Cut-Out Animation

And this is my final animation for this assignment....

Overall I am very pleased with the outcome. I love the style of this and my favourite scene is the Paris scene as I feel it gives it a little humour! I feel that there's something not quite right about the sitting room background, maybe its a little empty... 

I was very pleased with the lip syncing however if I was to 'touch it up' I would put more energy into Mary's movement and expression in her body when she is speaking as it is a little static for most of it. The trousers scene was a little mad, I think I would tone it down a little..make it simpler so that the eye can understand what is going on a little better rather than just seeing an explosion of colourful movement. Although I haven't shown it on here, the second part of which my partner did was also very good and the transition between the two worked well and smoothly (she animated a short chat show on the TV). 

If done again I would get into the character and 'skin' of Mary a lot more and get to know her personality much more than I did. 

I loved using the 'cut-out' technique and would use it again any day as it was highly enjoyable!! 

Cut-Out

This is a new assignment we have been given and it is the first assignment of our third module! 

It goes as follows...

Working within a team you are required to create a short sound track (no more than one minute) and produce a synchronised animated film using appropriate techniques. 

To start off we had a record voice tracks from a radio, cut them up and reform them so that they made up completely different sentences. After that we analysed them to form dope sheets, which is how we worked out the lip syncing for our animation....from the recordings we then created characters. Each team mate then chose a character and section of voice recording to animate. The technique we used to create the animation was 'cut-out' hence the title of the assignment. 

This is what my final voice recording said..."I have been thinking of great many thing and I will always think of great many things.  I was thinking I love being bear in Paris. Imagine a waistcoat as an angel in London smiling. I sometimes act like made trousers thinking quickly in the moment of great many things."

This is a woman's voice and so the next thing I did was create a female character. This is my first draft..

Meet Mary, the typical housewife...or so you may think at the beginning.

I brainstormed a little with expressions.

These weren't too successful but they gave me an idea of different expressions and mouth shapes.

This is the final Mary and different heads with the different mouth shapes for the lip sync...

This is Mary's neutral face

'O'

'A'

'I,E,Y,NG' (And many more)

'V,F'

'M,B,P'

'G,H,K' with 'I,EA'

'TH'

'N,R'

'L'

'A'

The Scenes

I then made a rough storyboard based on the voice recording

This is basically showing each scene that will be in the animation. I have decided to set the first scene with Mary in her home...husband in the background in his chair facing the television. Then the other scenes are set in the places she mentions, I will show the main objects that are associated with those places so that it is easy for the audience to know where she is. 

These are the final scenes I came up with...

I enjoyed making these...Just like Mary and her many heads I drew all the different objects out on paper, scanned them into my computer, rendered them on Macromedia Fireworks, cut them up and put them together to create the background.

I then have to make some more obejects for the Paris and London Scene as well as the last scene which goes back to the sitting room at Mary's house. For the Paris scene I had to do a new body for Mary without any clothes on, for the London scene I had to make a waistcoat, some angel wings and a halo and for the last scene I had to make some trousers. 

I will make a new post for the actual animation and will share my thoughts on it....