Evaluation of stop motion

Stop motion evaluation

Clay/ paper cut outs/ objects

What went well

The animation that was created was done smoothly and worked well. I feel stop motion animation is the most effective way of generating animation because it is rather simple and straight forward to create. I feel that the material (clay) we chose was rather easy to mould into whatever shape you wanted to. Also the time limit was rather short to create an animation but this was done carefully and professionally, so this shows that stop motion animation is reliable, quick and easy to use. The paper cut outs also make a great backdrop for the animation to take place. The objects that we used (lolly stick and white fabric) also were easily moveable for the animation, The fabric was stuck in the mouth shape by cello-tape which worked well to sustain the shape. 

Even better if

For this particular animation i think that it would have been goo to have had something to represent or relate to, as the idea was chosen randomly. Also continuity was also a problem within this animation we have just created because whilst the eyes were rolling up the clay balls, it was hard not to get the balls from movie. Also the animation could have added sound to it this would have made the animation much more interesting to watch. Possibly could have linked some of the movements of the objects with some sound. Another element regarding continuity would be that finger dents on the clay can sometimes be visible, a way that could stop this from happening would be to possibly re mould the shape anytime that this happens 

Lego/Paper cut out 

What Went Well

When  testing out these other assets we could use to generate a stop motion piece. We found that using the Lego characters and objects we could  make this piece in a much shorter space of time as we didn't have to build characters or objects like the previous stop motion piece with the clay. We found that creating motion with these objects was much easier than using the clay as this could potentially change the clay's shape.

Even Better if 

I feel that the tea was an extremely delicate material to use within this piece as changing the motion of direction the tea was moving in had to be done using extreme care as we didn't want each shot to seem over edited. I feel that these objects were a good choice however, the piece could have had much more going on within it. Such as something else that makes its way in to the shot.

Sand/whiteboard/people

What Went Well

Firstly I feel that this use of animation actually looked the best out of all choices we have used. I think that this format would be easy to appeal to every audience, my reason for this is because certain audiences may think that lego or other such object similar to this could be too childish for them. I think that this format could be both entertaining and meaningful to any audience. Also, this format gives you a great spectrum of creating whatever you want, whereas the lego/objects could only move at certain lengths in certain ways. Whereas the sand can move into anything you wish it to be, this is also the same with the whiteboard as you can draw whatever you want within that space, it doesn't have many limits. Our group feel that having people (hands) within the piece was helpful, as we originally thought of blowing the sand away from the whiteboard to give our final shot, however this would have been extremely messy and long winded. So using our hands was a very successful alternative for this.

Even Better If

The main problem with this format of animation was first and for mostly the sand. You have to be extremely careful and professional in terms of continuity if you want your piece of animation to look good. I feel that if sand is to be used, it can only be used at one certain time only and not over a period of days as the continuity of each shot could be incorrect. This was almost an issue even for our short piece below, we had to be extremely careful to not make it look rather unprofessional. Our group feel that possibly a mixture of each format could work well together for our charity piece as we seem to think that there are very good aspects of each format.

Moodboard for crisis charity

Crisis charity (to get dis explain why an animated advert would be best for this)

Crisis charity

Research found at the following websites

• http://community.crisis.org.uk/xmasappeal?gclid=CIzYm9uH77QCFe7MtAodXQsAxQ
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crisis_(charity)Who are they and What do they do?

Crisis is a charity that supports the need of homeless people. This charity was founded in 1967. Crisis offer food, shelter and man other vital services such regarding well being. The main aim that Crisis look towards is to completely transform the lives of homeless people also to keep people from becoming homeless. They believe that "Homelessness won't end overnight or on our own.  But we take a lead, collaborate with others and, together, make change happen" Crisis also work even at Christmas to ensure that everyone homeless has somewhere to sleep and eat.

Why do they do it? 

They believe that they can help make all homelessness end and even stick to their own motto 'Homelessness ends here'

Campaigns

In 2011 Crisis decided to make a campaign called 'No one turned away' this helped ensure that all homeless people had the right to emergency accommodation when they need it. This is because homeless people were not considered a priority when it came to social housing.  Another campaign they introduced was the 'Shared Accommodation Rate' Single people aged under 25 who live in the private rented sector are only entitled to the Shared Accommodation Rate of Housing Benefit, equivalent to the rent for a single room in a shared house rather than the rate for a self-contained one bedroom property.

My View on the crisis charity 

I think that the Crisis charity are an extremely important organization that do something that is very important to many people. I feel that this organization should be largely publicized as they help many homeless people across the UK not only find them homes but jobs and help them learn trades. This charity is imperative to many people spread across Britain and I think that it deserves much more attention and for this particular reason I shall be creating a stop motion animation piece regarding what this charity does.     

Equipment List

Animation Timeline

Animation timeline 

These are the top 10 most important documented times in animation in my view.


The Magic Lantern (17th century) 

The Magic Lantern is an early type of image projector created in the 17^th century. The magic lantern has a sunken mirror in front of a light source that gathers light and projects it through a slide with an image reflected onto it. The light rays cross an aperture, from there it hits a lens  The lens throws an enlarged picture of the original image from the slide onto a screen.

Thaumatrope (1824)

A paper or card disk with a picture on each side is attached to two pieces of string. When the strings are twirled at a rapid succession between the fingers the two pictures appear to combine into a single image due to persistence of vision.

Phenakistoscope (1832) 

The phenakistoscope is a spinning disc attached vertically to a handle. Arrayed around the center of the disc was a group of drawings showing different stages of the animation, and cut through it was a series of equally spaced radial slits. Whoever was using this would spin the disc and look through the moving slits at the discs reflection in a mirror.The scanning of the slits across the reflected images kept them from merging together, so that the user would see a rapid succession of images that appeared to be a single moving picture.

Zoetrope (1833)

The zoetrope contents are of a cylinder with slits cut vertically in the sides. On the inner surface of the cylinder is a band with images from a set of sequenced pictures. As the cylinder rotates, the person using this looks through the slits at the pictures across. The scanning of the slits keeps the pictures from simply blurring together, and the user sees a rapid succession of images, producing motion through illusion.

Flip book 1868

A flip book or is a book with a group of pictures that vary very gradually from one page to the next, this is done so that when the pages are turned rapidly the pictures appear to animate by simulating motion or some other change.

Praxinoscope 1877

The praxinoscope was an animation device, the successor of the zoetrope. Similarly to the zoetrope, it used a strip of pictures placed around the inner surface of a spinning cylinder. The praxinoscope improved on the zoetrope by replacing its narrow viewing slits with an inner circle of mirrors, placed so the reflections appreared more or less stationary as the wheel turned.Someone looking in the mirrors would be able to see a rapid succession of images, once again producing motion through illusion.

Kinetoscope 1888

The Kinetoscope is an early motion picture device. This was not a movie projector, it was designed for films to be viewed individually through the window of the cabinet containing its components. It creates the illusion of movement once again by conveying a strip of film bearing sequential images over a light source with a high speed shutter.

Cinemagtograph 1892

This was one of the first film cameras that were invented. However it also had two purposes, not only was this a film camera, it could also be used as a projector, so whatever was filmed on this camera could be then projected onto a wall. This was created by the Lumiere brothers in 1892. 

Felix the cat 1925

Felix the Cat is a cartoon character created in the silent film era. His black body, white eyes, and giant grin, conjoined with the surrealism of the situations in which his cartoons place him, combine to make Felix one of the most recognized cartoon characters in film history. This was the first character ever to obtain feelings from a movie audience.

Walt Disney's Steamboat Willie 1928

The film is also notable for being one of the first cartoons with synchronized sound.  Steamboat Willie was produced in black-and-white by The Walt Disney Studio and released by Celebrity Productions. The cartoon can be thought as the debut of the famous Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse. Steamboat Willie was the third of Mickey's films to be produced, but was the first to actually be distributed. 

Snow white and the Seven Dwarves (1937)

Similarly to Disney's steamboat Willie, Snow White was another drawn animation, however this didn't mean it wasn't a huge development in the animation timeline. It was a massive step forward in animation, this is because it was disney's first full length feature animation film. This showed a definite development in animation and possibly even set the bar for how animation films started due to it being the first. Films such as Toy Story would have gained some sort of influence from this film, they possibly could've looked at some techniques that were used within the filming of Snow White and developed them further due to the advancement in technology (animation films are now no longer drawn) The main reason for this is because it is far too time consuming and is easier to generate an animation on a computer.

Lady and the Tamp (1955)

The next development in the animation timeline that I discovered was found later in 1955. This showed another large development, due to the advancement of technology. The first computer came out in 1944 and around 10 years later, software had been developed enough to edit a drawn animation. This added much more color to the animation compared to a rather dull looking Snow White. It also gave editors a chance to cut out certain parts of footage they may not have needed. Or even gather the footage of the drawn animation and place them into a better order to generate a much more professional standard of motion.  

Present day animation

Moving into the 1980s a film called Tron was then made, this was significant because it was the first film with CGI (computer generated images) I feel that this was an important stage of the development of animation because if you think in this present day, many films actually contain hundreds of shots made with computer generated images. This development in animation probably would have had such a great impact on audiences in a similar way to the  magic lantern and when that was created. People seemed confused or scared how it worked.  So this would most definitely shocked audiences worldwide. 

In 1984 another film decided to use this method instead of the traditional way of making models and using those for certain scenes, this film was 'The Last Starfighter' In 1986, the well known computer graphics company Pixar was purchased by Steve Jobs, and then went on to make possibly one of the greatest impacts on the animation world which I shall explain in more detail later. Soon After this in 1988, a stage act named 'Willow' decided to use the form of morphing a character live in front of a audience. This also must have seemed shocking to see first hand because usually computer generated  images would have had to be edited in a long production, but for this to be shown live i my view is a greatly accomplished development in animation.

After this in 1993 the film Jurassic park used computer generated images in order to present realistic living creatures to an audience. I feel that this was another breakthrough in animation because CGI was used previously used in order to create a setting, and now CGI could be used in order to create people or creatures. Right after this, possibly the greatest breakthrough in animation history was the making of Toy Story. This was hugely significant within the animation world because it was the worlds first full length animated film. This film was created using 3D computer generated images which featured through the entire film.   

     

Aardman Studios

Techniques and equipment that Aardman use

Unlike our group will be able to, Aardman use very professional standards of creating animation. They use a large number of highly technical equipment in order to get the best movements in between frames of characters etc. One of the most important pieces Aardman use are their lighting rigs, due to average natural light not being enough to show the expressions of characters faces. These lighting rigs are huge and would be placed all along the set to present the best amount of lighting for each shot taken. These rigs also can hold cameras in place to show different angles on set, which leads into my next point. 

For our animation our group shall only be able to use one character that will have to be moved around the set in order to show different angles. Aardman will use a multi camera technique, they have a number of cameras set in place to show a number of angles around the set taking shots at the same time. THe main reason why they can do this is because films such as Wallace and Gromit have a budget big enough to use these techniques and equipment. 

The last piece of equipment and slight technique they use within their animations is a program called photoshop. For example is a character had to be lifted up via string, the string would then have to be rubbed out in order for it to make it look as if the characters is flying, falling etc. This techniques is now used in a number of animations (stop-motion)

Development in animation

Development in animation

Before animation within film there was many different types of devices that the motion picture could be shown. Many of these devices that were made often to be shown to people, which would amaze them, entertain and even frighten people at points. This would scare many people at this time as there was nothing ever invented like the ‘magic lantern’ that showed moving images. The Magic Lantern was invented around 1650, it is an extremely early version of the first kinds of projectors. The Magic Lantern consisted of a transparent oil painting. It was placed in a darkened room and projected on a flat surface using a form of light. People often judged this device as demonic and frightening. People even were convinced this was a witnessing of the supernatural. The early known magic lanterns are credited towards Christiaan Huygens or Athansius Kricher.

 After the magic lantern there were many other dvices that were created by pioneers in the animation world. Such as William George Horner and his ‘Zoetrope’ device, it I similar to the Phenakistoscope device (which I shall explain later) The Zoetrope was created in 1834. This was a circular spinning device that had several frames of animated prints around the circumference of the circle. Next to each print had a small coin like slot on the material, which was placed there in order for the person using this device to be able to see the images through on the other side when it is spinning at a quick rate. The slits move in the opposite direction of the way the Zoetrope is spinning to create an optical illusion. The Phenakistioscope created before the Zoetrope in 1831 was almost identical to Zoetrope, so as you can see William Horners design was most defiantly influenced by Joseph Plateau’s Phenakistoscope.    

Another Pioneer of animation named Emile Reynaud from France then deiced to create the ‘Praxinoscope’ in 1877. This device combined the circular design of the Zoetrope however mirrors were placed around the images that were drawn, this was done in order to show the drawn animated images in a clearer way than the Zoetrope did. Reynaud then decided to make an enlarged version of this device named the Theatre Optique which could projected onto a screen.

  

The next device that was then generated was named the            Zoopraxiscope which was created by Eadweard Muybridge in 1879. This device was ‘considered’ the first movie projector. This device consisted of rotating glass disks with hand painted images on them. These disks were moved in a rapid fashion in order to create an optical illusion of motion. The ‘Zoo’ part of the name was placed in as it showed mostly images of animals in motion like the picture below.

In 1888 the animation world started to change greatly, especially when Thomas Edison decided to generate another device named the Kinetoscope. This was a very early motion picture exhibition device. What this device allowed was for short animation films to be able to be viewed by an individual at one time. This was done by looking through a small window hole. This illusion worked by the movement of conveying a strip of perforated film holding sequential images over a light source with a high speed shutter. As you an see this is much more advanced than the other devices at this time, which made it a breakthrough in the world of animation.

There was another massive breakthrough in photography and film after this, the Lumiere brothers worked out how to project film onto a screen and also created the first motion picture camera in 1895. This quite literally would have been the most shocking and exciting moment in cinematography history as no one had ever thought something like this could be made (similar thoughts as when the Magic Lantern was created) You can see that from this point the cinematography and the animation world had developed up to such a high standard from all of the past inventions from the other pioneers

After the Lumiere brothers another man who changed the animation world was George Pal a Hungarian film producer. Pal was mostly well known for his creation of the animated films called ‘The Puppetoons’ these cartoons films were memorable in the sense of using the replacement animation technique or Stop Motion animation. This was also seen as a person who pioneered animation as during the 1930s it would have been unheard of to create animation films. However Walt Disney must’ve found some inspiration to create his first full-length feature animation film by watching these Puppetoons films, when he made his Snow White and the Seven Dwarves animation film.

Developers

Willis O’Brien was a pioneer in stop motion animation who was well known for the animation work that he generated within a film called ‘The Lost World’ (1925) and the very well known ‘King Kong’ (1933) Especially in 1933 there was no way near as much technology to generate such pictures as these and so this is why O’Brien became a pioneer as he was able to create these animated images that shocked audiences within the cinema world, it was most likely similar to the feelings that audiences got to the magic lantern as they had never seen things like this.

Another pioneer within this animation world was Ray Harruasuen who was another stop motion animation pioneer who was most famously known for his first color film ‘the 7^th Voyage of Sinbad’ and Jason and the Argonuaghts which contained his famously created scene ‘the fight with the skeleton warriors’ this scene was extremely well known as it contained actual moving skeletons having a sword fight with the main character. This was seen as amazing to audiences world wide as they were full 3 dimensional stop motion characters the had facial expressions and body movements.

The next pioneer within animation I shall talk about is Jan Svankmajer. He was born in Prague and was fascinated by puppetry. Some of his greatest known work is his own film ‘The Last Trick’ (1964) Jan was a pioneer due to his technique in stop motion. He was able to generate very surreal and hilarious pictures. His work included funny exaggerated sounds. One of the most noticeable ones was during eating scenes within his productions. Jan’s work was usually only made using stop motion. He also used clay animation similar to how Aardman studios (Wallace and Gromit) make their films.

The last considered pioneer of the animation world is Tim Burton. Tim burton was most known for many of his films such as Corpse Bride and Nightmare Before Christmas these were hugely popular claymation films. He has produced 12 films and directed 16. I feel that this person would be a pioneer in the animation industry due to his own style of gothic animation/claymation. Corpse bride is a very good example of this style in a gothic nature. Not many animators were combining this kind of style within their animation and so this made Tim Burton have his own unique style of stop motion animation which has become largely popular around the world. 

       

Another piece of contemporary work would be the The Brothers Quay. They are two Polish brothers who work and reside in England as directors. Their style of animation often involves puppets or doll parts that are actually made out of organic materials. This shows a much more creative approach towards animation and also very original. Another strange aspect that is also looked at strongly from their work is the dialogue. Their productions often contain no meaningful spoken dialogue which again shows a much more different style of animation that people are used to. It is mainly multilingual spoken gibberish in the background of their pieces, with pre-recorded music placed over the top of it. This may seem rather strange to typical animation techniques, however for many of their films they have been nominated for awards for them.