Ceramics workshop numero uno

 Today, we had the first of four ceramics workshop. After a short introduction to the facilities, we got started on making an armature. First this involved twisting some wire to make it strong enough to hold its form in the model, and cutting and bending some metal rod to make the arm that the model leans on and attaching it to the board.


Then, we got started on our armatures. We had to design a simple humanoid character- I chose a robot- and then create the skeleton of it form the wire we had twisted. Where we had to join wire together we used a thinner, more flexible wire to tie around it which held it strong. There are little loops on the hands and feet to make it easier to attach the milliput.

We then added milliput to the parts of the figure that weren't to bend- like the thighs, the bit across the shoulders etc... everything but the joints that needed to move. We also made eyes out of the milliput so that we can move them while animating. We then left this to dry.

And then.. PLAY TIME!

You Spin Me Right Round - 360 drawing

Here is my 360 degree turnaround of a minion for my "You spin me right round" brief. 

I chose to draw a minion that I got in a happy meal because it is a relatively simple shape and I thought it would be fairly easy to draw, but it also has shapes and parts that extrude and make the shape more complex.

I think this worked well, I don't like how one frame has slightly crumpled paper- I need to take better care of my drawings before scanning them in. I chose to do it in fineliner with limited shading because I like the simplistic approach to the drawing and didn't want to overcomplicate the shading. If I did it again, I'd re-do the hair on the object because it was really hard to make the hair look like it was spinning while it was brushed over, although I think it turned out okay in the end.

You Spin Me Right Round (research)

360 degree character turnarounds are used often in animation, not only when designing the characters, but also in the actual animation when characters spin and twirl. The turnarounds allow the viewer to see the character from every angle so the animator needs to be able to draw the character at each stage.

360 degree spins can be seen in many Disney feature films, like here in Cinderella. The turnaround is at the end of the clip where Cinderella is admiring her new dress. The spin looks natural like how someone would actually show off their new dress. I like how the dress moves as she spins.

CBeebies ident

I have decided that for my CBeebies ident, I am going to turn popular CBeebies character Mr Tumble into a cartoon clown and have him juggling the CBeebies blobs. 

While he is juggling, he starts to throw the blobs too high and more jump in so Mr Tumble loses control of them and the smush together at the top and turn into the CBeebies logo.

After presenting this storyboard to my class, the general comment was that the idea was good, but the clown needed to look more like Mr Tumble, so I'm going to do some more character development to try and make him look more like the character.

CBeebies animatic

I need to do a bit more work on character development, as it was pointed out to me that my clown character doesn't look enough like Mr Tumble from the CBeebies show, but here's my animatic to give a general idea of the timing and how I would like my animation to run.

I'm going to use bright bold primary colours, perhaps a green background and the clown will be in Mr Tumble clothes.

It was suggested that I try to include some key features of Mr Tumble so that he is easily recognisable for the children who watch it, like his spotty bag.

Discovery Channel animatic

Here is my animatic for my Discovery Channel ident. 

This roughly works out the timing of the animation and fits into the 10 second time limit.. I might need to make the breach a little bit quicker, unless I make it obviously slow motion..

The colours will be blues and blacks and natural colours.

Discovery Channel ident

Shark week ident.

I have done some research into shark week on the Discovery Channel.. Shark Week is one of the most popular shows to appear on the discovery channel and so I have decided to theme my ident on this. It will be quite different to the other idents on the Discovery Channel, but the others are done with motion graphics and 3D and I have not yet got that ability.

I have watched hundreds of videos from previous shark weeks and other videos of sharks on youtube and have decided on either having the logo in the water with sharks circling it, having the shark eat the logo and us seeing inside the sharks mouth, or a shark breaching the water and grabbing the logo like it would grab a seal. I think this idea is the most dynamic and interesting, and I think it would be a fun challenge to get the movements and speed to look realistic.

I've done some studies of sharks for research to get a good realistic looking shark, as the Discovery Channel would not suit a very stylised cartoon shark as much as a realistic natural looking shark.

Here is my storyboard.

You Spin Me Right Round (research)

Character turnarounds are used frequently in animation while designing a character to make sure you get an equal amount of detail on the character from every angle. It also allows the animator to adjust shape and size to make sure the proportions are correct. 

A-ha rotoscoped music video

The video for A-Ha's take on me is probably one of the most well known rotoscoped videos. It combines live film with rotoscoped animation and does so really well. I like the sketchy style that it's done in and the movements look really realistic, as it's done over video.

Visual Language- Drawing sounds

Here are my final visualisations of sound presented in animation.

Firework Scream

Monster Blob

Rapid Warble

Fried Egg

Dripping Tap

I definitely preferred animating the sounds to drawing the sounds static, I found it much easier to visualise the sounds moving as it seemed to have more effect and relate more to the sounds in question.

Drawing Sounds

 Here are my Sound Drawings for my 10 sounds, followed by my 5 final drawings. If I'm honest, I really didn't enjoy this project. I found it really hard to draw sounds that change and move as a still image, as I don't think my drawings really represent the sounds that well. I'm hoping my animations of the final 5 represent the sounds a bit better. I would have used more colour in these drawings, but I could not work out which colours looked right in my head with each sound when I was drawing.

(The final 5)

CBeebies research

CITV used to use logo as their ident and they'd just animate the letters in the logo in a fun way. 

Recently they've recreated the logo and have started to incorporate it into images. For example in these 3 images from idents, the C of the logo becomes the mouth of the horse, or venus flytrap, or shark.

They've used real backgrounds and drawn over them a 2D cartoony style and animated over the image, which I think is a really cool way to do it.

E4 EStings

E4 are well know for their EStings, and the majority of their stings are created by viewers of the tv channel.

All Idents have to use the E4 logo and the colour purple is a common theme as it's the colour of the channel.

A lot of the E4 stings are quirky and strange and can be done in any media or style.

I will obviously stay with the purple theme, however it's going to be tough to think of an idea that hasn't already been done as there are so many EStings around..

Discovery Channel idents

I looked at some old Discovery Channel idents and compared them to the newer idents that focus on the world next to the D of Discovery. 

The Discovery Channel idents are typically real life images in very high definition, and they zoom out into the ball on the logo. I think I am going to redesign the idea of the ident to encorporate animation into my ident. 

CBeebies ident

I've done some research into other kids tv channels/ tv shows to see the kind of things they have as their idents and how they compare to CBeebies. 

Milkshake! on channel 5 have created their idents with drawings that children have sent in, which animators have brought to life and they dance across the screen.

CBeebies ident

CBeebies ident's use bright, vibrant colours and usually include the CBeebies blob characters that create a sense familiarity and also keep the ident feeling young and childish and friendly. 

I'm currently brainstorming ideas for this ident.. But I defiitely think I'm going to include (a version of) the blobs.

Oskar Fischinger- An Optical Poem (1938)

Oskar Fischinger is known for his animations of sounds. This piece starts out with each note starting out as different sized circles depending on their volume, and each fades into the distance, getting smaller, as the note fades and gets replaced by other notes. Different sounds or instruments seem to be represented by different colours and shapes. The strings at the start are circles, whereas later, the woodwind sounding instruments are squares and lines. 

The Dot and the Line- A Romance in Lower Mathmatics.

The Dot and the Line is a short animation that tells the story of a line that falls in love with a dot. I like the way the sounds chosen represent each of the shapes, for example the squiggle has a wild and unruly and fun sound, whereas the the line has a smooth sound and the dot has a upbeat bouncy sound. 
This animation is mostly about the story, however moments like with the doorbell, the sound is represented in harsh red lines. And sounds and feelings are embodied in the shape of the line. 

In this animation, I think the parts with the squiggle are the best representations of sound as image.

Disney's Fantasia (1940) Visualising Sounds

Disney's Fantasia is a good example of an artist visualising a sound in animation, using colour and movements to represent sounds.

In the first clip you can see the different shapes that represent each instrument at the start, and it becomes more abstracted as it goes on. The shapes get bigger as the sound gets louder and quicker sweeping sounds are represented by sweeping movements of colour on screen. The really fast part of the song around 4 minutes is shown by many quickly appearing and disappearing dots and beams of light, separated by the loud imposing sounds shown by large imposing images.

Fantasia also has some less abstracted elements to it, as shown here in the dance of the sugar plum fairy. Here, the song is represented by the movements of the fairies dance. When the music sweeps down low, the fairies sweep low and so on. 

NEW BRIEF: A Tale in the Sting.

We have a new brief! 
To create either an ident for 3 out of 4 popular tv channels: E4, CBeebies, BBC4 or The Discovery Channel...
OR
To create some titles for a new movie or tv adaptation of a book that we get to choose...
OR
To create an animated charity campaign video for either Childline or Amnesty international...


I think I will choose the idents as it appeals to me most and I think it sounds really fun. I am going to choose E4, CBeebies and The Discovery Channel.





I have done some research into previous idents on E4 and Cbeebies..

E4's estings are always quirky and interesting and don't always make a lot of sense. They always involve E4's colour- purple. EStings can be done with any kind of animation technique. I think I'd like to do a stop motion for this animation.

CBeebies often use their CBeebies blog characters and the colours Blue and Yellow are frequently occurring. Their idents are always flowy and cute and dont have any solid edges, and a lot of rounded corners and fluid movements. Always 2D animation on photoshop or flash etc.