Evaluation

What could be improved: looking back over my final outcome there are still some parts I would like to change, e.g. I had to alternate the storyboard of the piece because the main character and the crowds were photographed separately, so I couldn't used the view of looking out from behind the clown on the stage, as the seats would have been empty.

Due to timing, finding a time to photograph this was very limited (AS/A-Level drama and dance exams were on)and I had to fit shooting into a lunch time, a break time and periods 3&4, and unfortunately this meant the drama students weren't available to be the audience in this animation, and hence why I changed the storyboard.

Also, I felt it was unnecessary to shoot the character from outside the theatre (entering and exiting) as it worked better with the shooting solely in the theatre, as the storyline is easier to understand as it's all in one place.

My final criticism of the animation is that there are some parts in it which I would like to slow down the frames per second (FPS) i.e. when the crowd is filling up, clapping or when the face paint is being applied. However, Flash will only let me set one frame rate for the whole animation.

Despite the negatives, I feel this is a creative response to my stories task idea and I feel I have improved from my exam final piece, as this animation was a lot harder to shoot and there were a lot more jobs and people to find and organise it all than the last piece (as it was mostly done at home with myself as the character.)

How To: Flash Animation

This is a small guide to how to make a basic flash animation. *Note to upload it to youtube, click 'file', 'export', quicktime '.mov' file.

Copy and paste this into the address bar:
https://acrobat.com/#d=Y0hu*qAKqX5VK1Yr95p5Tg

Test Shoots

These two videos were done to test if the theatre was suitable to photograph an animation in:

1. The problems faced with this part of the animation was the lighting. If the lighting was too dark the shutter speed would lower, and if the main character moved in that time the shots would become blurred. However, if I used flash the character would be well lit up, however the background would appear black and the whole atmosphere would be gone.



2. The Crowd, the problem I faced with this was if the group sat on the seats closest to the floor the lighting was too dark, however, I moved them up to the top of the theatre where it is much lighter. In the final product I would like a compromise between the two (not too dark, but not as light as the video below)

Experimenting with clothes

Now that I have my final outcome idea (refer to sketch book) one of the elements in the animation I am needing to experiment with is the changing of clothes on the main character, without having one frame with one set of clothes then the next frame with another.

Here is my first animation experimenting with something small (glasses) and seeing how I can change them (the usual applies with the video, the right hand side has been cut off and the animation has been cut short, the character is meant to go completely off frame



Clothes Experiment 2#
This time round I wanted to experiment with most of the items of clothing I could find around the house. One criticism of the animation is the fps (frames per second) it's possibly too fast to take in everything that happens first time round. In my final piece I will have to consider slowing down and speeding up curtain sequences so that the viewer finds it easier to digest.

More Research...

My final piece wont be as complex as this, however, I want it to be as creative as this animator's work, with this in mind I will put together a storyboard for the final animation (sketch book)

Experiment With Stop Motion 2#

The problems I faced with this animation was the fact that I had to animate multiple objects all in one photo and fitting them into the jar without any blue tac (so they kept falling out.

I also thought on the spot to move the jar out of frame to then prop it up, because it would have been impossible to do it in frame without string. In the future, to anticipate problems, a storyboard would be useful to follow and it shows I've thought about the problems that my occur. Plus the animation would run smoother because you know what is going to happen in the animation.

Research: Her Morning Elegance

After my exam blog, where I looked at such animations as "Neighbours" and "Sledgehammer" I came across this animation where multiple objects are used in each frame, I want to incorporate this into my next experiment.