Editing.

The editing and post production side of my animation shouldn't take too long. I didn't use any green screens, and the scenes are all quite dark, meaning that things in the background wouldn't be seen anyway. This will save me a lot of time with editing. The only things that do need doing are masking out the rigging that is visible in some frames, and adding in a light source in the camp fire scene, and fixing the flickering light in a couple of frames.
 Unfortunately I will not have time to do this before the deadline but will have it completed by the exhibition. 

I also have been editing together the completed scenes as I go and some have required moving the camera around in post production and zooming in or out depending on the shot as I cannot zoom on the camera I am using. I have also been adding sound effects to help tell the story, which I have been doing for each completed scene in the evenings.

Finished Puppets.

I've completed all of my my puppets outfits. Luckily, the daughter, the miller and Rumpelstiltskin all have clothes that are supposed to look quite hand made, which is good because my sewing skills aren't amazing. 

I had a lot of trouble with the Millers clothing, as the arms kept coming loose while I was trying to sew his top and then the wire that made up his neck and spine snapped, forcing me to undo all of the stitches I had already done and take apart the sponge and the armature again and replace the wire. This was an inconvenience but hopefully the wire should hold now. The arms still have a tendency to become loose and fall out of their sockets which will be annoying if it happens when animating, but the Miller doesn't have to move too much in the animation and I have made it possible to get at the arm sockets without having to unstitch too much of the puppet now.

The main issue I had with the King's puppet is that his forearms dont like to stay attached to his elbows, meaning he doesn't animate very smoothly but I think I can get around this with some creative angles.

The Rumpelstiltskin and Millers Daughter puppets worked the most successfully and both have a good range of movement. The only issues with this are that the hands don't move too well as the wire keeps poking through the silicon. This could have been solved by me putting a blob of glue from a hot glue gun on the end of each finger before casting, which I will do next time I make a puppet. 

Plan for the last week and a half.

There is just about a week and a half left of this project before the deadline so I've had to extra organise my time as I have gotten a bit behind with the animating. I think I can get it done in time though if I stick to my schedule. I have the lights and equipment until next monday so I have planned to have the last few scenes done by then, and I'll add the sound in the evenings. This should hopefully give me a chance to clean up a couple of bits in the last two days or give me two days to finish things off if something goes wrong and things dont work to plan. 

Plan for last few scenes.

Friday 29th and Saturday 30th (doing this last as it should be pretty quick and isnt the most important scene)

0:00- 0:07 camera slowly moving through the forest

0:08- 0:10 (camera behind characters) camera catches up to Miller and his daughter as they walk through the gate. Miller walks holding his sore back, daughter walks slowly and sadly just behind him.

0:10- 0:15 Camera just behind the king, to the side. miller bows before the king, looks up and presents his daughter. (king takes girls arm and turns towards the castle?)

(scene done in one day easily)

0:15- 1:19 done.

Wednesday 27th (After PPP) and Thursday (after crit) if needed.

1:19- 1:23 girl with crown on her head, sweeping hair behind ear while looking down. 

1:23- 1:27 girl holding baby.. pacing back and forth? (tie down holes) rocking baby? 

1:27- 1:31 cut to shot of Rumpelstiltskin walking up through the gate, he bows and then holds out hands for the child. 

1:32- 1:34 shot of both. Girl pulls back, holding baby protectively as Rumpelstiltskin holds out hands for the child. zooming in on girl towards the end

1:35- 1:40 girl turns and collapses on her knees, holding the child close and crying.

1:40- 1:43 shot of both of them, girl is crying on the floor, rumpelstiltskin looks thoughtful.strokes chin? has an idea!

1:43- 1:47 Rumpelstiltskin holds up three fingers, girl wipes her tears away and looks hopeful. Rumpelstitlskin turns to leave. camera moves to focus on him.

1:48-1:50 Rumpelstiltskin leaves. Shot of his back walking through the gate.

1:50-1:54 Girl pacing back and forth in front of castle (use same tie down holes as before) 

(whole scene in one day? Day and a half?)

1:54-1:55 fade to black.

1:55- 2:08 done.

Thursday 28th (after Crit) and Friday 29th all day.

2:08- 2:12 Rumpelstiltskin walks two steps up to the girl and bows, with his head low. Last second he looks up with a cheeky grin.

2:12- 2:18 cut to shot of girls upper body. eyes half open, half smile on her face, one hand thoughtfully in the air as if she’s thinking.

2:19-2:22 cut to shot of both of them, girl leans forward, eyes closed , smile on her face. See Rumpelstiltskin from the back still crouched down with this head tilted up looking at her.

2:23- 2:29 cut to shot of rumpelsiltskins face change from grin to shocked as he gasps and falls backwards.  (all in 3 hours)

2:30- 2:32 cut to shot of back of girl with rumpelstiltskin in the background. Girl turns away and heads back into the castle. we can see rumpelstiltskin in the background not fully in focus as he gets to his feet and begins stomping around in anger.

2:33- 2:39 cut to a shot of rumpelstiltskin stomping around angrily. one foot gets stuck in the ground. 

2:39-2:42  slightly closer shot as he starts pulling at the leg stuck in the ground. 

2:43- 2:46 (swapped puppet out for a plasticine one?) close up of the legs, he pulls at the leg more and then it flies free straight up, ripping noise.(whole scene in one day?)

Friday 29th

2:47- 2:48 shot of Rumpelstiltskins head, (or whole puppet in two halves?) eyes closed, lying on the floor. fade to black. (10 minutes tops, its just one shot, nothing moves.)

It is quite ambitious to aim to get 30-40 seconds done in a day but they're mostly not too elaborate so it could be possible. If not, I have a few days spare to sort it out and finish it up. I will then hopefully have time to do some editing like adding in lights in after effects and cleaning up the rigging, hopefully before the deadline but if not definitely before the exhibition.

Set Built: Castle

Elliot is building my sets. To make the castle, we measured out and bought a large piece of MDF to be the base of the set. I also had a fair bit of cardboard that Elliot thought he could use for the castle. We put it in the stop motion room in 210 which is where I'll be animating and Elliot will be building the set. We measured out the cardboard to find a rough height for the castle and the walls and sketched out roughly where the path and trees would be. I then left Elliot to make a start on the set.

Elliot had gotten a bit behind on my sets, so I had to help out with this set as well so that I could begin animating on it. We used a large piece of cardboard as the castle, drew on where the door would be and then I covered it in bricks also made of cardboard while Elliot did a similar thing with the towers. I also used strips of cardboard on the door to act as planks of wood. Then, while Elliot was assembling and bricking up the wall that goes between the forest and the castle, I covered the board in PVA and soil to give it a forest floor texture. I used a thinner layer of soil for the path and inside the castle grounds so that it was easier to see the difference and easier to drill through for tie downs.

Once all the assets were assembled, we took them outside to spray paint the base coat of black on them. Once the base coat was dry, elliot mixed up a brown coloured paint with some PVA and a little water that would help the paint cover and stick to the soil texture, and we began covering the board using a dabbing technique. We did two to three layers with slightly different colours to create depth and texture to make it look good on camera. We then dry-brushed three layers of different greys (dark to light) on the walls of the castle and towers and outer wall to create the impression of worn in brick. I used a similar effect with the wooden door to create a wood texture.

Animating.

Some problems I have come across while animating have caused me to slow down and rethink things. I found that, although three of my puppets came with strong magnets to hold them onto sets, once the silicon had been applied to the feet, the magnets weren't nearly as strong and they weren't able to get through the wood of the set and the silicon, so are basically useless for animating with. This means that I will have to use the tie downs for these puppets which will mean drilling holes through the set where I need them, which will take more time. I also had planned to use a rigging kit for the king puppet, however the rigging kit doesn't attach to the kings armature as planned so I have had to slide it between the sponge and his clothes and hope that is strong enough to hold him. This will make it more difficult to animate with. 

As I didn't know how a spinning wheel worked, I have looked for some videos as research and found this very useful video and have used it as reference so that my Rumpelstiltskin character looks like he is in fact working the wheel. 

As I have limited experience in animating in stop motion, some of my movements are quite shaky and the light occasionally flickers and I can't work out why. The shaky movements aren't too much of an issue for me, but the light flickers I will need to clean up in post production.

Another issue I faced with this animation is working out how to make the campfire look like it was giving off light. I bought some little LED candles that I thought might be useful, however they are too bulky to sit above the set inside the campfire as it was too obvious that they were there, and the LED light bulb itself wasn't big enough to show through the wood if we had drilled a hole through the set and attached it underneath. Because of this I have decided to add a light source in in post production and maybe footage of a fire inside the set. 
The biggest issue I have had with this animation is the King puppet, as I couldnt attach his arms properly and his bulky shape make it hard to position his arms without them springing back again. 

The last issue I have had is the Rumpelstiltskin puppet. At the end of the animation he is supposed to tear himself in two, and originally I was planning on making a duplicate puppet that was in two halves, loosely held together by clothing. Unfortunately, I ran out of silicon because the first Rumpelstiltskin puppet didnt work, and I have run out of time to order new silicon and make a full new puppet. 
Therefore I have had to think of a new way to do this last scene. I had wanted the audience to be able to see the whole scene as it would have been a fun challenge, however because of a lack of time I think I will either have to make a plasticine puppet that maybe wont look exactly the same as the original puppet, or, to save more time and definitely get the animation finished by the deadline, I could just make use of creative angles to shoot the scene at to make it look like he might have torn himself into two. I think because of the time I have left, I will go with the second option and show a shot of Rumpelstiltskin pulling at his leg, use a ripping sound effect and then show Rumpelstiltskin lying maybe in pieces on the floor.

Sound.

I asked a good friend of mine from home, Sam Benjafield, to create the sound for my animation as he is a talented student at Ravensbourne, London studying Music Production for Media. He specialises in creating music scores for films of all kinds but particularly likes dark creepy film scores and so it seemed a perfect fit. He also said he needed more diversity in his showreel and an animation would be perfect as all the other films he has done are live action. He has worked with me before in first year creating some music for one of my idents so I knew he'd do a good job. 
Here is a previous film with a music score created by him.

Sam likes to work to the footage to best fit the music to what is happening in the story. This meant that I had to send him either the finished animation before he could start sound, or part animatic with finished animation elements so that he could see how the story moves. 


He sent the music the other day to see what I thought about it and if it needed changing. I thought it sounded really good, however I thought it needed to sound a bit more dramatic and sad as the beginning sounded too happy. I also asked him to extend it by about 10 seconds to include the closing credits at the end. 

He sent me the finished sound today and it sounds great. 

Set Built: Tower Room

Elliot has completed my first set. It was a little behind schedule but I don't think it will be too much of an issue as I gave myself a little extra time in my plan. I will just have to animate at a decent pace. 

The set looks amazing and I love the spinning wheel that he built. I also like the green splodges he did on the walls that look like damp or mould growing. I'm very pleased with this set. 

One issue is that I forgot to tell him to include a door but I can just use some camera shots and lighting to make it seem as though there is a door, and rethink a couple of panels from the storyboard. This could actually make it easier to animate.

Setting up the lights

Every scene in my animation will have quite dim lighting, however what the lighting on the set looks like to me is not what it looks like from the camera, so I have had to set the lights up quite bright and then they come through looking quite dark. This took some fiddling to get it looking how I wanted it to look but I'm happy with how each set has turned out. 

I also had to work out where I wanted the light source. I used a big LED light on quite a low setting to give the basic lighting so that the set was visible in the camera, and then used one or two little Dedo lights to highlight the characters/ act as windows or doors in the tower room set.

I tried to give the lights a nice warm glow using the settings that they offer. This is because the scenes were pretty much all meant to be lit by candle or fire, with the exception of the woods in the castle set.