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!

My animation - Zu3D

This is the video that I created using Zu3D. It's very basic and not particularly good, this session was created to allow us to get familiar with using Zu3D and to allow us time to explore all the different tools available. I did find it quite frustrating to use at first, but I'm sure that it's just a case of being new to the programme and needing to familiarise myself with it. Although I found it quite frustrating, I am looking forward to hopefully using Zu3D again in order to develop my skills on there to create animatons that are fun to watch as well as educational.

How effective is animation for learning?

Created with Padlet

Phenakistoscope

A phenakistoscope is a spinning disk that is divided in to sections (this is variable) and a photo is drawn on to each section. Each photo follows on from the previous one however it moves slightly, similar principal to making clay animation I guess, in order to promote an illusion of motion. The creator then spins the disk whilst looking at its reflection ib a mirror through the splits created in order to create the effect of a continuous motion.

We then went on to make our own. We decided to keep it quite simple as we had never done one before and some of the ideas the popped up on google were very difficult. So, as shown below, we created a disk with photos of ballons which would create the illusion of the ballon flying away. It was difficult to get each ballon looking exactly the same shape as the previous one and we were unsure of how much to actually move the ballown up for the next section although we gave it our best shot. We were please with how it turned out although when we tested it through the use of a mirror, me Stacey and Rhiannon all agreed that it was very difficult the get the right angle looking at the reflection in order to see the motion effectively. Never the less we all enjoyed doing it and it was so hands on and allowed us to just get stuck in!!



Here is also a video of the illusion that can potentially be created through the use of a Phenakistoscope that I found on YouTube.

Thaumatrope

In this lesson Mandy introduced to us what a thaumatrope was and then we had the chance to make our own. The basic principal of a thaumatrope is that by drawing similar photos on either side of a round piece of card, and then spinning it once complete would create the visual effect of a moving object or a physical motion - the photo would change in some way. It was simple to make once I had the idea although I did struggle, as well as many others in the classroom, with getting the positioning of the string either side of the card right in order to ensure that the thaumatrope would spin effectively.

Claymation

Claymation can be explained, in its simplest terms, as of the use of creating models out of clay, and moving them slightly whilst taking still photos and then sequencing them together in order to make it look like one continuous movement. Famous examples are productions such as Wallace and Grommit and Pingu.

There is a definition I found on-line that describes a Claymation production as "artists sculpt the characters out of clay and often support the sculpture with wire moulds underneath. To create the illusion of movement, the position of the sculpted characters is altered slightly in every still photo, or frame. Just like other forms of animation, claymation generally requires a storyboard or background for the characters to be set against and to develop what they will do or say" (http://www.wisegeek.org/what-is-claymation.htm)

The Last Animation I Watched

The last animation I watched was Despicable Me 2. I absolutely love both the films I think they are hilarious and the minions are to die for. The second film is basically about Gru (the guy with the big nose) who has changed from being a crook to a good person since the first film, being asked to undercover to try and detect another crook by some 'anti-vilan' company. But basically by doing so he needs to become mean again and also, of course, he falls in love and at the end of the film he has to save the love of life and then they marry and live happily ever after :D:D:D

BETT Show

So we went to the BETT show in London this week which was a really cool experience. I was slightly over whelmed when we got in there though as I was unsure of what I was looking for really. However, me Stacey and Rhiannon did have a good wander around and tried out some of the amazing things they had around. The amount of different interactive whiteboards available is unbelievable. Here are just a few photos of the conference, and the little Robot below blew my mind as the lady in the photo made it stand, walk and sit back down. Unfortunately the video I took of it has been lost since but it was absolutely amazing!!! Over all, it was a lot to take in up there but I enjoyed none the less :D.

My scratch animation

So today I made my own scratch animation after becoming a lot more familiar with the programme. It did take a while as I used two sprites- the ghost and the dove - and they had to have separate coding and instructions but I had to make sure they still worked together.

I couldn't embed my game on to this blog for some reason, which was particularly frustrating, so this is a screenshot of my game and the link below will take you to the Scratch Website where my game can actually be played.

http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/16316027/

The player is the ghost and the aim of the game is to catch the dove. By clicks the green flag the game begins and the dove begins to move.

In order to move and control the ghost in an attempt to catch the dove, the player needs to use the four arrow buttons on the keyboard to navigate themselves.

I added some message animations in which in the ghost says 'Hello' when he gets so close to the dove, and also sound animations which I coded to get louder and louder and the dove got closer to the front of the screen. I also adjusted the size of the dove to make it look like it was coming closer and closer.

I feel that through increasing the size of the dove along with increasing the volume on the noise made by the dove it looked quite effective. However, I don't feel I did such a good with the ghost and if I had more time I would have worked on the ghost sprite a lot more.

Overall, I really did enjoy making this scratch animation, so much so that I came home and showed my mother, who is an Assistant Deputy Headteacher in a local primary, what I had created because I was proud of it and didn't know I was capable of creating such things.