not getting to grips with.......small needs to be smaller!

30/4/2010

I'm going to have to think of something more solid to fix the gorilla grip to = the handles/bar of my trolley moves around too easily and I keep getting the trolley in shot. Also, the gripper is not staying put, no matter how hard I try so I'm liable to move the camera from shot to shot which ruins the continuity. It's a shame but I'll persevere and find alternatives.



you can clearly see the side of the trolley in the above frame. Everything is so time consuming but I must remember to check the frame before shooting - EACH time.

I bought smaller wax and coloured crayons yesterday as the others were too large to compliment the rabbits and move about easily. However, once the rabbits were in place, even these crayons were too big. I've decided to use only 3 rabbits so that the two outside ones are the ones which take the crayons and point them at the middle one.



It's not easy to move the crayons about without moving the rabbits out of sequence. In fact, I was getting really wound up by it (surprise surprise!). It's very painstaking, this type of animation. Because you have to move all the pieces, it's toally tactile and totally prone to loss of complete control over them. The acetates mean that the background images move about a lot, in spite of being blu tac'd down where possible. Again, I must remember to 'register' everything and be as gentle as possible when moving the pieces. It requires the utmost patience and care, this hands on approach.

Also - the crayons being too big mean it's not very effective trying to position them round to ended up in the rabbits' paws....



In this shot they look clumsy. These were the smallest crayons I could buy but I then thought of an idea. Cut them in half and turn them into mini crayons that would suit the size of the rabbits more and give a bit more space for manouvre.



This works a lot better. I will still have to use a tiny amount of blu tac to keep them in place, but at least I'll have more space around them when moving them.

I want the two outside rabbits to colour in the middle one towards the end. To do thsi easily I will use coloured pastels to do the actual colouring. They're easier to make marks with than wax or crayon which would move the rabbit around too much I'm sure.



I would keep the rabbits still and just keep adding more colour slowly, shot by shot.

gorilla grip vs colour & tissue paper...

29/4/2010

Julie has kindly lent me a 'gorilla grip' tripod which will hopefully help me 'lose' the tripod legs in shot that have been a problem so far.



Here's one in action that I found in Google images.

It took a while to find a suitable thing for it to grip to so that I could get everything I needed in shot but I settled on my trolley which, on set up, seemed ok.
You have to make sure the grip is really tight or the camera will move slightly when taking the shot (and I don't have a remote shutter, so I need to be gentle when pressing the shutter.




I wanted to experiment with the colour again today. I've decided not to complicate things too much as the more I bring in on layers, the more chance I have to move things about, rabbits etc, when I don't want to.

I started off with the lightest photo background (the one copied over tracing paper, set on light setting)



The image is still dark and moody enough to suggest gloom and isolation - not exactly a nice place to be and one a child would rather be out of.

I then gradually dropped in a piece of white tissue/tracing paper (they called it tracing paper in the art shop - looks more like tissue to me!) from the top of the frame



Already you can see the contrast.

Once the tissue had dropped in about 2/3 of the way I started to drop in the strongest coloured acetate on top of it.



Obviously for the actual animation itself, the rabbits will also be in shot so again, it is really important to keep everything in place as much as possible. This is actually really hard to do. When you drop something in from anywhere, layers move other layers. You have to be aware of where everything is. It's best to mark out on the floor where your base image is and any other subsequent layers when they're in place so that everything is sinc'd up.



By the stage above, you can just see the background photo but the colour stands out better and once the rabbits are added, they too stand out well.



The rabbit character stands out sharply from the background and the whole thing looks more cheerful here.



They become central to the piece rather than the background, which is what is needed at this stage. It's they that are important.

Next I had to re-look at my text boxes. First of all I outlined them in strong felt marker so that they stood out against the images.



The text is the most important thing at this point in the animation as it is the informative bit. Our attention has already been drawn by the question - Lonely? and the statements Try Creative Learning! Make New Friends! Now we need to know how to do this - where to go etc.

The small Join Us box will sit behind the rabbits nicely but by the time you get to the next text boxes they are too big to do this - the letters become blocked by the rabbits so you would either put the boxes over the rabbits or take the rabbits out altogether



I like this image because the rabbit is looking up at the information. This is good as the rabbit is still interacting with the piece - in the same way as the viewer is.

It wasn't easy to get the text boxes in shot - using the zoom on my camera and experimentation is the only way. The text needs to be seen large enough to read. Also important - keep this information on screen for a few seconds. Take lots of stills of each text box.

When the bigger box comes in and the last one, the rabbits are removed from shot so the text stands out clearly. I've reduced the size of the website line in this shot as it was too big to fit on the screen properly. I've also bordered it in blue to compliment the colour of the web address (which everyone recognises as blue).



This shot seemed to be successful until I noticed that you can see the side of the trolley in shot at the bottom. I had to raise the camera up a bit to get rid of this - again, it's pretty tricky as a lot of things can move - the grip, the trolley handle, the trolley.....



It wasn't possible to get the side of the trolley totally out of shot without losing a lot of what I needed in frame. So I have to decide what works best - the tripod or the gorilla grip.

The last shot I want is that of the organisations involved - their logos. I resized the images in Word. These are fine when they're in a shot on their own but too big to include on the text box before. I have made them smaller and will try to fit them on the last text box but think they'll probably crowd it out.



So I've added the website address in again (smaller, to fit on the page)



The boxes are a little wonky so need tweeking. On the floor they look horizontal - always check from behind the camera - the angle changes as the camera is gripped at a slightly wonky angle! Perhaps it adds to that 'hand made' feel? : )

This is what the re-sized (smaller) logos look like when added to the final text box:



They crowd it out a bit - and, because they're so small, don't have the weight to sit flat onto the paper, so all in all, I think I may go for the larger images on their own.

Vis Comms session 26/4/10

26/4/2010

Nightmare trying to print off photos anywhere in the college today - all printers on a go-slow so nothing happening. Had to take all of my stuff out of the queue so that other people could print. Who knows when I'll print it out now...

Anyway, uploaded yesterday's photos to Premier Pro - need to know how to use effects and possibly add text to replace the awful text boxes I have printed out myself.



Again, almost forgot - had to scale clips to project dimensions BEFORE importing them into Premier Pro or they'll appear too big in the frame and you'll lose a lot of the photo image.

Rendering the images lessens the jerky movement from frame to frame.

However, the overall look of this is pretty dire. My fingers appear in the frames, the movement of the cut-outs isn't fluid enough, the frame size is not big enough to get everything in properly. I need to get smaller crayons for a start. There are too many things in frame.

I also want the colour to appear sharper. There is still too much of the black/white photo in shot so the mood is still pretty dark. Not sure how I'm going to do that. May just have to have a white background with the coloured acetates on top. Or just drop in a white background underneath the acetates from the top of the frame.

REFERENCING
Add these into my summary/evaluation. Make sure I reference everything I've accessed for this assignment.

Tutorial with Julie:

Talked about the following

Colour. The acetates are not really working that well. I may use fine tissue
paper and colour it with coloured pencils/wax and drop this in as a
background. Or use it as a background to layer the coloured acetates
onto.

Julie will lend me her Gorilla pod so that I can experiment with that
as the tripod legs are getting in the way.

My animation as it stands looks too busy. I have to now think about
considering isolating the movement, e.g: when adding the colour or
dropping it down, stop the rabbits moving. I can keep the rabbits
still for a number of shots, for example. I need to tell the viewer
what to look at, at any given time.

Leave the text boxes on screen for a lot longer, so the viewer can
take in the information. I had considered adding in text in Premier
Pro, but after discussing with Julie, decided that the 'handmade'
effect may be lost this way, so I'll just adapt my cut-outs to fit.

Use smaller crayons - wax and coloured so they don't take up too much
of the frame.

Use the rabbits coming in from left and right to 'activate' the middle
rabbit. For example, they can be holding a crayon and when they touch
the middle rabbit, it will start to be 'coloured in'. You can take a
lot of shots - still, just a little more colour is added each shot.

The crayons appearing anywhere else in the shot can be colouring the
background. I have to be careful tho, as moving things around in this
will cause the rabbits to move. I had trouble with the blu tac before.
So I will need to experiment with this and practice it a few times
before committing it to the final piece.

Blog margins: On some of my blogs the movie clips appear to be cropped
on the right edge so you can't see all the image. In order to rectify
this I needed to change the code settings. Julie advised me to save my
original code settings (as they were originally) to a word document so
I could go back to them if anything went wrong when trying to change
them. www.beginner-blogger-basics.blogspot.com

I changed the following: Header wrapper: 820; Outer wrapper: 850;
Main wrapper: 550; Text allignment: left; Main float: left; Sidebar
wrapper: 270; sidebar wrapper float: right;











Need to talk about effects now.

Acetate hell!

25/4/10
Trying out everything today with coloured acetates, b/white photo acetates (both tones), cut-out rabbits, speech bubbles, text boxes and crayons etc.

A whole lot to think about, firstly continuity of light if you're not shooting everything on the same day.

I started off yesterday afternoon, bright sunshine outside, took about 20 shots and then my brother turned up with his kids so I had to stop. I re-started this morning at around 9.30am - sadly it's not as sunny today so this may affect the lighting on the shots.

I began by laying down the first dark b/white photo background and the first sad rabbit



For this piece I took more than one shot of a single set-up - this way I will hopefully have enough photos for 30 seconds worth of film.

Speech bubbles were added next (still against the dark b/white photo background, as the mood at this point is still one of isolation.

One thing to take note of - do not have your hands in the shot - this can happen when you're taking photos automatically - or too quickly, after moving a cut-out, so that your fingers are in shot, as below! So always check the photos you've taken.



I had a couple in sequence like this, which means I'll have to delete them and the animation will look at little jerky at this point.




At this point the rabbit cut-out has changed - there's a smile on his face as he jumps down off the box - taking notice of what is being said/offered. I swapped in the middle tone b/white photo at this point.



By shot number 50 I'd swapped in the lightest tonal background photo (the tracing paper one) so that by the time I started to add in the colour acetates, the colour and lightened mood would show.



Obvious note: tripod legs are showing - will have to ask technician how I might improve this as I don't have a claw grip.

The two halves of the first coloured acetate layer are pushed in from the sides. This was far more tricky this time as the acetates moved the rabbit layer about a bit. I tried using tiny blobs of blu tac to keep things in place but still not easy.

By the time I wanted to add in another denser colour layer, I'd decided to drop it in from about. The trip legs cause a real problem when trying to slide in from the sides.



In the above photo you can see the coloured layer coming down from above. It's not necessarily ideal but... Maybe I'll just put the whole layer down instead of dropping it in frame by frame? You also get an annoying shimmering effect with all these acetate layers.

By shot number 94 all the coloured acetates were in place, more cut-outs were brought in as well as starting to introduce the wax and coloured crayons. By this stage it was really hard to move each piece about without disturbing other pieces and drove me quite nuts.....





It requires so much patience to make an animation in this way. If I blu tac the crayons to the acetate to keep them in place while I move the cut-outs, inveriably everything moves when I have to lift them off and move them again for the next shot.

I have no idea therefore how this experiment will turn out but it won't be that smooth, I know that!

By shot 137 I was taking the crayons out of shot ready for the text information boxes.



I had also, by this time, just about lost my temper with the whole thing. I need more space to work in and more professional help. It feels very amature and frustrating but we have to plug on. As I look through the photos I can see more with my fingers in shot! ahghgh!

I then took out all the speech bubbles and started to bring in the text boxes



These may need a border of some sort around them to make them stand out a bit more.

Again, it really wasn't easy to place these as the acetates kept moving about underneath them. I didn't want to use blu tac as it only made things worse before....




As you can see, the box is off centre and off kilter - will have to think of a better way for registration. I may also have to change the size of the text.




Note also that the text box fits in behind the rabbits....as you can still see the text itself. It's important that the information on screen is easily read, so if I put boxes around the edges I may need to move the rabbits behind, or, as mentioned before, put a tracing paper layer over the rabbits before adding the text boxes. Not sure how well it would stand out then.

When it came to the final box - the telephone number and website address, the text was indeed to big to fit the screen properly. This therefore needs to be reduced.

By this time, as you can see, I was competely fed up with the whole thing!



I'd removed the rabbits but the text could not be read unless I zoomed out more and then you could see the tripod legs and outside of paper shot. Not good. Still, this is a first full run trial using only about half the number of frames I will use for the finished piece. I've taken 170 odd shots for this one.

I also need to add organistion logos. It may be that I add a text box in Premier Pro to make it look a lot clearer, and readable, take the background completely out etc.

new bubbles, new text... size does matter...

24/4/10

redoing my speech bubbles in felt pen - bolder and stands out better than crayon...



To compliment these I want text boxes to appear near the end of the animation to advertise the sessions themselves, organisation, contact details etc.



However, this was nowhere near big enough to show up no the photographs (as they were being taken from a tripod/a distance so I had to re-do them a lot bigger. It's a hit and miss thing getting the size right so it's a case of trail and error.




Attempted to add colour to the black and white photo starting with the darkest photo first...then replacing it with the light one





remembering to draw registration marks at each corner so that the new replacement is in the right place. Brining the coloured actetates in from each side proved a lot more difficult though, because the tripod legs were in the way. This was very frustrating and means that the end result will not be as smooth as I'd have liked.





On the above photo you can see the overlap of acetates in order for them to fill the screen. This is because the shot in the frame from the tripod is smaller than the photo/area of the actual image and by the time the coloured halves of the acetates show on screen, then are actually overlapping in the middle. This means I may have to cut a bit out of the middle to make it smaller and push the coloured edges to the edge of the shot/to fit.

I overlaid the 2nd coloured acetate on top of the two halves because it was just too difficult to bring in another two from each side without the acetates slipping on each other. It's not the most satisfactory way of adding colour but all I can do with my limted skills at the moment!



Even this doesn't quite give the intense colour I was hoping for, but once the rabbits, coloured objects and text are on, it shouldn't be too much of an issue.

Storyboard update and background research

23/4/10

Time to update the storyboard thinking about text and sound....

Doing this again is allowing me to visualize the animation more thoroughly and think about when to introduce text, colour and sound.
The music needs to start of fairly simply but sombre and sad and gradually become more jaunty and upbeat (not overtaking the animation though, not overly loud). I then would like the sound of chidlren's happy voices laughing to appear - all of which fades out as the closing information titles appear at the end of the sequence.

I've been looking further into the following

Low tech animation: Folk Animation - Low Tech Art in the High Tech age
http://www.awn.com/mag/issue1.12articles/serpentelli1.12.html
This is an interesting article about getting messages over to children using
simple animation, as well as talking about watching children making art,
pointing out that contrary to them having short attention spans, when
engaing in art they are capable of sustained concentration. This therefore
underpins the importance of creative learning in children - art as a tool to
learning. Children tell stories with pictures as well as words, so links
between the two are developed and strenthened through creative arts sessions.

Parenting and skills for families/Suffolk Family Learning
www.suffolk.gov.uk/EducationAndLearning/CommunityLearningAndSkills.com
This outlines the opportunities for taster workshops and courses for parents
with a chance to: share experiences and views with others in a supportive and
confidential group; discuss ways of building positive relationships; explore
ways to build children's self-esteem and to learn new skills and build confid-
ence. Creative learning sessions on offer at Beccles LEAP centres combine
the child's art learning experience with the development of their relationship
with parents/carers, as well as giving both child and parent a chance to get to
know new people in the community.

the wonder of tracing paper....

23/4/10

using coloured acetates..... on original black and white photo was proving problematic



as you can see here, the colour hardly stands out at all....and so will not be effective enough to 'brighten' the mood of the animation once the action starts to take place, which is the whole idea.

POINT TO NOTE - the image here is the wrong way round - must remember this when scanning as opposed to photocopying. However, as it's only an experimental thing, it doesn't matter too much in this scan. I won't be using the scans in the final piece.

So... having done this before in a previous project, I photocopied the orginal photo background through tracing paper. This was OK but still a little too dark so I copied it again using a lighter setting and this was what I was after:-



Now I had to layer the coloured acetates over this 'lighter' image to see how they came out and if the colour would show up more strongly.




this became more successful as the full-colour layers were scanned in...




So, I will start off with the dark, original image, add the colour acetates for a few frames. I will then remove the dark image and transpose the lighter one, adding in the varying degrees of colour in stages. I will probably have to cut up the acetates in half and introduce the red and yellow colour from each side, right and left, trying not to disturbe the top layer acetate (the one with the rabbits on.. Good luck to me!