Stop Motion Animation reviews

My stop motion animation that I created was a time lapse drawing of Levi Jones from The Tide, the video I then mixed with a portion of the song Young Love by The Tide.
Personally I believed that my animation was rather basic. I liked the sound mix and the editing as I tried to not stop or start the song in the middle of a word. I did not believe that it had a storyline and I did not think it was the best quality compared to what animation can be.
This is the feedback that I received about my animation:

I put the numbers of feedback into the Apple Numbers app as a spreadsheet:

And then used this same app to convert this table into a bar chart:

The results from my questionnaire were good and based on 6 people answering the questions, 4 people believed that the quality of my animation was good and 2 people believed it was excellent. 1 person believed my sound was satisfactory, 4 people believed it was good and 1 person believed it was excellent. 2 people believed that my editing was satisfactory, 3 people believed it was good and 1 person believed it was excellent. 2 people believed my storyline was satisfactory, 3 people believed it was good and 1 person believed it was excellent.

Taking consideration from the feedback, if I had to do it again the categories I would work on the most would be sound, editing, and storyline, however it is rather difficult to get a storyline into an animation. I would also ask more people and different people for feedback to keep it fair.
To make my timelapse drawing look more professional I could have taken more time on my drawing rather than rushing it, however that depended on deadlines, as well as talent. The sound and editing in the video below is very good also, so if I were to redo my time lapse assignment, next time I would aim to get my work closer to this level than the level of mine now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIaEaB3tbWc

Stop Motion production diary and evaluation

Lesson one 

The idea I have for my first stop motion animation is to create a time lapse drawing of either a Disney cartoon character or a famous person. This is the idea most likely to happen, however it seems quite simple compared to what animation can consist of.

Another idea that is a possibility is creating an animated music video, such as Taylor Swift's lyric video for eyes open.

If I were to do the lyric video idea i think I would do it on the song Runaway by The Vamps or Burn by The Vamps, as they both have quite a lot of imagery in them.

I am also considering model animation, and I am going to start looking at examples of lego animation as I am unable to use the clay due to allergies.
Lesson two 
Idea One- Lyric video a song which is to be determined.
I took inspiration from the lyric video for Eyes open by Taylor Swift.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hsVICl7d8k
I like the idea of using paper, however if I was to do this idea I would use more drawings to represent words. 
Idea Two- Time Lapse Drawing of either a famous person or a disney character.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_cwJsGGjU8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSmbLmUFNmo

Idea 3- create a story using lego blocks to make the characters and the sets.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZ_JOBCLF-I

Lesson three

My final idea is to produce a lyric video for a song which is not yet detemined. I am in the process of elimination. The lyric video will be paper based.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIIlaiuTSEs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJ15xiY8yrQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w348pEAEQlw
I Found a Girl by The Vamps has a simple concept through the lyrics ('I found a girl who's in love with a girl') and could easily be very symbol/picture based which is what I wanted. I have begun to see where I could fit pictures into the lyrics.

Lesson four

I have decided on the song for the lyric video- I found a girl by The Vamps.
I have looked through font generator sites to get ideas of how to write the lyrics, and I have test drawn some.

Lesson five

This week I continued work on the font design, and printed the official Vamps logo out to use as a background.

The final product

When it came to the deadline, I didn't feel like I had enough time to do the lyric video well so I switched ideas back to the timelapse drawing of the famous person and drew Levi Jones from the Tide. I recorded the animation on my Ipad with these settings:

This is the final product. 

Stop Motion Production Lesson five-

This week I continued work on the font design, and printed the official Vamps logo out to use as a background.

Stop Motion Production Lesson four-22/02/16

I have decided on the song for the lyric video- I found a girl by The Vamps.
I have looked through font generator sites to get ideas of how to write the lyrics, and I have test drawn some.

Stop Motion Production- lesson three- 8/2/2016

My final idea is to produce a lyric video for a song which is not yet detemined. I am in the process of elimination. The lyric video will be paper based.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIIlaiuTSEs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJ15xiY8yrQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w348pEAEQlw
I Found a Girl by The Vamps has a simple concept through the lyrics ('I found a girl who's in love with a girl') and could easily be very symbol/picture based which is what I wanted. I have begun to see where I could fit pictures into the lyrics.

Stop Motion Animation assignment

Since its beginning, animation has depended on the persistence of vision. Persistence of vision fills in the gaps between pictures, therefore making it look like they move.

Animation was originally not made for large broadcasting and instead created on devices that would only allow viewing by single people at a time. 

A Zoetrope is one of several pre film animation devices and has a greek name- Zoe meaning life and Tropos meaning turning, although historians believe that it was created in 100 bc by a Chinese inventor. The device was a cylinder with vertical slits in the sides and images around the inside.

This is a Victorian Zoetrope which was recently up for sale online.

A phenakitoscope is another early animation device, the first part of the word comes from the greek- phenakizein- meaning to deceive or to cheat, as it deceived the eye into thinking the images were moving.

The device used a spinning disk that was attached vertically to a handle. the disks centre displayed drawings showing the different parts of the animation, and had a series of equally spaced slits. When the disk was spun, people could look through the slits and see the images reflection in a mirror.


This is the moving version of the phenakitoscope shown below.

The kinetoscope was made for films to be viewed by one person at a time through an eye hole window at the top of the machine in 1889 by a friend of Thomas Edison. The device created the illusion of movement by moving a strip of film with images on over a light source and a high speed shutter.




The mutoscope was similar to the kinetoscope as it didn't 
project the film onto a screen and could only be viewed one person at a time, but was cheaper than a kinetoscope. The machines were coin operated and had a series of cards resembling a flip book, however weren't bound into a booklet, and were instead attached to a circular core-  with 850 cards giving a minute of viewing time.



The thaumatrope was an animation technique that was also used as a toy in the 19th century. It is a small disk with a picture on each side that is attached to a piece of string. When the strings are twirled quickly it gives the illusion of the pictures blending together to give the persistence of vision. 



Early animation pioneers

Georges Melies was a french illusionist and film maker, starting in 1896. He discovered that he could split film to give a perception of vision.

This is one of his films which used animation and was hand painted to include colour.

Winsor McCay was an American cartoonist (known for the comic Little Nemo) and animator (known for Gertie the Dinosaur). The technical level of McCay's animation was unmatched until Walt Disney's films arrived in the 1930's.

Lotte Reininger was a German film director and a pioneer of silhouette (cut out) animation, best known for the adventures of Prince Achmed (1926).

She anticipated Walt Disney by a decade, due to creating the first multi-plane camera for special effects.

Walt Disney was an American animator and film producer. His best known early animation is Steamboat Willie, which was among the first animations to include sound - which started happening in 1928. His early animations were drawn on cels and then flipped to be painted.

Animation Techniques

Cel- based animation was the technique which involved drawing each individual frame onto a clear piece of plastic film, then flipping it over to paint the colour onto it. The background would also be hand drawn but onto a seperate sheet so that when the characters moved, they did not disturb the background. The Walt Disney Studios used cel based animation until winnie the pooh (2011) and the princess and the frog(2009) , but they did not do as well as their cgi films out at that time- Bolt (2009) and Tangled (2010).
Walt Disney's first feature cel based animation film was Snow White and the Seven Dwarves (1937) which took three years to produce. 

Cut Out animation is created by cutting out shapes (e.g a characters mouth) and making them move. One of the earliest full length cut out movies was Prince Achmed (1926) by Lotte Reininger. She also produced shorts such as Cinderella.

An example of a modern use of cut out animation is Charlie and Lola. This style of animation was used to capture the collage style of the original books.

Model based animation includes building/making characters and sets out of clay, lego, etc. 
An early example of model based animation was a remake of Romeo and Juliet in 1917 by Helena Smith Dayton.

An example of modern model based animation is Wallace and Gromit. The first short film was made in 1990 by Aardman's animations.

Pixilation is a form of animation which includes taking pictures of live actors as they move slightly every time. An early example of pixilation is Monsieur Pontu (1975)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UP7p7lnC7dE

A more recent pixilation animation is The Secret Adventures of Tom Thumb (1993) This film used a combination of pixilation with live actors and stop motion animation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddl9d-gsdBQ
  
Time based animation (time lapse) is a method of animation in which a camera takes scheduled pictures of something, and when played back you can see how it develops. This method is regularly used on sun rises/ sunsets as well as on other things in nature because of how long they take to happen when we are watching.
An example of time lapse that I found interesting was the one below created by a Dutch artist who took a picture or video of his daughter every day and then compiled them into a video to see her growth.

This next example is an example of a time lapse drawing, which I think I would like to create myself when it comes to creating our own. I find it fascinating seeing the blank page and then what is created and must have taken many hours. 

Time Lapse animation

Time lapse animation is a form of animation which involves taking a lot of pictures of something to reduce time. Time lapse is usually used to show progress in nature in seconds rather than the days or weeks it would normally take, for example here is a time lapse video of sunrises and sunsets.







As well as time lapsing natural views, people also use time lapse to show the growths of people as this dutch artist did a time lapse of his daughter from birth to 14 years.

Pixilation

Pixilation

My Aims and Objectives for Today are:

• Define
• Produce
• Upload
• Review

Pixilation is animation which uses people.

How to Stretch and Challenge Myself

For Today's Lesson this will mean:

Remembering:
Understanding:
Applying:
Analysing:
Evaluating:
Creating:	We created a seven second pixilation

Reflection during lesson

How am I doing so far:

So far Sinead, Samara, and I have come up with a concept for our pixilation and tried to create our clip realising that it was too short so we have saved that but started again.
Reflection at end of lesson:

We managed to create a seven second pixilation which was using a creative idea
What have I achieved?

We achieved a good pixilation clip

Cut out animation

This is the cut out animation that I produced with Sinead, Samara, and Beth.

Animation 1970's to present

Monty Python's flying circus was cut out animation which began in the 1970's in Britain. It had adult humour and therefore was not aimed at children as such.

The Walt Disney company was present throughout this period- and is still creating films. Aristocats was released in 1970 and had a sketchy look to the frames which sparked complaints from critics.

Wallace and Gromit was a clay modelling animation. A grand day out (see clip above) was released in 1989and the creator Nick Park began creating it in 1982 after he graduated from the National film and television school.

Early Animators

Early animators

Georges Melies was a french illusionist and film maker, starting in 1896. He discovered that he could split film to give a perception of vision. He also used to hand paint his film to have colour in his movies
.

Winsor McCay was an American cartoonist (known for the comic Little Nemo) and animator (known for Gertie the Dinosaur). The technical level of McCay's animation was unmatched until Walt Disney's films arrived in the 1930's.

Lotte Reininger was a German film director and a pioneer of 
silhouette animation, best known for the adventures of Prince Achmed (1926).

She anticipated Walt Disney by a decade, due to creating the first 
multi plane camera for special effects.

Walt Disney was an American animator and film producer. His best known early animation is Steamboat Willie, which was among the first animations to include sound - which started happening in 1928. His early animations were drawn on cels and then flipped to be painted.

The birth of animation

The birth of animation

Persistence of vision is an optical illusion that allows the brain to fill in the gaps between pictures, therefore making it look like they move. This is most commonly used in animation.

A zoetrope is one of several pre-film animation devices. The name comes from greek- Zoe meaning life, and tropos meaning turning, even though historians believe it was invented in 100 BC by a Chinese inventor. The device was a cylinder with vertical slits in the sides and images around the inside of the cylinder. 

This is a victorian zoetrope that was recently up for sale online. 

 A phenakitoscope is another animation device, the first part of the word comes from the greek- phenakizein- meaning to deceive or to cheat, as it deceived the eye into thinking the images were moving.

The device used a spinning disk that was attached vertically to a handle. the disks centre displayed drawings showing the different parts of the animation, and had a series of equally spaced slits. When the disk was spun, people could look through the slits and see the images reflection in a mirror.

<- This is the moving version 

of the phenakitoscope that is shown below.































The kinetoscope was made for films to be viewed by one person at a time through an eye hole window at the top of the machine in 1889 by a friend of Thomas Edison. The device created the illusion of movement by moving a strip of film with images on over a light source and a high speed shutter. 

The mutoscope was similar to the kinetoscope as it didn't 
project the film onto a screen and could only be viewed one person at a time, but was cheaper than a kinetoscope. The machines were coin operated and had a series of cards resembling a flip book, however weren't bound into a booklet, and were instead attached to a circular core-  with 850 cards giving a minute of viewing time.

The thaumatrope was an animation technique that was also used as a toy in the 19th century. It is a small disk with a picture on each side that is attached to a piece of string. When the strings are twirled quickly it gives the illusion of the pictures blending together to give the persistence of vision. 

Examples of Stop Motion Animation

The Nightmare before Christmas (1993) used stop motion animation as requested by Tim burton, the creator of the poem that inspired the movie.

Steamboat Willie was one of the first animations that Disney produced in 1928.

Bugs Bunny- Bully for Bugs, 1953

Coraline- 2009