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..

Smudge 'n' Click Part Two

So I started off by painting the key frames of the animation sequence to scale as it says on the brief. I chose paint to do this even though I may use another media  it will still clearly show me what is happening and where I'm going next with it.  Here they are ...(sorry about the poor images)

And so that is the sequence in paint!

To get the correct sequence for the water droplet falling into water I looked at lots of slow motion videos on youtube and I will keep using them as a reference when animating too. This way it will look as real as possible. 

I quite liked the idea of working with chalk as I could easily rub it, smudge it and manipulate it, and so this is what I did...

I was happy with this overall but there where a couple of things I wasn't too keen on. For example the lines at the bottom when the droplets splashed were meant to be puddles. They didn't look like puddles at all. When I do it again I need to keep the droplets dropping for longer just so that the audience can gauge it a bit better. The beginning of the droplet falling into the water was good, I was really happy with that but it was let down by the other half, the water that comes back up hangs in the air too long and I felt it was too big. I wasn't too keen on the transition of the blue rising, I tried to make it look like water rising up but it didn't work the way I wanted it to. Next time it needs to be smoother. Another thing that I wasn't too sure about is the speed of the animation, I feel that it all happened too quickly and so next time I will do it so its a little bit slower.

Although I enjoyed using chalk it was very messy and not as easy as I had thought. 

Next I tried paint (the same paint that I used for the key frames)

I liked this one so much that I decided to use it as my final animation. I really enjoyed using this too and found it was easier to go over a colour with a different colour than the chalk. As you can see I took out the puddles at the beginning which I feel makes it look a lot better and is a lot more effective. More droplets fall and for longer, which is also an improvement and the transition to blue is smoother. I managed to make the beginning of the ripple sequence the same and am as equally pleased with this as I was with the chalk one. The end bit still isn't right where the water comes back up but has improved all the same! 

I found that making this animation became quite tedious at points, especially the ripple sequence but it was worth it! Overall I am very pleased with the outcome. If I was to do it again I would experiment with more media and research into other possible sequences that I could have done. 

3D Stop Motion Part Six

  Time to Animate!!!

It took aggeeesss to make and now it was time to animate (this is the part where I get really excited!!!). 

To start with we had to animate the scenes that didn't have the rabbits in as they weren't finished (this was very frustrating) Unfortunately I didn't get to do as much animating as I would have liked to because a lot of it was done on the day I had to go home but I am satisfied that I did enough to get my hands into it and have a good mouthful to taste it. 

I animated the bit where the girl is running towards the stage, the girl opening the door to enter the theatre and where the girl was pushed in to the hat by the magician. I had a lot of fun doing this...the most fun was making the girl run, at one point it looks like she is tripping over her dress! I loved using the magnets..it made it so easy to animate and was a bit of a battle to get them to move (they were so strong!) but it was worth it. The little girl puppet was a pleasure to work with. When animation he being pushed into the hat we didn't actually push her into the hat but rather sat the hat forward and put her behind. I was a job to stop the hair from being seen either side of the hat but we managed it!...Just!

Stuart was put in charge of editing the film over the easter and he did a grand job! 

Overall I am very happy with the animation, it came out well. The lighting sets the mood really well, we used a number of camera angles to give it a bit of diversity and the sound edited in is great, it brings all of the movements together and makes it pop! All of that hard work was definitely worth it.

if I was to do it again, I would plan it all better, although a lot of our time was spent waiting for handy man Dave to help us or to be able to get some materials out of the cupboard. 

I would love to do another stop motion. 

3D Stop Motion Part Five

Building the Set

This is the main part of the set...we had 2 bit of wood, on was for the back which we hung red material on for a curtain backdrop (which is the red material you can see laying down) and then the bit standing up with a hole in and curtains either side. The camera when shooting will be the other side to this and this is where the magician pops out from. 

The next bit was the stage that you can just see in the image above... here it is being made..

This is the front of the stage..where the magician will perform his magic tricks. The bits of wood that we stuck on the front had been burn to give it a worn effect, however later on the group decided to paint this black. 

We were going to use the remaining bits of wood to construct the floor like this...

But we were told that the magnets used to keep the puppets standing up wouldn't work through them. So we decided to scan them in and print out the effect. However once we had we didn't like it and decided to keep the stage as it was.

Props

The Chairs

There were many props that had to be made... the ones that I took a major role in making were the chairs. Stuart and Suzi made a rough mock up chair to give us an idea as to the size and dimensions...

I the took this home and made this...

This was a lot sturdier and stronger that the first.

I took this back and showed the group. We then made a production line making the chair as we needed 12...3 and row and 2 rows each side. I was in charge of drawing the nets as I knew them and the dimensions. Suzi and Stuart were cutting and sticking them together. Stuart also cut out the foam for the backs and Aaron and Bas stuck the red material over them and stuck black bit of card on the back to neaten them up and finish them off, here are the stages....

Then the rest of the cardboard was painted black. 

The Dead Audience

Stuart made 4 different heads for the dead audience out of clay...all having died of some sort of failed magic trick. Bas and Suzi painted two each.

The Charcoaled and Melted Victim

Shot in the Head Victim

Frozen Victim

Saw Victim

The Hat

Unfortunately I don't have any images of the hats but Bas made them out of black plasticine and did a very good job of it. He made four, all ranging in size. .

The Swords

Aaron made the swords that the rabbits stick in the hat when the girl is in it. There are very simple, basically little sticks of wood painted silver. 

Overall I was very pleased with the set and props, I feel that we did a rand job of making them. This is the front view of the set almost complete...

3D Stop Motion Part Four

The Magician!

Stuart made the puppet for the magician, this is the armature of the puppet below...

As you can see it is made from twisted wire with milliput moulded over it where the bones would being the arms and legs. It was recommended that we use milliput instead of metal tubing because the character is so slender. If we used tubing we wouldn't be able to put foam over it as then the character wouldn't be so thin, but with milliput we could keep it thin and give the limbs shape so that he looks more humanly when we put the clothes on him. However we did use the tubing for his hips and shoulder and his head is made from soft wood with milliput moulded onto it for his nose and chin.

 This is him with his head attached, the foam on his body and the metal plates on his feet. We glued him together with araldite. And then finally the clothes were put on...

...and his face and hands. The clothes were made and stitched on by Stuart and his sister and Stuart created his face from plasticine and white wooden round balls for eyes with fluffy material stuck on his head for hair. 

We had a lot of problems for this character, so some reason the glue didn't set the first time we glued it together, I personally think that its because when the glue was mixed up there was more resin than there was hardener and so therefore it didn't harden. Then the next time it did harden but after a while when we stood him up the upper half of him kept flopping back over. So we had to wind some more wire around the joints to strengthen it. Then once we were sure was ok and put the clothes on the arm fell off and the hip joints were still giving way. By the time we felt that we had finally sorted it out and started filming we still had trouble with him standing still but it wasn't as major as before. 

Overall we were all really pleased with the outcome of the puppet. 

The Little Girl

Again Stuart takes credit for making this puppet too.. luckily we didn't have half the problems with this one as the last. 

Again we used milliput and twisted wire...

And then the metal plates on the feet, foam on the body and hair and finally the soft wood for the head.

Unfortunately I haven't got a picture on her finished and completed, but to finish her Stuart and his sister again made the clothes and stitched them on her and Stuart moulded her head and face from Plasticine and stuck some blonde material on the big foam hair bits. And then finally Bas made her eyes from paper and stuck them on. 

Again we were all very pleased with the final out come of this puppet. 

The Rabbits

This time I was in charge of making the rabbits..well I made both of the armatures and sculpted the evil rabbits body out of foam and Bas did the good rabbit. Unfortunately I don't have any images of these either...They were made the same way as the other 2 puppets except for these I used tubing instead of milliput. It was difficult to work out how the armature was going to be and hardly anyone could work it out. But I looked at a rabbits skeleton and managed to come up with one that would work well when animating. 

Overall  the outcome of the rabbit were ok but wasn't as good as they could have been...we were very pressed for time by the time it came to making the rabbits and so the last stage of covering them and making them look like the images from the character designs were a bit rushed. 

3D Stop Motion Part Three

So after the story was agreed on we set about looking at the other characters in the story..The little girl, the rabbits and the dead audience. 

We all decided on a description of the girl...half the height of the magician, quite wide with a big round head, blonde hair in bunchies and pink dress with white t-shirt underneath. Suzi got the job of doing the character design for this character.

We decided on having two rabbits....one was going to be a good sweet looking bunny and the other was going to be evil and horrible looking. The description for the good bunny was light pink, fluffy, round and squidgy with big round eyes and a large fluffy tail. I had the job of doing the final character design for this. The evil rabbit was to be black, skinny (so much so that parts of the skeleton was showing), have rips and a tiny tail. Basically the opposite to the other rabbit. Aaron was given this rabbit to do the final character design for.

Here is the design I did for the good rabbit...

And finally Bas was given the story board to do.


Next we look at the set and what it would look like. The main set would be the theatre where the magician was going to perform and there would be a second simple set of an alley way where the little girl would be introduced at the beginning. 


For the theatre we decided to have the traditional deep red, obviously symbolising the death and horror genre of the film. We also decided that the set will be lit with low key lighting to set the dark mysterious mood.

We then went to the workshop technician Dave to talk about how we would go about making all of the characters and the sets.

There were quite a few things we had to work out, for instance how the girl would fit in the hat when the proportions of the hat is a lot smaller than the girl. How big the puppets where going to be...the magician is very thin and slender - would he stand up ok or would he fall over all the time?

For the hat we decided to make different sizes for different shots, the magician was going to be about 30 cm tall, the girl 20cm and the rabbits 5cm.


In the next post I will be showing the making process of the characters. 

3D Stop Motion Part Two

And so these are the magicians that I came up with...

This is the first magician, I decided to make him look quite smart. I felt that an older magician would be better as this would make the audience think that he has been in the trade for a long time and is quite experienced. Purple is the colour of mystery and so I felt that it would be good to give him a purple jacket. 

I don't like this one at all, I preferred the leg being slimmer and him being older than this one. I don't like the hat either it's too small for the head and I preferred him with the jacket on. 

This was my third, the hat is much better, I like the high waisted feel to the trousers (like an old man would be seen wearing them) and I love the big cuffs on the ends of his sleeves. 

With this one I liked the way the shirt is tucked in his high waisted trousers but also boldges out from  underneath the waist coat. I like this magicians face.

Here I experimented with how he would stand side on...being an old man I felt that his shoulders may be hunched over and his legs may be a bit bent at the knees as his joints may be seized up. 

We then all got back together once again and discussed what we liked about each others and took different parts to make a description of the final magician. Stuart got the part of drawing up the final character design for him. The magician ended up being an evil magician, from this Stuart came up with a story...

Opening shot

Scene 1

Setting

Black and white lighting

Girl skipping through an alleyway soon discovers she lost, panics and moves closer into darkness. Camera tracking feet.

Spiders crawl around feet as she walks through into darkness. (showing a sense of fear and un nerving to the audience)

Opening credits flash up every so often.

Screen turns to black.

Dark room (dark colours) (reds, purples, blues, blacks)

Tattered old looking theatre.

Door opens seeing silhouette of little girl. Cute rabbits run past her, she follows and they lead her into an old tattered theatre. The rabbits stand near the front of the theatre. The little girl goes to stroke the rabbits. Music goes silent as her hand stretches forwards. There are sudden flashes of lighting as the camera zooms forwards causing the rabbit to change for a split second. There is a sudden jump as the rabbit turns into a freak of nature and the camera quickly pulls back and stage lighting comes on.

Old creepy circus music starts playing as we see the little girl fall over backwards. A long thin strange looking man peeks from round the curtain on the stage and then pulls out one of his long legs out onto stage and then pulls the rest of his body with it. The camera goes to a point of view of the magician seeing the dead audience and then sees an evil looking smile from him and then bows to the little girl. He takes a step back and two rabbits pull a table onto the stage (possible third rabbit) the magician puts he’s hat down onto the table, he reaches into the hat and pulls nothing out so he looks confused and then sticks his head into the hat and gets his nose bitten, pulls his head out and there is a head attached onto his nose. (Gets his nose bitten, pulls out his head then reaches his whole arm into the hat and pulls out a head.) he presents the head to the audience “ta-daaa” there is silence from the audience and the little girl looks shocked.

He throws the head into the corner, and then looks as if he has an idea. He clicks his fingers and from the top of the stage hanging rabbits appear.  He covers his mouth and starts moving the dead rabbit’s mouths with his finger to make it look like there singing. There is no reaction from the audience again and he slowly moves off stage in a mood. As he’s off stage the rabbits start singing on their own. And the man pokes he head round the corner hearing noises. Rabbits come along and pull the dead rabbits off stage as the magician pulls on his grand finale covered by a curtain.

He pulls away the cloth from the grand finale showing a saw box. And the little girl is in the box. He pulls out a saw from his hat and starts sawing in the middle of the box. Once the box is in half he pulls the two half’s away but this shows that the girl is in the top half and a rabbit is poking its feet out of the bottom half. At the end of the girl’s feet is a rabbit chewing on her toes. The magician looks horrified as his magic trick has failed. He looks at the girl and then looks at the camera, waves his arms in the air. “ta-daaa” and the stages curtains close. Showing the credits roll up.

This was the very first version. However once we had done a storyboard and the tutors had seen it a couple didn't like it and told us it didn't work. The main reason being there wasn't a point for some things being there for example, the tutor couldn't work out why the audience would be dead- how did they get there another was the rabbits, especially the hanging rabbits and making them sing. And mostly they didn't like that the little girl gets killed through the magicians failed magic trick, they said that they would have liked to have seen the girl get away and that its a bit dark and horrible to kill the little girl.

I personally agreed with this I felt a little uncomfortable about killing the girl but a lot of the group were enthusiastic about it ( personally a little worrying) and so I suggested the girl turning into a rabbit but no one liked this. This is how we changed the story...

1. Instead of pulling a head out of the hat he will pull a rabbit out of the hat...the same rabbit that leads the little girl to the theatre.

2. The girl then wants go and save the rabbit and so runs up to the stage but as she gets there she is greeted by the magician and he pulls her up in the stage. 

3. The magician puts her right in the hat (out of sight) and the rabbit that has turned back to being evil is pushing swords through the hat

4. The magician pulls her back out of the hat so show the audience that she is dead (This bit was horrible)

5. And then the next thing that happens is that you she her silhouette sitting in a chair in the audience with the camera facing the door that she came through to then see another person coming in. 

With the story like this the rabbits purpose is then the magicians evil side kick helping him get his audience, and therefore it is then clear how his audience is dead and how they got there.