PLANNING

These are pictures of the planning that i've done throughout the production of my animation. The pictures include my individual characters, backgrounds, storyboard, production schedule, and my initial ideas..

TIM BURTON - VINCENT PRICE

Tim Burton was born in Burbank on the 25th August 1958. His family knew from a young age that he had a high imagination, and he would often watch low budget horror movies to help him escape from his reality. Tim Burton has brought some of the best animations and films ever into our lives including “The Nightmare before Christmas”, “Edward Scissorhands”, “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”, and “Big Fish”. All his films have a somewhat noir effect to them, bringing dark storylines and characters. Tim Burton has had an extremely successful career, and is a legendary figure in the film making industry. Alice in wonderland his latest creation starring Johnny Depp has already been sold out. Vincent Price was the first short film 6 minute black and white animation written and directed by Tim Burton that was released on 1st October 1982. Based on a poem that Tim Burton wrote, Vincent is a 7 year old boy who wants to grow up to be like his hero Vincent Price. His character is disturbed and twisted within his imagination and has a somewhat split personality. He lives in a world inside his imagination where he is the equivalent of Vincent Price – the popular horror actor. Vincent Price is actually the voiceover for the animation which says a lot about the animation in itself, as Tim Burton was the only man at the time who managed to get Vincent Price to participate within a film. Tim Burton uses rhyme and gothic features to create an atmosphere full of darkness and hatred. Vincent is a very disturbed child who turns anything good into something bad. The animation has a noir effect to it, contrasting with the claymation and adding to the bizarreness of narration and imagery. It seems as if the animation is reliving Tim Burton’s childhood, and Vincent is really how he was as a child, pretending to be in horror movies and causing havoc.


I think the animation as a whole is a great success because of how its pieced together. The techniques used create and illusion that Vincent is dreaming, but it then links with another scene that brings him back to the sincerity of reality. Its mesmerising how the character is in his own world one moment and then in reality the next, as its shown in a way thats truly remarkable. I think that the only problem with the animation is that you have to really concentrate on what’s being said and shown, instead of being able to use it as a source of reflection. I liked the animation however, and i don’t think Tim Burton could have started his career in a better way.

websites: www.youtube.co.uk
www.googleimages.co.uk
www.imdb.com

PIXAR

FOR THE BIRDS
For the birds is a computer animation, that was created by pixar. Computer animation is an effective technique, because you can visually portray absolutely anything without too much hassle. For the birds is an interesting animation because it seems to hide a moral within it. All of the smaller birds make fun of the largest bird because he's so big, and try to exclude him for being different.
They try to push him off of the wire they're all standing on, and eventually he falls off. As he's so big and heavy, the wire weighs down so he's pretty much at the floor, so he falls off without having any injury. The small birds however who aren't so heavy are all thrown off by the force released as the bigger bird steps off the wire. They all come plummetting to the down in a pile of feathers, bare skinned and ugly. The story relates to real life situations because people are often excluded for the way they look. The idea of the birds being hurt in the end is a sign of karma and what goes around comes around.



The feathers used within the animation were all real, and the short clip used over 10000 of them. I think the animation is really effective because its simple and creative. The idea in itself has an impact on its overall appearance. I enjoyed it due to the idea behind it, and i'm sure others will too.

Websites used: www.youtube.co.uk www.googleimages.com

FINAL ANIMATION ONE

The video which you can see above is my un-edited final animation. To make my animation, i used a medium thats called transparancies. As you can see in various points in my animation the transparancies don't work so well, but because of the storyline i'd chosen for my animation it seemed the best option to use as i could change the facial expressions of my characters sufficiently. It took me quite a while to get used to using the medium, but after about 2 lessons i got to grips with making it look effective. I found that using white paper as backing made the colours seem bolder, and made my animation look a lot less like an 8 year old had made it. The various stages if making my characters were irritating, because i couldn't get them to look the same each time but with different expressions. It took me quite a few attempts to get there, but i think it worked pretty well towards the end. My animations quite unusual, because its storyline makes no sense. I'd started off with the idea to have a love story where two characters meet on a ski slope from knocking into each other. It started off okay, with the downhill skiing, but as i progressed to zoom in on their facial expressions to show their emotions it became quite hard. You'll notice that at a point in my animation it zooms in on the orange characters face then changed into a heart background with him being in love. I had absolutely no idea how to combine these two parts of the scene together, but the best i could come up with was to try it by zooming in. I'm quite pleased with my animation because honestly, i never thought i'd have had the patience to see it the whole way through. I'm still browsing for some sound effects to put in the backing of it, but once thats done it will be fully complete.

There are a lot of strengths and weaknesses within my animation, which you can probably see for yourself. Th transparancies are a weakness in a few parts, because the colours appear different shades and you can actually see the outline of the transparancie. This makes my animation look quite un-proffessional, and i cant say im pleased about the way they turned out. Another weakness would be the movement within the animation. When the character is skiing down the slope at the beginning it doesnt look too disastrous, but once he meets the 2nd character it all seems to go downhill. The camera photos are out of sync so the animation is jumpy, which is really uneffective. There are some strengths with my animation though. I think the skiing scene actually works quite well with the arm movement, because it gives a real effect f skiing. I also think that how the facial expressions change is quite good, because it seems to run smoothly. Overall i don't think my animation was anything special, but i do have to say i'm pleased with it. Even though it doesn't look amazing i put a lot of effort into it, and just to see a finished product is good enough for me.

TEST ANIMATION ONE

This animation was my first test of my end project. I was quite pleased with this because i got the timing right, but as its only a few seconds its hard to see what i can work on from it. I found inspiration for this looking through books of cartoons. I saw the image of a dog, and decided to interpret it into my own character. I chose the word "slide" to base my animation on so a ski slope seemed a good idea. I've experimented with different types of movement, and found the best way to animate this scene is by taking 2 pictures per frame to make the movement smooth. This excercise helped me to find where i was going wrong in my attempts, and helped me to improve my animation greatly!

I think the weakness with this attempt is the way it looks on camera. All the lighting has changed and i moved the camera accidently a few times, changing the affectiveness greatly. I could have put more effort into the appearence of the character, as the colours seem rushed instead of blocks. I can learn from this animation all round within my camera shots, because seeing this has taught me about how important it is for the camera to stay still at all times. If i could do this again, i think i would do a claymation because it seems a lot easier and also less time consuming.

websites: www.youtube.co.uk

WHITEBOARD

This animation is a whiteboard that i made alone. I don't know where i got the inspiration from, it was just one of those ideas that spontaniously pop into your head. I think that doing this animation helped me to improve my drawing skills and using a steady hand, because it was quite challenging to draw without rubbing out pieces of my work. I think this animation actually went quite well because i worked independantly, and had the chance to try things out on my own. In this excercise i learnt how effective the simplest of things can be.

I think this is one of my better animations. In comparisson to my pixilation i'd say it was pretty good because i tried to put effort into this one. I can learn from this animaton, because it shows that things don't have to be complex and awkward to look good. If i was to do another i think I'd add a lot more to it because its quite short, and could have been made more interesting with a bit of time.

websites: www.youtube.co.uk

PIXILATION

This video was supposed to be a car crash that me, sable, hobie, and jake made at the beginning of the year. To create this video we used pixilation, which is a technique that makes images appear to be moving. I did this in a group, and although i wasn't actually in the video i took all the pictures. Making this animation helped me to progress in my camera skills, by giving me practise at getting the correct shot. There wasn't a particular animation that influenced us, it was just a creative idea we had in our heads which wasn't portrayed so well when we recorded. In this excercise i learnt just how complicated pixilation is, because before i didn't realise just how much effort it is create the right effect.

I dont think this animation was very good because we misunderstood the concept of making the movement look real. I don't have any animations i can really compare to this because my others fall into different criterias, but I think we could have improved this a lot more. I think from this i could learn to be more careful with planning, so the idea we come up with actually works. If i could change this animation, i'd scrap the whole idea and try to do something a bit more simple.

websites: www.youtube.co.uk