GIF stands for Graphic Interchange Format and were developed by
CompuServe way back in 1987, when personal computers were still in their
toddler phase.
A GIF is a series of images combined to make a short animated
picture. They are not the highest quality pictures you’ll see, with a palette of
just 256 colours. However they are popular as they are supported by most formats
and are popular for icons and basic graphics, such as the old “under
construction” pictures on webpages.
·Below is an example of a GIF.
·It’s not a good GIF.
·It’s not even funny.
·Once you’ve seen a cat do something “humorous” you’ve seen the
lot.
Rubbish isn’t it? That’s because
sound is an important part of animation. That’s not saying that you can’t make
a good animation without sound, but c’mon, it’s not 1920 in the local picture
house, watching a silent movie is it?
The clip was Beavis and
Butthead, a 90’s animation that revolved around two teenage boys laughing at
silly things. But without sound, their show was meaningless.
Sound plays an important
role in filming for many reasons, such as playing to the audience’s emotions,
adding suspense, fear etc.
Just imagine watching the movie jaws without
the famous “Dur Dur” sound effects. Well this is what a "slight" sound change can make...
Despite the increased popularity of CGI in animation with companies like
Pixar raking in millions of pounds from films such as Toy Story, Claymation is
still a popular method of animation.
Used since early last century, it has been the method of animation for
the academy award nominated Nick Park’s Aardman Animations which has produced
films like Wallace and Gromit and Chicken Run.
Models are made using materials such as plasticine, sometimes around
wire armature and filmed using stop-motion animation. It can be a lengthy
process filming a Claymation animation as there may be hundreds of frames to
make using many small movements of clay parts between takes. Below is an example of lip sync-ing, to co-incide with our lesson of face movements.
Claymation Lesson: The poem
A really enjoyable session
So I will set the scene
We looked at people’s feelings
And played with plasticine
We drew some happy faces
And then we drew some sad
I couldn’t draw confusion
Instead the face looked mad
Then there came the fun bit
The highlight of the day
We took our lovely pictures
And created them with clay!
Final Animation
Group Members: Roisin Stewart, Hannah Cummins, Rookshanara Khanum and myself.
For this animation the group had many meetings, spent
many hours, and had even more fallings out.
Initially, in the earlier, happier times, we quickly
decided on using plasticine models as it was something we was all either
familiar with or still enjoyed playing with. Zu3d was a given from the start as
it was a piece of technology we’d used in class very recently and all felt
capable of using.
We toyed with a
few ideas for the scientific concept before decided on the food chain (with a little ESDGC) which seemed a plausible
idea to make interested to our age group (key stage 2). Running through the
criteria we decided on job roles for each person that we thought suited each
person best. (We would later find out that job roles counted for nothing as we
all mucked in and did a bit of everything.)
The intention was to create a forest scene where the animals of the food chain were personified, given a character and interacted with a TV presenter, who would be speaking to them whilst actually explaining the food chain to the viewer. Like the characters, the forest set will be made of clay/plasticine to keep the look consistant.
After the first meeting my job was to write the script.
After using my immense brain power, I googled “food chain,” read up on in, and
had the equivalent knowledge that an eight year old has. I was ready to write.
The script penned followed the presenter/narrator taking in turns to speak to each of the characters in the food chain, in order of the energy transfer, then at the end, the food chain is summed up again to reiterate it to the viewers.
As I enjoy writing I had it done quickly, including all
the points we wanted to teach. The only issue was that we had to stick to
roughly four minutes and the script was the length of the yellow pages.
After cutting it down, we decided (unwisely) to record
it first on Audacity, taking on different roles and doing fairly silly voices.
This ran smoothly, we saved it and decided to match up the animation to it.
The animation caused us problems to begin with as we
decided to import the sound and match up mouth movements to the words. Bad
idea. After about 7 hours and a few
temper tantrums, we scrapped the idea and filmed first without sound.
The animation was quite enjoyable, yet very time
consuming, with the major issue being the lighting, which seemed to change in
the room so much I thought there was strobe lighting coming in from next doors
disco.
Two millennia later, we finished the clay animations
after swapping roles, so we’d all covered everything, from movement, to
computers, to directing. We re-did the sound on Zu3d’s sound engine and fitted
the script around the movement. We added the song "Four Seasons" by Vivaldi, which is popular and well used in scenes such as ours. We kept the song playing throughout the entire thing as the animation is so short, we didn't wanna disrupt the continuity.
Finally done, or so we thought, when we hit our biggest
problem, which was exporting it off the memory stick, to get a HTML code.
Simple process, but the computer were moving at snail’s pace and would not
download. We later found out it was a university wide problem and completed it
at home. If we were to do it again, I would use Zu3d, but simplify a lot of it. I would have a basic set with less colour which would put more emphasis on the characters. I would try to use less speech and put on subtitles to explain some of the concepts. The main change I would make would be to work in a smaller group, no more than two which would speed up the process due to a lack of arguements.
Overall, it was a bizarre mixture of frustration and
fun, silly voices, dirty nails, slow computers and head scratching, with a
healthy bit of learning in there too.
Diagrams and pictures have been used
in books, for clarifying, explaining, demonstrating or highlighting parts
of text in education for many years. Pictures are even used in
books without words for small children to begin to understand how books “work.”
However with technology developing at rapid rate, with more and more schools using
Apple technology, we have seen less use of books and more use of electronics
such as ipads .
Less of boring diagrams…
So with children become more and more
computer literate, teachers could produce simple animations in their planning
using the many apps available, rather than spend hours producing paper hand-outs
and the hours of their own or their TA’s time photocopying them.
Less paperwork…
Not only should animation be used as
it is the “newest” technology, it can also be very beneficial to learners,
especially to those who are young or have learning difficulties. Children who
may not be able to read, or struggle with attention may have difficulties
listening to a teacher-led activity on the board, but with a cartoon animation on the board, they may have their
Imagination captured and learn something, even when they think they are just “watching
a program.”
It is not just small children who benefit
from animation, for they can be used all through teaching and learning, such as
showing the way the blood pumps or the way molecules move (Ainsworth,
2008).
Therefore with its obvious
advantages, it seems likely that animation will be the way forward in an
educational setting.
The aim of
today's lesson was to make a magic lantern, using the limited resources
available such as boxes, card, sellotape and also an Ipad.
First of all let me explain what a magic
lantern is: A magic lantern is the more modern version of the magic lamp,
giving many updates such as five wishes as opposed to three, with the genie
being a Megan Fox-esq lady rather than a bearded man in tights. So OK maybe not….
The defunct Magic Lamp 2.0 (above)
A magic
lantern is an early version of a projector, using a light and a concave mirror
to project an image.
It hasn’t
always been used for entertainment; in the pas it has been used by magicians, con-men and
religious charlatans to trick people into seeing images such as ghosts and
moving objects….
How it works:
A magic
lantern consists of seven functional sections: the lamp, reflector, condensing
lens, lens tube, body, base, and smokestack. The lamp is the sole source
of illumination, which often came from burning oil or gas, a burning piece of
calcium, or later, electricity. The reflector reflects the light from
the lamp toward the condensing lens, which focuses the light onto the
slide being projected. The lens tube serves to magnify the illuminated
slide, so that projected images from 6 to 12 feet wide can be obtained. The body
is often made completely of metal, and houses all of the previous components
except the lens tube. The base lifts the magic lantern above the surface
of a table. This is important because the body will become intensely hot from
the illuminating lamp, and the base helps to prevent table burns. Finally, the smokestack
serves to vent the smoke coming from the lamp, so that the smoke doesn't
accumulate inside the lantern and put out the fire.
Hand-painted or photographic glass slides are inserted
horizontally between the condensing lens and lens tube, through metal runners
at top and bottom. A skilled projectionist can move them quickly, and if the
slides contain images of progressive motion, the projected image will appear to
move. Some slides can create complex, constantly moving displays, demonstrating
that the magic lantern is not simply a still image projector. (Thank
you Laura Hayes and John Howard Wyman)
In our first
foray into the making of animation equipment, I think we did a fairly good job,
considering we were equipped with the sort of things Blue Peter presenters use to make a
Tracy Island model. Using our limited instructions and very limited knowledge we put
together a rudimentary model, which was very much trial and error. The final
version, although not working as we wished, did show that the structure of the
magic lantern worked, and with more time, better equipment, more knowledge, more
detailed instructions, the right materials and better team members we are sure
that it would have worked like a dream.
Today
we were introduced to Chroma-keying which is the layering of green screens.
This is done to remove the white fuzz that often appears around actors in front
of a screen, such as on Flash Gordon.
300
was the first film that was filmed completely on green screen, with no location
filming.
To
ensure filming on green looks good you should use Chroma paint, or the correct
blue or green colours. If using material then it should be totally flat with no
creases which can cause shadow, which can also be caused by uneven lighting.
In
a group we attempted to film on Zu3D using basic green. Using a piece of green
felt draped over a flat brown piece of cardboard, we attempted to make the
surface as flat as possible so that we would not have any shadow. However, even
without a character on screen this proved difficult because of the light.
Firstly we was in a room with inconsistent lighting, with 8 room lights, some
on some off which threw the balance off. Secondly there was many people in the
room constantly moving which meant the light was constantly changing. This gave
the light on camera a sort of "jumpy snowing" effect. To counter this
we put a lid on top, thus blanking out the lights from above. As we could not
stop people moving behind we had to ensure that the camera did not move to
create a still as image as possible, whilst positioning ourselves in the same
position for every screen shot. When we thought we had a flat as possible back
we introduced a white horse which didn't blur too much. We then took away the
green background using the Zu3D function which left an almost plane black
background with minimal snowy effect.
In our last session we used Zu3D to film a short animation using
stop-motion. Our group, myself, Arfyn, Ceri and Andrew used toy cars and
figures to create a street traffic scene that had an out of control
skateboarder causing havoc on a street.
The intention was to have traffic moving up and down a busy street,
by using many cars moving on the road and disappearing in and out of the shot.
A skater was to be introduced into the road to make the cars swerve and take
the onscreen action from linear and smooth running into a very visual
experience with lots of movement.
However, the animation took longer than expected, it was very time
consuming and required many intricate small movements of the pieces to create
the effect of movement.
We found that a slight error or unexpected movement can cause a very
visual problem on screen. For example: If you are to pick up a piece of the
animation and put it down in the wrong place, it can be seen as “jumping” on
screen. We had to work out how many frames should be used per shot, the speed
to the action coinciding with the intricacies of each movement. Due to time constraints we did not finalise the sound, and this has shown in the final video.
Despite this, our initial difficulties were no more than expected for using a new piece of kit. Zu3D was fairly easy to use on screen, with its simple frame boxes and layers for sounds and effects.
After this first use I will be considering this for our final animation.
Using Zu3D we had an introduction to basic animation. Using
single frame pictures with minute difference played in sequence, these
individual pictures give the impression of movement.
To begin with I drew
a basic picture of an unfinished flower. This forms the basis of the rest of
the animation, as the picture is then copied from slide to slide. It is copied
identically in order that the picture remains consistent throughout the
animation, so that the flower doesn't seem to move or appear in a different
position.
After step 1, creating a basic picture, the next slide is
created as a copy of the last one, only adding slight details. For example
slide one would be a flower stem, which is copied onto slide two, with a petal
added. This is copied onto slide three with another petal added. This goes on
and on and building up a picture of a flower seeming to form. Although it
creates the impression of movement, they are all separate pictures, thus called
"stop motion animation" Other parts of the program where used, such
as playing the process backwards. This made the flower appear to grow, then
"ungrow" (for lack of a better word.) Backgrounds was added for aesthetic
purposes which like the flower, was copied to each one, however there was no
changes made to it, this consistency helped emphasised the flower's movement.
We exported it to Tiny Pic and copied it to here on blogger.
There are three
main types of animation used today: hand-drawing, computer generated and
stop-motion with each having a different visual effect. An example of
hand-drawing would be the classic Disney films such as Snow White, used in the
early days of film. The Computer generated method is more modern and used in
such films as Toy Story and Shrek.
Like
hand-drawing, stop-motion is not a modern technique and has been used as early
as 1906 in film, with the film Humorous
Phases of Funny Faces by the Edison Company in 1906. In basic terms
stop-motion is the method of using a series of frames that are slightly
different, connected together to give the impression of an inanimate object
moving. When making films or TV, the more popular methods of stop-motion
animation include silhouettes, models, puppets, cut-outs and clay.
An example of
stop motion is Nick Park’s “Wallace
and Gromit,” which were feature length films, made with plasticine and metal
armatures (a solid structure on which a weaker material is built around).
Rather than
explain what techniques and equipment are used, you can view a video by the Digital Arts Guild.
Despite working many underpaid hours in a cinema, I must say
that I am not exactly a cinema-going or an avid film-fan. The modern films I have
watched are few and far between, with the ones I watch being the ones that
really interest me, such as comic book films or dark/crude comedies (yes, this
is perfectly normal for a 32 year old man, don’t judge me!)
With this, I can’t exactly say I’ve seen many of the new
animated films, but I still admit to enjoying a few that I liked whilst growing
up, a particular favourite being “A nightmare before Christmas,”
and being the last one I watched a few days ago after reminiscing with my wife
(how grown up...) after too much cider.
The film is based on a poem wrote by the producer and
co-writer, Tim Burton, made by Disney production and released under their
Touchstone Pictures banner.
I won’t go into details about the plot as the fear would
cause any reader to have a heart attack, so I’ll explain instead that it was
animated using “stop motion animation” using puppets. These puppets were made
with detachable parts, such as having different heads with different
expressions.
