Foam Latex or Silicon moulding

I've been watching some videos on foam latex and silicone moulding and I think this is how I would like to create my characters. They seem to come out with a really nice texture and move easily and I think it looks really good. However, I have researched into buying this silicone and it's really expensive so I might have to go with foam as it is a cheaper option.

Back to The Start

This animation is really cute, and child friendly but it really makes you think about the process involved in getting your meat and it's really interesting to watch. I like that this simple, quite childish style shows a serious issue and it makes it really enjoyable to watch. I would like my animation to be quite simple and cute, so that it appeals to children, while also informing everyone about serious issues within society and how they can help. I feel that watching a really nice, friendly, funny animation while listening to important facts will make more people pay attention and take action against food wastage in the UK.

Documentary Animation: Food.

The Real Junk Food Project.

Pay as you Feel Cafe's. 

They intersect food from restaurants and supermarket's that is going to be wasted- past its best before date but not it's use by date so all the food is still perfectly good but will be wasted, and cook it in their cafe to give to people for free, or for a donation of however much they can pay.

Skip Diving.

More extreme version, physically climbing into bins behind restaurants and supermarkets to find food that is still edible. Can get arrested for this but it's better for the environment than wasting all the food.


These facts were found on: The Real Junk Food Project.com http://www.therealjunkfoodproject.co.uk/

The problem, causes and solution

Food is wasted throughout the supply chain. Supermarket's aesthetic standards mean that in the U.K, over 40% of vegetables are discarded before leaving the farm.

There are strict food labelling laws that mean perfectly healthy edible food is being mindlessly binned at every stage of the distribution chain.

Food waste is a symptom of a much bigger problem that can only be addressed by re-evaluating our food production and distribution system.

WRAP estimate that food distribution and retail generates 4.3 million tonnes of food waste each year in the UK, whilst simultaneously over 900,000 people were regularly using food banks in 2014.

One Human Family

This short animation is beautiful. I love the style it is done in. The 3D animation is so smooth and the message that it gets across is simple but understandable and hard hitting. I really love the subtle colours in it and the way everything changes from grey to coloured when they start to work together. 

Pay As You Feel Cafe.

This video about Pay as You Feel Cafe's has inspired me to make an animation about the Pay as You Feel Cafes and everything they stand for. I will be using this video as reference for my facts and to get my story right. 

Food Wastage Footprint

This motion graphic about food wastage was very eye opening. While the motion graphic style doesn't appeal to me regarding what I want to do with this project, the facts about food wastage have made me realise that I would like to do an animation to draw attention to how much food is wasted in the world. 

RSA Short

This animation from RSA is a beautiful stop motion made using food. I really like some of the inventive uses of foods for certain objects, especially the popcorn puffs of smoke. I think this animation is really well done and really interesting. It might influence my own stop motion. 

Stewie Griffin- Rocketman.

Here is an example of they type of thing we're being asked to do in our brief, in the industry. 

Stewie Griffin is speaking the words of the song with a different tone and emotion than the original song and the character is animated to fit the scene and lyrics.

Roto-Mation

This rotoscoped animation uses a really nice blend of animated characters and real world back grounds. I really like this idea and think it would work really well with my Discovery Channel ident, if I can successfully get rid of the logo and ibm watermark in the corners of my discovery channel shark footage. 
I also really like the block colour used on the character. I think it makes the animation the perfect blend of realistic and stylised. I will use this simple block colour idea on my CBeebies animation and also perhaps in my E4 ident, however in my CBeebies ident I will have to make the colours very bold and bright to make them engaging and fit within the CBeebies image. 

Rotoscoping research.

This short film demonstrates an example of rotoscoping and shows how it helps to create realistic movements. I really like the use of minimalistic colour in this animation, as there are only subtle amounts of colour to emphasize and help recognise items like the lemons. The simple line style is really nice and interesting, however for my rotoscoped animations I will not be able to do this, as my ideas require colour. CBeebies especially needs bright engaging colours.

Rotoscoping in Snow White

In Disney's Snow White, the character of Snow White was rotoscoped to get the movements flowing perfects. This rotoscoping of a person shows how realistic the movements can be and how rotoscoping helps to get the proportions right within the Character. It demonstrates the act of taking a real life person to capture the proportions and movements, and then creating an entirely different character over the top of these basic movements. 
This will help me get the proportions right for my Mr Tumble character in my CBeebies ident.

Flow, Form and Force

Disney's Snow White uses rotoscoping to get the movements correct in the film. Rotoscoping from a dancer that they got to model is another way to draw from life, getting each and every movement in. This shows the importance of life drawing as it captures the movement really realistically.

Flow, Form and Force

When making Sleeping Beauty, Disney used a live action model to capture the movements and make them realistic. This was done by doing really quick sketches as the model moves, similar to our project brief. Above is a video about how they did this and below is the finished movie scene that they were working on. It shows the importance of life drawing in animation.

Flow, Form and Force

Ryan Larkin's 'Street Musique' has elements of drawing from life in it, in between morphing these images into other objects. The life drawing elements are well drawn and I really like the way he seemlessly morphs them and changes them. 
The figures in the animation look relatively realistic- the proportions are correct, which would come from drawing from life, although they are simplified to fit with the style of the animation.

Flow, Form and Force

Thought of You- Ryan Woodward

This animation by Ryan Woodward shows the importance of life drawing and capturing the idea of a persons shape quickly to give the impression of movement.

This animation was done by rotoscoping and obviously has more than a few 10 second poses like our movement brief but it's done with really simple lines and not much detail which helps the movements flow. It's a beautiful animation.

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.

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.

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.