Smudge 'n' Click

Smudge 'n' Click is my next assignment, and last for this year! I can't believe it!

Anyway, here's what I've got to do...

"You are required to produce a short animated film, (no more than one minute), based on one of the following themes using smudge 'n' click (animating under the camera) techniques.

1. Metamorphosis

2. The Elements

3. Growth

4. Expressions

5. Materials

You may use a variety of media: charcoal, chalk pastels, inks, paints, sand, or anything that you can easily manipulate under the camera."

First I started looking at the different themes and decided that I was most interested in Metamorphosis, The Elements and Growth. So I did a few quick sketches to try and think of ideas for all of them. These are what I came up with..

For metamorphosis I came up with a caterpillar transforming into a butterfly. I got pretty stuck for ideas for this and so wasn't very inspired by the subject.

I decided to do a sketch for each element, the first was wind and for this I did a tree being blown by the wind . I thought that it would be nice to have the leaves blown off gradually. Then there is water, I drew water droplets falling and hitting the ground and splashing. For earth I had the idea of having an animal walking through mud or dirt  and leaving its foot prints behind after it. And lastly for fire I got quite stuck for ideas...well for something that was a bit more than a flame. I wasn't very successful with fire I feel my idea for it is quite weak. Although now thinking back to it I suppose a massive fire with a lot of flames could have been really effective if animated well.

And finally for growth I drew a plant at different stages growing. I decided that it would be nice to see what is going on underneath the ground too so the audience can see what happens to the seed and roots.

Out of all of these my favourite theme was the elements. I feel that there is a lot more freedom with it and can be explored more than the others. 

My group came together with our sketches and all decided to do the elements. We each chose an element - I chose water. 

These are the ideas I came up with for water...

I think I will start off with the water drops coming down, I would then like to build it up so that it then turns into the downpour but I'm not too sure how I would animate this so that it looks right. I'm not going to use the beach idea simply because I don't think it will fit in after the raindrops. The animation would be all over the place. And then lastly I think I will finish it off with the droplet dropping into the water creating ripples. 

I feel that if the droplet and ripples are animated right it could be a very effective animation.

This is my decided sequence of my animation...

In the next post I will be experimenting with different media..