mood boards
A moodboard is a collection of images that is related to a certain theme, here are examples I’ve found of mood boards with themes of industrial and the colour blue, in each you can clearly see what the mood board is based on. For the industrial mood board it shows parts of an industrial building and even colors/patterns associated with industrial work. in the second mood board it is focused on things that are all different shades of blue, such as blue fabric, blue paint and blue advertisements.
Stopmotion filming setup
This is how I set up for filming for my stop motion, fortunately I did not require any additional lights as I only needed natural/ambient light.
target audience and audio development
The target audience for my stop motion animation will be 16-25 year olds both male and female, one reason is that because the original web comic it is based on contains strong language and violence, furthermore another reason the age range for my target audience of 16-25 is because my animation will have a dark/grim ending that I do not think would be suitable for younger viewers. I have come to this conclusion of who my target audience are because of who the fandom currently consists of, one way I found out the target audience was to meet other fans at a convention in London, another way I found the target audience was with social media, on Facebook there is a page setup for fans that talk to other fans and make costumes/props based on or from the web comic and even talk about their own stories/comics/theories based on the web comic.
For the soundtrack of my animation I planned to use parts of 5 royalty free song, which were; Volatile Reaction, Black Vortex, Mechanolith, In a heart beat, Harmful or Fatal, I planned to do this because I believed that each individual song had parts that would of created an atmosphere that would be relevant to the setting of my animation, however when I attempted to mix the parts together they did not fit well with each other. In the end I decided to use parts from the one song that I thought would be best for my animation, the song was Volatile Veaction, first I created the start of the soundtrack by having it fade in, next I created a loop of music that I could then repeat/cut depending on the length of my animation, I then created the end of the song to match the scene where my character falls off the log.
history and facts of stop motion animation
Animation uses a illusion theory called the Persistence of Vision, this involves multiple images being played at a rate of around 16 frames per second, this causes the brain to stop perceiving the flicker/flash of images, which then causes images to ‘merge’ together to give the illusion of movement, although different types of media use different frame rates, for example flick books work best around 10 frames per seconds and both physical and digital film use 24 frames per second. However a more modern versions of illusion theory are the Phi phenomenon and beta movement, these theories conclude that the illusion of movement is a sensation created by a rapid succession of a scene of images/frames.
One type of animation that uses Persistence of Vision is the Zoetrope, this is a very early form of animation. The Zoetrope is a drum like device that spins, on its side are slits to look through and on the inside are a series of images that are on the opposite side of the slits. While the zoetrope spins you look through the slits at the set of images, which act like a frame of animation, as it spins you see a single frame of the image set and then the side of the zoetrope and then another frame of the image set, at the right speed the images ‘merge’ together and form an animation.
One pioneer of animation is Ray Harryhausen who is known for creating a form of animation know as Dynamation which is where live action actors appear as if they are interacting with animated models. Another pioneer is Joeseph Plateau who was the first person to demonstrate animation with moving images on a disk with slits in, this device is known as a Phenakistoscope. ‘A third Pioneer’, although not a single person, can be Disney’s Nine Old Men who are best know for not only working on many of disney early animations, Mickey Mouse, Snow White, Lady and the Tramp…, but also for the 12 principles of animation which are constantly used by all animations because it help make their animations more realistic and appealing.
A modern day stop motion animator is Philip Beglan who was a animator for Coraline and The Boxtrolls, he has also produced stop motion adverts for Kelloggs, he also runs a stop motion studio, called The Belgan Bros, with his brother Charles. another modern stop motion animator is Will Becher who has work for studios Aardman and Laika, he has worked on file such as Shaun the Sheep Movie and The Pirates, he has also produced several award winning short films. A third animator is Antony Farquhar-Smith who has worked on Fantastic Mr. Fox, he currentlyy works for a studio called Th1ng and has also produced stop motion adverts for Weetabix and HSBC.
Nowadays stop motion studios still exist even though they are beginning to be replaced by more popular forms of animation. One studio is Laika, this studio has produced several stop motion films such as “Coraline” and “Paranorman” and one of their upcoming films “Kubo and the Two Strings” will also be stop motion. another stop motion studio is Kerrupt Animation who have produced stop motion animations for Top Gear and Cbeebies. A third studio is Stoopid Buddy Stoodios who have worked on adverts for Lego Scooby-Doo and a part of an episode of Gravity Falls that was themed around clay-mation.
Stop motion is still used for animation, an example can be Clayton from “The Amazing World Of Gumball” who is a clay stop motion character who references claymation, to date Clayton has appeared in 4 seasons of the show, another example can be the AT-AT’s from “Star Wars” that used go motion (a variation of stop motion but uses different techniques to create the effect of motion blur), but the most recent live action film to use go motion was “Coneheads” in 1993. A third example of stop motion animation can be “Paranorman” a stop motion film, produced in 2012, that was the first stop motion film to use full colour 3D printers to create their models, however “Coraline” was the first stop motion film to use 3D printers to make their models/puppets but they were printed in black and white.
evaluation
For this Project I had to create a 3D model in Maya, for this I learnt about the 4 different modelling techniques and then used what I learnt to make my 3D character from its 2D drawings.
The target audience for my character is 5 year olds and up, I have decided this because of the target audiences for the inspirations I’ve used for my character.
The requirements/constraints for my animation sequence were; output size: no limit – 500-600 frames at 25 frames per second – 20 seconds in total, aspect ratio: animation sequence: 1920×1080 (16:9) Image stills: A3 300dpi, file type: save: Maya MB or ASCI Rendering Frames: Png Rendering final video: MP4 (using the H.264 compressor).
Research that I’ve done includes; character development techniques, box modelling, extrusion modelling, quad draw, sculpting tools, lighting, textures, cameras, how to render, how to set keyframes (to keyframe everything the key is ‘S’ or you can keyframe an individual variable [translation, rotation,scale…] by right clicking on the variable and left clicking key selected or by turning auto key on so when you move something on scene it will automatically be keyed to that position), particle effects, inverse kinematics and forward kinematics.
To make my final character I used box modelling and extrusion modelling techniques due to its angular design, to keep the angular design even when smoothed I added an edge loop either side of each current edge loop, again I used box modelling to make my character bones, after I then added textures to my character, I used a transparent/translucent blue for his skin, solid purple for his bones and solid yellow for his eyes.
In my option a strength of my final character is that I’ve used what I’ve learnt and applied it to my character in a more in-depth and more intricate way, for example I learnt about adding textures and then applied them to my character by having solid parts below the transparent/translucent body. A second strength of my character I believe is that he resembles his powers efficiently, I have used colours that are associated with electricity and the shapes used in his body also resemble electricity, with his spiky hair and spike like elbows and knees. However a weakness of my final character is that he is not a good example of anatomy, parts of him are not anatomically correct, an example of this are his legs, compared to my quad draw research his legs are not realistic, I have done this because I do not believe that I can currently create an anatomically correct character effectively so I decided to make his arms and legs how they are, another example is that my characters skill is a sphere, when making the skull I attempted to use the sculpting tools to create a human skull shape but I was unable to do this. A second weakness is that I did not include a mouth, this is because his mouth was designed to be a visual representation of what he says, but in my storyboards he does not talk, also I believe that it is currently too difficult to animate accurately.
From this project I have leant; how to make a 3D model in Maya with an array of modelling techniques and different types of textures, about different types of lights and cameras in Maya and how I can use them to get a certain effect, how to make 3D models move in Maya by rigging them using the joint tool and NURBS circles as control points, and how to make basic animations in Maya that then will be exported and assembled into a video.
character design specification
attempt at silhouette character development
For the silhouette developments I first started with drawing using the basic shapes for characters, these include triangles, squares and circular shapes, after I then decided my 3 favourite that I would then develop, to develop from these I lightly sketched the basic shape and added detail, after I had to write about the character and give them a backstory.
character development
At the start I had to design and develop a character, two methods that we used were silhouette and random word association.
Random word association involved rolling multiple dice to choose a word from a grid, for example 357 could be island, and we then drew that word, however due to miscommunication i did not draw any superheros/villains based on the random words.
The silhouette method involved drawing many thumbnails of random shapes in a solid colour and then developing the each silhouette into a character, but this method required the individual to ‘see’ what is in the silhouette to develop a character, because of this I struggled and have no silhouette characters.
However during the holiday before i started my second year of animation one of my tutors set m the task of designing a superhero, and in this design i had to create multiple expressions, in the end I only had one body design, 5 emotions and 3 different mouths, the inspirations for the mouths were different types of seeing audio, such as audio waves in sound editing software or music equaliser bars and i would have his mouth show what his voice would look like as these forms of audio, furthermore the emotions were depicted by using different types of eyes, I first started out with using angular overall eyes for his regular eyes and edited them to create andy and sad emotions, after i decide to use ‘?’ and ‘!’ for confused and surprised, also I thought that to make my character ‘blink’ his eyes would dim to a darker shade of yellow.
various notes
After I made the background on record cards I decided to make some notes about my backgrounds and animation.
the page reads as; “The scenes from the previous page I will develop onto record cards, and then add colour and piece together with the background texture.”
“due to its difficultly I will design and develop the maze digitally and upload to my blog.”
“The order of the scenes can change, however the;
1st scene must be the maze,
2nd scene must be cutscene 1,
3rd scene must be moving platforms,
4th scene must be cutscene 2,
And the last 3 must be Logroll followed by cutscene 3 and then cutscene 4.
The remaining scenes, treadmill and bouncing balls, can go in any order but must have cutscene 2 after each of them”
“The music I will use will be either or a combination of;
- Volatile Reaction – from imcompetch.com
- Black Vortex – imcompetch.com
- Mechanolith – imcompetch.com
- in a heart beat – imcompetch.com
- Harmfull or Fatal – imcompetch.com
All of the music I’ve chosen is royalty free.”
“Furthermore I plan to 3D print the legroom scene.”
Animations and Research 