clay, however, after finishing my first character and attempting to make him walk, I found that he would simply squish and after a few frames end up completely retarded-looking. Mr Andrews suggested to build my characters around a wire frame so that they would be stronger and sturdier, however i still had the same issue with the character becoming squished and demented. As a final resort, I decided that I would simply create a wire frame and sew clothes onto it, using only the smallest amount of clay for the head, hands, feet and to fill out the shirt. This worked surprisingly well when I tested it as it didn't squish, and so I am very pleased with the result.

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Storyboards

I HAVE FINALLY FINISHED MY STORY BOARDS! YAY!

And I was right, drawing them was quite time-consuming, however that was most likely because my storyboards are very detailed in order for me to gain maximum benefits from them when filming. Because I did include quite a lot of detail I will hopefully be able to get right into filming when i do start, rather than wonder what to do next.

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Set Design

I decided that before I began drawing out my storyboards as this will not only assist me in making my sets but also in fact my storyboards as I will now not have to draw out a complete set for each picture. In addition to this, the short description that i have included will help me to formulate finer details in my planning.

I am not quite sure whether I will draw the backdrop to my scenes or create them in photoshop as I need to take into consideration that drawing them may take a while, however I may not be able to get the same feeling or texture from a digitally produced image.

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Bruce Bickford

Bruce Bickford is man who was born in Seattle in 1947 and who started animating at the age of 17. Now 64, his 2D line animation is described as remarkable and his works in claymation have made him legendary.

However, this legendary status did not come into existence until 1973, when a friend introduced Bickford to rock musician Frank Zappa. The following year Zappa called Bickford back and eventually employed him. The resulting collaboration of two great artists is history. For six and a half years, Bruce was paid to do what he loves most – create.

Bickford was prolific in this era. More importantly, he developed the hallucinogenic style of animation that made him a cult icon of underground stop-motion. Using incredibly labor-intensive replacement animation, Bickford made people and objects appear from and disappear to the landscape. He morphed figures relentlessly and unpredictably. A character might suddenly become the landscape and the background might suddenly become the character at any moment.

Bickford's animations depict surreal scenes based on his unique worldview, and as a result of this, his work is extremely subjective in its content and concepts, with some disturbing and shocking imagery. Bruce Bickford is an original thinker, an iconoclast, and a visionary artist of the highest caliber. His work is important and deserves an audience.

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