Evaluation

Overall, I feel that all three of us are very pleased with the outcome of our final animation, mainly because we did not believe at the beginning of the module that we would ever have the ability to create our own stop motion animation, based on the fact that for me personally, I barely knew what the word 'animation' actually meant. The work we have done since October has certainly, for me at least, made me realise that I am capable of things that I would never have imagined, and I wouldn't have had the opportunity to pursue those things if it wasn't for this module. We certainly worked well as a team and all found ourselves naturally falling in to three roles that suited us best without any arguing or confrontation which could potentially have had a negative effect on the final outcome of our project.

However, we did encounter some problems and limitations during the creation and development of our project. The biggest issue for us was trying to get the lighting right in order to capture all our frames as we had hoped to. One particular motion, which is at the begging of the animation, in which the moon comes down and across the screen caused us a lot of problems in the sense that we could not get the lighting to get darker to emphasise the transition between day and night in order to make the motion more visually effective. We tried adjusting our set up, covering windows and even covering the top of the backing set with a big black piece of card but the light would not adjust at all, therefore we simply carried on with the lighting as it was in the hope that the viewers would still understand the transition between day and night through the use of the sun and the moon in our animation.

We also encountered a problem with using clay in our animation, although this was only a minor issue as it only occurred towards the end of capturing our frames as a result of our flower growing so big that the weight of it was causing it to fall over. However, this issue was addressed promptly by creating a small wooden stand with a triangular base to place behind the biggest flower in order to support it which allowed us to take the final frames that we needed to complete our animation.

In reflecting on the presentation of our animation to the rest of our class, Mandy and Sue, we were all slightly disappointed at the quality of our video on the screen, however we were not the only group to have that problem. Although, Mandy promptly reassured us that it was simply due to the equipment that we had been provided with in order to create our animations and mainly as the video was being enlarged in order to fit the size of the interactive whiteboard screen in comparison to a computer screen which is what we had been using to create ours through Zu3D. Therefore we assumed that it would look as clear on the whiteboard as it did the screen but this was not the case, and we don't think it will have any negative reflection on the way people perceived our video as every group had the same issue, therefore people were understanding which was re-assuring.

In conclusion, even though there were problems, which have been highlighted above, during the development, completion and presentation of our animation project, over all I am certainly pleased with the final outcome and I thoroughly enjoyed all aspects of the project from beginning to end. However, if I were to do a similar project again the main issue to address for me would be lighting and setting as I feel that if it's continuously changing throughout the duration of an animation, unintentionally, it ruins the fluidity of the motions, as I noted in parts of ours. I would also push to have a longer time limit on the animation because although 2 minutes of video took hours and hours of work, I feel that given a longer time limit the content of the story could be developed a lot further allowing the main concepts behind it to be made a lot clearer to the viewing audience.

Life of a Flower - Final Production

Here is our final stop motion animation production.......

Applying sound to our stop motion animation

Once we had completed all the frames and put them all together to ensure there was a continuous flow it was time to think of a soundtrack to accompany the animation. This proved quite difficult at the time as other groups seemed to be doing the same thing and there were different songs being played left right and centre. However, as we were watching our animation a song popped in to my head and I instantly thought 'that would be perfect'. I converted it from Youtube,imported in to Zu3D and it just fitted perfectly - all three of us were so pleased with it straight away. We did have a bit of trouble cutting it down to the length of our animation as our cursor on the computer we were using had a little mind of it's own, but we finally got there. Here is the song that we chose, it's called 'Hoppípolla' by Sigur Rós. Here it is........

Filming process of our stop motion animation

As you can see here these are photos taken during our filming process.



After finalising our characters to use by adding a few bits and bobs such as a butterfly and a watering can we then began to film our animation. We decided to use Zu3D mainly because we had already had some experience in using it previously in the year and after trying a few other programmes available on the iPad Zu3D seemed to be a lot less complex to use. Mandy provided us with a camera to use and once we set ourselves up we assumed we would be on a roll as everyone else around us seemed to be. However, this certainly was not the case. We had trouble for a while with the lighting as we had set up directly in front of a window and as the sun was shining through so brightly, along with the fact that our set generally consisted of light colours, we could not see a thing through the camera. We overcame this problem by taping a big piece of black card up to the window to block some of the light. It was by no means perfect but we made a start anyway as we felt we did not want to waste time.

We progressed through the day, taking it in turns to take photos for each frame, moulding and re-shaping the clay until we finally felt that we had enough in order to complete our two minute video. When we finally had enough frames we couldn't quite believe how much work and effort goes in to such a short 2 minute clip. Coming towards the later frames however, as our clay flowers were getting bigger and bigger they became too heavy and would not stand up.This issue was quickly addressed by us making a 'make-shift' wooden stand hidden behind the flower to prevent it from following anymore. When we played all the frames through together to create our stop motion animation we were all very pleased with the result of the video as I don't think any of us were really knowing what to expect.

Storyboard for our animation

Before beginning to make a start on the set and characters of the animation we identified a structured story line to ensure that everything we would create and each frame we would take would all be relevant and related to the scientific concept that we were trying to get across and more so to prevent us going slightly off track of our idea.



The storyboard clearly shows that the aim of our stop motion animation was to demonstrate a step by step breakdown of the scientific concepts that occur in the life of a flower everyday. Through creating the storyboard we found the name of our animation which was going to be 'Life of a Flower' under the assumption that our original idea, supported by the use of this story board, would all go to plan and would work out the way we wanted it to. Our aim was to highlight factors that contribute to the life and growth of flowers such as sunlight, water, polan from bees and so on (See storyboard above for full breakdown).

Design Process for our Stop Motion Animation Project

When me, Rhiannon and Stacey first heard of the project and what we had to do we were all petrified because none of us felt that we were particularly creative enough to do such a thing and none of us had done anything of the sort before. Trying to think of ideas initially was really difficult because as you can imagine there are thousands of different messages you could portray through the use of stop motion animation and many different ways of doing so. However, on the first day of designing the animation I was unable to attend uni therefore Rhi and Stace carried on without me but continuted to text me and keep me in the loop all day about ideas and we shared suggestions on different ideas and little things to do. We finally agreed on creating a stop motion animation using clay and our story was to be about the life of a flower and how it grows and so on - something scientific and educational for children to learn in a fun way. Rhi got on and started to make the set and stace started creating our little clay characters which were flowers, seeds, the sun moon and so on. Here is a picture of them getting stuck in below :D:D.

The Importance of Sound

I actually missed the lesson on Wednesday due to illness, however after reading Rhiannon and Stacey's blogs I decided to do my own research into the importance of sound as I come from a very musical family and background I believe that the use of sound is so important in animation and in every other aspect of life and the effect it can have on people and their thoughts and attitudes towards everything is simply mind blowing. I can go from being completely happy to completely sad as a result of hearing a few seconds of the simplest sounds, and visa versa.

As quoted by Mandy on moodle, "The right music can help your animation flow, and sound effects can give your work a solid feeling that adds to the illusion of life." Mark Simon

I completely agree with the statement above and I believe that sound is so important. One example for me is that as I am petrified of watching horror movies or anything remotely scary, if I find myself in a position where I can't avoid it the first thing I always do is turn the sound to mute and instantly I am not scared any more.

A comment I found online reiterates the importance of sound again in which someone states by turning the sound of an animation off there will be a sense of boredom as the use of sound is so important in creating and completing the atmosphere and without it there would be no emotion - good or bad, happy or sad. (Peace o'Cake, 2014 - online)

Here's a video found online which highlights the complete effect of sound in animation!