Evaluation

Overall i am happy with my final piece. It was the first time i had done any animation so i enjoyed it quite alot. It gets tedeous at times but i think its good when a piece comes together. I think my soundtrack worked really well with the jerkyness of the film, as the pitch was always up and down and the camera was moving around, but the music was also very flowing and thats why i used the line running around the body. I tried to make it as if the music started when the hand opened and stopped when the othe hand closed, whilst in the middle the line was representing the flow and movement of the music. I had some problems with cutting it down to 30 seconds, the original one was longer with the sound track but i had to cut some frames to fit it in the 30 second barrier. Overall i am very happy with the outcome and will definatly take the skills i have used during this project and experiment in the future with more animation.  

Final Animation

This is my final animation with the sound track. Overall i am very pleased with it, apart from a few issues i had with cutting it down to 30 seconds.

Here it is.



Final Animation (Without Music)

This is the animation i have done to supercede the storyboard i drew up. This shall be my final idea as it is the best animation i have done that fits best with the music.

I was really impressed with the way it came out to be honest. I like the jerkyness thats why i chose to do stop motion. I shall now go and put my soundtrack to it and fit it accordingly.

Final Animation Storyboard

This is the first section of my storyboard. It starts with a hand that turns around and opens, Then a black spot appears and a line starts to protrude out of it. By the last frame on this page the line has wrapped itself around the finger and the camera has moved to a lowwer angle to capture it.

This is the second section of my storyboard. By this point the line has travelled up the arm and onto the neck and face. In the last frame on this page the camera has taken an airel view to capture the line going in one side of the mouth and out the other.

This is the third and final section of my storyboard. Here the line has travelled out of the other side of the mouth and down towards the hand. In the final frame the line has finish in a black spot like it started an the hand is closed. The camera repeats the angle from the beggining but on the other hand.

PES

PES is an animator that uses stop motion. In this clip he utilises household objects as if they were food. I really like the fluid motion that he achieves in his work and the bright colours hes uses, especially in this clip. He has gave me insight into alot of different camera angles i can use so i shall go forth and put them into practise. 

Paper Ball Experiment

This is my storyboard put into action. I only wanted it to be a short experiment but I realised near enough as soon as i started that this was going to need alot more frames than i had planned in my storyboard.

I ignored it and tried it out anyway.

Dispite the 'Stop Motion Pro' watermark that cannot be removed as i am using a trial version, i think it turned out great. I was really proud as it was only my 4th piece of animation in my life. Apart from the lack of frames on my storyboard, it and the final animation are very similar and the way i captured it hard a strong resemblence to the way i planned it.

Overall it took nearly 300 frames and alot of patience but i a very happy with the way it turned out and cant wait to try my soundtrack with it.

Storyboard

After experimenting with stop motion i started to think about my sound track. I have been given:
 02 Bach (JS)_ Goldberg Variations, BWV 988 - 01. Variation 1.
The previous experiments that i have done do not really work with this track. The music is very flowing and moves up and down but yet still remains very fluid, so i thought to myself what else is fluid, water? But water is also fast and would be hard to capture with stop motion. Then i started to think even more simple, and i came up with a line. A black line that draws smooth, fluid curves just like the music.
A close friend of mine did a piece of stop motion a couple of years ago of a screwed up paper ball. It was only simple but i really liked it. I liked the jerky movement as it rolled around on the floor and it obviously stuck in my mind because it was one of the first things to pop in my head when i was thinking about stop motion.
I decided that i was going to use his idea with the paper ball but expand it with my own addition.
Heres my storyboard of what it should look like.

Here is the paper ball rolling around a little then stopping and starting to open itself up. The camera will be behind it, following it.

Here it finishes opening and ends up a flat piece of paper then a black spot appears on it. towards the last two frames here the camera moves back and up onto a small tripod so it can capture the whole shot. A line starts to protrude out of the black spot.

Here the line has curved out of the spot and off the paper onto a white surface. The camera moves back, still on the tripod and the line continues towards it. The camera then continues to move to keep it all in shot as the line diverts itself away from the camera and starts swirling towards the wall. The line then goes up onto the wall and starts to write some letters while the camera moves in on it.

The line then continues to spell out 'stop motion' on the wall and the camera stays stationary. On frame 23 the camera moves right in on the letter 'n' and follows the line as it continues off the 'n' and back onto the white surface.

These are the last 3 frames. The line finishes off in a black spot like it started and the camera is moved back out to capture the whole piece. The last two frames are repeated so the image can be clearly viewed.

Now its time to try and capture this animation on camera.