Zombie Animating

Once I had finished drawing out all of the concepts for my character I was given a piece of paper with silhouettes of a fast running animation which I then drew over on Photoshop to create my own version of it. i created five separate zombies that were running with slight adjustments to the hands, arms and back to make him look alive. I also put a fair bit of detail into his eye that was hanging out which moved up and down and created a bit of humour.

I then lined them all up on the animation tab in Photoshop and made sure that it ran smoothly, this took some adjusting as I had to find the correct speed between each frame to make it look natural. To achieve this I ended up setting the time between frames to 0.1 seconds which gave a very smooth transition between the frames. I also ended up taking away the fifth zombie on the silhouette board as it was exactly the same as the first zombie so it made up a image which lasted for 0.2 seconds and made it look odd, after taking it away it ran smoothly.

I then created a moving zombie that went across the screen which was set to the dimensions of 1920 x 1080 pixels which represents HD 1080p. I had to use the four frames that I had created and repeat them over and over moving the zombie form one side to the other in small minute movements so it glided smoothly across the page.

After I had done this it was time to create a back ground for my zombie to run on, this was very interesting to do as we would have to create five separate layers so that we could make each of the layers move differently which created a very interesting sense of speed and movement. I decided to go for the classic freaky graveyard setting which goes well with zombies and the horror genre in general. My front layer is composed of mounds of dirt which the zombie will be running along; the second layer is made up of a mixture of gravestones which are coloured in a light grey as they are closest to the front; the second layer is made up of gravestones yet again but these are of different sizes and locations whilst being coloured in a darker grey as they are further back in the shot; the fourth layer is made up of your classic spooky dead trees which are coloured a very dark brown to the extent where they are nearly pure black as they are very far away; my last layer has a moon on it which wont be moving at all because in reality the moon stays where it is.

I then took it into photoshop and was told to design it digitally in the style of my choice on a layer 1080 pixels high by 7068 pixels wide so that we could have enough room to move the layers when we come to animating. The very front layer is grass that my zombie will be running, for this I simply used the brush which has three blades of grass on and made an entire layers worth of it then used filters on it till it became cartoon looking. The second layer consists of some rounded gravestones which I found on the internet and then cut them out using the magic wand tool then put some brush filters on it too give it a very nice look. Behind this layer I got some cross gravestones on a base which I again cut out and put effects on but to make it look as if it was further back I had to change the colour to a darker shade. I then created a tree which I traced from a picture and put a filter on it which looked like bark and gave it a very nice contrast, I then copied the one tree and pasted it and made it different sizes all over the layer. After that I created a moon in a cartoon style and put a plastic filter on top to give it a slight reflective look whilst keeping the cartoon tone. Behind this layer is the final layer which is simply a layer filled in with black.

After I had done this my friend Scott helped me create a video in Adobe After Effects which I found very confusing but it was also very interesting as I didn't know how to work it. It involved creating lots of pre-compositions, creating time markings and different values to animate the background. To animate the layers we set them to smaller increments so the layers in the back would move slowly and the front layers would move faster. To animate the zombie we simply imported the psd files and copied them and repeated them over and over and made them move by using the time markings.

Zombie Character Design

The brief for this lesson was to get into groups and select one of the films we had done in one of out previous projects and draw characters from it as we knew a fair bit about the chosen films. The group we had created chose to do the film 'Plague of the Zombies' and each took to the challenge of creating our own characters from scratch. I found a zombie on-line that I liked to look of so I used it for inspiration and tried a few different things to change him into my own character.

We then had to create different views of out character so that we we animated him we would know what he would look like. Here is what I came up with.

Lovespin

This is one of the most interesting videos I have ever seen in terms of animation as it just seems so perfect and nothing is wrong with it, everything just magically evolves into something different without looking out of place or being noticeable. The entire thing is on a turn table which is constantly spinning at a steady pace whilst everything on the world of the turn table evolves. As it spins the objects on the turn table begin to change as they go out of view they come back as something different, it is also very good to look at as the objects themselves don't move at all but you seem to think they are just because of the spinning.

My opinion on the storyline of this animation is that the man (blue) is looking for love throughout the animation and this for him is obviously a struggle. It goes through a variety of scenery including things such as the countryside, urban areas and town centres. At the end of the video it is clear that he has found his partner who is the red person as they both settle down on the plant. I also noticed that the beginning and end scenes are different as the plants starts of not bloomed and by the end it has fully bloomed.

Bringing the Limerick to life!

As a group spent the next couple of sessions carrying on creating and cutting out assets and creating the characters for our animation we were creating - 'There was a Young Lady of Niger".

We finished of the main background which was a jungle setting where the tiger and the lady explore through, this consisted of trees, vines and other specimens of plants drawn onto a sheet of paper. we then cut the out and stuck the top and bottom of the paper to a green sheet of card so that we could place things behind it freely. We also had to make the setting for the inside  of a stomach for when the lady gets eaten by the tiger, we created it in the same way as the jungle setting. We created a wave on green paper and cut it out so that it would represent rising acid levels inside of the stomach. We then cut out a circle and overlayed it onto some some red card which represent the inside of the stomach then glued it down except for the bottom part so we could then raise up the green waves we had created to engulf the woman inside.

To film the animation we used iStopmotion, after we had done this we would the export it to final cut. We added credits to the end of the animation using cut out letters which spelt out each of our names for a mess of letters, I thought this was a great idea as it had the same style and feel that the rest of the animation has. Scott did some voice overs for the animation so he sort of became the narrator for the project, he edited the sound track he had created so that it was in time with the speed of the animation and it worked out very well.

GROUP 3 LIMERICK CUTOUT ANIMATION FINAL from Long Road Applied Media Diploma on Vimeo.

I am very pleased with how the project worked out as I had never done anything like it before so I enjoyed all of it. The team I worked with was great as we just got on with everything and there was no hassle involved. I think that the animation itself could of been a bit more smooth but it still looks great.

Limerick Exercise - Cutout Video

We were shown a video of a limerick created by students who once attended Long Road and were told that we would be crating our own stop animation video. There were 10 limericks to choose from and we were also in groups of around four, each group selected the limerick they liked then had to figure out how the would portray it, we chose the following limerick:

"There was a young lady of Niger

Who smiled as she rod on a tiger;

They returned from the ride

With the lady inside,

And the smile on the face of the tiger."

Our group decided it would be best to allocate people to do specific roles so we could spread out all of the work and people could do what they were best at. I was chosen to do the drawing of the tiger and the lady as the group felt I was the best drawer; Doug and Holly created the background and researched in depth about what jungles and rainforests looked like and incorporated them together; Scott was chosen to create the story board and had to brainstorm with the three of us to decide what we would do frame by frame.

Character Animation

Lemon Jelly

Lemon Jelly - The shouty track is done by using animation in the style of a flip book. It has the same principle of animation as the drawings in it are animated, something that I think works really well is where they have thought about what animation was needed for each part of the song. These are then repeated for the chorus, from the simple animation you start with to get the rhythm of the song going and it stays in your mind. The name of the track certainly works with what you hear, the animation inside is also just as bonkers as the music as it is all so random. Monsters are randomly beating each other up and causing havoc but it is so well done.

Sumo Science

Sumo Science are specialists in animation and work together to create fresh new animations unlike anything you have seen before. Ed Patterson & Will Studd make up the team of two represented by Aardman Animations. They have used many different styles of stop-motion, 2D, live-action and Puppetry. They have worked with a variety of companies to make commercials which include Hellmans, Innocent Orange Juice, Weetos, P & O, Johnson's Baby Wipes and most recently Nokia with their Gulp animation.

The inspiration for Gulp came from their previous work on Dot which was also mad whilst working with Nokia. Dot was the smallest stop motion character as she was only 9mm tall, the film won a Guinness world record as well as 15 major advertising awards. The brief behind Dot was to celebrate Nokia's new phone and cell scope however knowing they couldn't animate blood cells they came up with the idea of Dot. For an animation of a minute and a half they were making 4 seconds a day which was a very tedious process and the video got 3 million hits on Youtube.

This then lead onto Gulp which was the worlds largest stop-motion animation ever created with the largest scene being over 11,000 square feet filmed on location in Pendine Beach, South Wales.The film has had rapid success online, just like Dot it was also filmed on the Nokia N8. In Dot they used a 3D print to create all the character models whereas in Gulp it was easier to use a real person for their fisherman and moved each joint like a puppet. The story of Gulp was about fisherman who catches a fish he then becomes the bait for a larger fish and sets off a chain reaction. It was shot for 5 entire days outside with the help of a large team of animation graduates. To produce 20 seconds of animation took about 16 hours. The set of stills play back at 25 frames per second to show the motion.

Jan Svankmjer

Jan Svankmjer is known as one of the world's best animators. He was born in Prague in 1934 and still lives today. He done all his training in Prague during the 1950's at a institute of Applied Arts and an Academy of Performing Arts. Creating his first film in 1964, he is responsible for some of the most memorable and unique animated films available. A lot of his films usually involve objects coming to life, he uses stop-motion on many of the objects and they are made out of clay as seen in his animation below.

To me this is one of the strangest things I have ever watched as everything is random and doesn't make any sense at all but it is so well done you just sit there and watch it trying to figure out how it is all happening.

In the majority of his work he uses Stop motion along side with live action, these pieces include Alice made which was made in 1988 which was his first feature-length film. This won the feature film award at the 1989 Annecy International Animated film festival. He often uses fast-motion sequences when people are walking and interacting but one of his trademarks are his exaggerated sounds. Although much of his work is made from a kids perspective such as Down to the Cellar they sometimes have a weird disturbing feel to them and are usualy in an aggressive manner. His latest work was in 2010 called Surviving Life but his next project is set for release in 2015.

BLU Artist Research

Blu is an artist that has travelled all over the world creating works of arts that have a point to them, working with spray paint on small murals all the way up to creating huge images on the sides of building or wherever he deems fit. He typically tries to conceal his identity from every one as much as possible and trys to be a shadowy figure just like Banksy as he would rather get on with his art, rather then go to huge exhibitions he would prefer to go to other territories.

Blu's fame was first found in 1999 after he had created a series of illicit graffiti which he had painted in the historical centre and suburbs of Bologna which was the capital of Italy's Emilia-Romagna region. In the early years of his career he was simply limited it spray paint which is why he appeared in the graffiti culture. However in 2001 he started to use house paint, using rollers which he had applied to telescopic sticks which aloud him to reach a much bigger area to paint on. With the ability to do this he started to create human figures which emitted a range of emotions and looked as if they were from a cartoon or video game.

Blu has travelled all around the world to places such as: Central and South America, West Bank, England, Spain, Germany, Italy and other parts of Eastern Europe. He has created murals in all of these country's to do with things such as plantation workers not being treated properly and creates a point out of art which people can then relate too.

This shows you where he has visited and what he has accomplished in each of the places.

Character Loop - Ideas and Design

We were told to come up with some ideas for a character that we would eventually animate, we were given a sheet of A3 paper and let our imaginations go wild. However I missed the lesson so I had to come up with a few ideas quick and came up with a few:

A ghost with huge eyes and a sad mouth as he is dead and not happy about it. I would animate the legs that sort of look like tentacles to move about slightly and possibly had dribble slurp up and down from his mouth as he looks quite cute and cartoon like.

A space invader sort of shape with strange eyes and a small mouth. I would animate this character by having his mouth get bigger then shrink back down whilst he changed through a variety of colours.

A face with buck teeth and huge blood shot eyes. I would animate this character by having the blood vessels enlarge and shrink whilst his pupils moved around and he twitched his nose every now and then.

A rabbit with huge spoon like ears and two huge buck teeth. I would animate this character by having his ears sway from side to side slightly and one would twitch every now and then and he would also scratch the side of his body to indicate he has fleas.

A bird with unproportioned body parts such as Huge eyes, Huge beak and small wings and legs to make it slightly cartoon looking. I would animate this character by having his wings flap really fast as they are smaller than his body so need to keep him a float, his feet would tuck up and down into his body as he flew, his eyes would also look around to see what was going on.

After looking at the pictures for a while I had decided to animate the ghost as I thought I would enjoy it the most and decided to make some changes to one of his eyes and make it bigger and the other smaller to give him a cute kind of look and make him slightly rounded and squashed rather than have him long and thin.

His eye sockets would remain blank throughout every scene as he is a ghost. His legs which are small tentacles will sway from side to side to make it look like he is moving or hovering within the air. I also selected 16 colours and decided on three to use which I thought would look best and applied them onto my character, I eventually decided to go for the green I had selected as I thought that it looked the best and is personally my favourite colour.

After this we were given a a booklet to lay out the frames for our character just like the bouncing ball task. I created 13 frames that would loop together with his legs swaying from the outside to the inside and the dribble hanging down his mouth the being sucked back up to give the impression he is a cute little ghost.

Bouncing Ball Animation

I was given a sheet which explained the ball animation and how to do it step by step. There are specific frames which are detailed for specific reasons as they are key frames such as when the ball is at its peak in the air or when it has impacted onto the ground. We had to draw these out 1st on a small sheet of paper and have a line along the bottom to act as the floor and this was the guide to line each frame up as well. We copied the main frames 1st then started to fill in the rest of the shot for the ball, these mainly consisted of the ball falling down and then bouncing up again slowly losing its momentum until it had gradually stopped and stayed still.

One we had all of these frames onto our small booklet we then took a screen shot of every page using iStopmotion and a digital camera connected up to the mac. I blue tacked the back of my pad of paper so that when I turned over the pages the pad would not move so the line would stay in the same place and create a smooth flow throughout the process. However a few of my shot at the end got blurry and I couldn't focus the camera for some reason so I tried to make them look as good as possible but I still think it looks quite good despite the blur.

Once we had each of these we then had import it into Final Cut and create a small animation out of it however the clip only lasted for about 4 seconds so we had to copy the clip and repeat it a few times to give the video some length.

Stop Animation Sound Exercise

Today we combined our iStopmotion video and sound where we used coins that were inside a tupperwear box. The lid was slowly removed and the box would then slowly falls over onto one side and the coins would then pour out of it, they would then spread out around the box and then reverse the process and go back into the box with one coin left and then the lid to the box creates a ramp for the last coin to roll up and after it has fallen into the box the lid secures itself back to the box again.

The sound effects were recorded directly into final cut using the voice over tool. We did a variety of sounds such as tipping the coins out of the box, scraping a coin along the table for the sound effect of the coin rolling up the lid, the snap sound when the box flaps open and close. We then combined the two together and slowly pieced the parts of sound together that we needed to create our animation clip.