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.