Pipe Dream 2

This is an amazing piece of animation which represents sound using balls hitting wires, tubes and instruments. I came across this video on youtube, while looking at the first version of this animation but I thought I'd talk about this one instead because it's so much better. The Synchronisation of the sound and the animation is bang on no mistake about that and the timing of the balls hitting the instruments is on point. Being a drummer this amazed me because when the balls are hitting the drums, the drum beat its producing is quite hard to pull off in real life, so the amount of work the animators mush of had to do just so they could make it look like the balls are actually producing the sound is intense.

I also like how they've used the environment because they start off just by showing you one part of the instruments and then panning you across to another part of the instruments, and then zooming out to show you everything playing at the same time. They've also try to make the animation look realistic by making the balls have the easing in/out effect on them when thy hit the drums and other instruments.      

Oskar Fischinger: Komposition in Blau 1935

Composition in Blue (excerpt) by Oskar Fischinger from CVM on Vimeo.

This stop animation is an abstract film which its movements are strictly synchronised with the music, so that you can visualise sound and give a different impression to the music. The film is about how a red cube slowly glides across the floor, but suddenly multiple red cubes are dancing around in various formations. Throughout the film the red cube gradually transforms in to a circular shape. The technique that corresponds the music withe the movements is actually called 'mickeymousing'.   This great piece of animation uses wooden cubes/ rectangles no bigger than a cigarette, some of them where painted and some of them where covered in fabric. Even though it's a stop animation it has a nice fluidity to it and it compliments the music well, for example when the music gets higher a block gets higher, or when the music increases so do the blocks.  

Song in Animation (copyright)

For my animation I chose a song which fits in with the tone of the animation, which is 'Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head' by B.J.Thomas. I realise that if I publish my animation to the public media I would have to get permission by the songwriter/musician that created the song, also if I used a cover of the song I would have to get permission from the person who did the cover and also again the songwriter/musician who created the song. Seen as though I'm not publishing my work to the public and that I'm just using it for educational purposes only it's okay to use the music I've chosen.

Finale Animaiton

For my final animation I've decided to choose the element of water but more precisely a raindrops journey when falling down from the clouds. I chose to do this because I found it interesting not to base my animation on characters but on a real moment in nature, just so thats it's different from everyone else's animation. Throughout the brief I've found it easy to animate but only when I've gotten into the momentum and figured out which layer in photoshop goes with which frame and thats not easy when you have 240 frames to go through.

Evaluation

Evaluation

For the classical elements brief I had to produce a twenty second animation on either water, fire, earth and air. I chose to create an animation about the journey of a raindrop. The things that I like about my animation are the fluidity of the movement of the raindrop, the tone/feel of the animation, which is happiness and way the music (‘Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head’ by B.J.Thomas) fits in well with the timing of the animation. I like these because the fluidity shows how much effort and time I’ve put in to the process, the music fits in well because when I was showing the animation to other people someone said that she liked the swooshing sound in the animation when the raindrop hits the leaves, but it was actually the music that made that sound. Also I made the tone/feeling of the animation happy because I’ve already done comedy for another animation and I didn’t really want to make a sad one this time, also the songs a bit cheerful as well.

However, some parts of my animation I don’t like and they are how when the raindrop is falling towards the camera it starts to get blurry. Also how the bird isn’t in the animation for that long and that you can’t see it when you get an overview of the raindrop falling, and I don’t like the way the camera zooms in on the frog at the end of the animation because it seems a bit shaky. These are because in the scene before the bird appears you should able to see it because your looking down and you can see what the raindrops going to hit, also I think that blurriness of the raindrop at the beginning has something to do with the way I drew it then expanded in so it looks like its coming towards you.

After analysing all of this and if I had to redo this project again I would change a couple of thing in my animation. One of the things I would change is the frog at the end by making it smaller and maybe changing the colour to black and white like the rest of the thing in my animation because I feel like the frog is stealing the focus from the raindrop as the main character. I would also change when the bird’s appearance begins in the animation just so that it’s accurate when you’re looking down at the raindrop. Something that I would change about the animation is the sound, what I would do is take out the music and replace that with some sound effects like droplet noises, swooshing sounds for the leaves and maybe put in a croaking noise in there for the frog as well at the end when he winks at you.          

     

After Final Crit Development

I've changed one bit in my animation and thats where that frogs tongue no longer just sticks out and waits for the raindrop to fall on it. Now the frogs tongue comes out catches the raindrop and goes back in.

I then had to put the final edit into After Effects and change it around, so I took out the old animation and placed in the new one. I did this so that I didn't have to redo the credits at the beginning and end.

Toy Story (1995)

Heading towards the digital age a new film came out which was the first feature length computer animated film by Pixar, this was Toy Story. This film is about a cowboy toy getting jealous that his kid as been given a new toy for his birthday, which is a space ranger.

John Lasseter was the directer of this film and was chosen by Disney to create a full length feature film after the success of his short film 'Tin Toy' (1988). Toy Story lead on to be the top grossing film on its opening weekend, and earned over £361 million pounds worldwide.

Some interesting things that the animators did in this film are that when the characters in the film blinked they didn't blink at the same time, and all of the car toys had a license plate stickers which said november 95 on them because that was the year the film came out.  

Luxo Jr. (1986)

Luxo Jr. is a two second animation created by John Lasseter, which is about how an older lamp called Luxo Sr. watches over while Luxo Jr. messes about with a ball, which he accidentally pops.

This animation was created for an annual computer animation exhibition called SIGGRAPH, and to show off how he used the shadow maps within the rendering software, and to show the 12 principles of animation even though the characters are made of metal/plastic like squash and stretch, secondary motion and character appeal.

This animation was so good that it lead on to be the logo for pixar and appears in every movie at the beginning.    

Tron (1982)

Tron directed by Steven Lisberger, is about a hacker/arcade owner how gets trapped inside one of his own games by a software pirate called Master Controle. In here he meets up with a guy called tron and they join forces to defeat the Master Controle in an infinitely challenging computer game.

Although this film was the beginning for computer animation and the first movie to extensively use 3-D computer graphics, it was a flop at the box office and was disqualified of winning an Academy Award for special effects because at the time the Academy thought that it was 'cheating' using the computer.

A fun fact about the movie is that to inspire the actors/actresses they placed arcade games on the production set and could be played during downtime. Also the name 'Tron' is actually a basic programmers command which means to 'TRace ON'.    

Snow White (1937) Vs Brave (2012)- Women in Animation

In these two animations done by Disney the main characters are both women but both of them are very different in opinions and attitudes. In Snow White the character doesn't turn out to be the true hero at the end of the film because she needs a prince to to come rescue her from her sleep, where as for the main character in Brave is the true hero because she sorts out her problems all by her self and doesn't need a man to come along and save/help her.

This shows a huge development in the animations Disney has produced throughout the years with female characters. They do this by showing in the newer animations that the female characters are more independent, smart, not just a pretty face and brave. Modernising a female character helps inspire the children more (especially the girls) to grow up to be intelligent, hard working and independent. And it only took them around 70 years to figure this out.

Praxinoscope 1876

In 1876 in inventor called Charles-Emile Reynaud a device called the 'Praxinoscope', which is like the Zoetrope, has a cylinder and inside it it has a strip of 12 images which when spun shows an animation. To see the animation you have to look at the mirrors inside the cylinder which reflects the 12 images to create to illusion of movement.

The name Praxinoscope actually came from two Greek words which are praxis, meaning action and the word scopein, meaning to look at.

Steamboat Willie

Steamboat Willie was created in 1928 by Walt Disney and was one of the first animations that had successfully synced sound with the animation, where as Fleischer Studios tried before but their animations kept going out of sync. This animation was considered to be the start of the characters Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse even though he appeared in an animation several months ago in 'Plane Crazy'.

For me this animation as inspired me think of simplicity in my animations and that it doesn't matter how much is on the screen but how the images tell the story.    

The Classical Elements: Final Crit

For the final crit we had to show our final animations to the class then analysis it together. With my animation people said that they liked the style of it because I only used straight lines using the lasso tool in photoshop, they also said that they liked the way the music (by B.J.Thomas 'Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head') fits the animation smoothly and creates the feel of happiness.

Some of the things that people said that I could change was that before the bird comes in to the animation were we're looking down at the trees and seeing the raindrop fall, that the bird should appear there as well so that it's on screen for longer. They also mentioned that the frogs tongue shouldn't be sticking out already because they don't do that in real life, and so I'll have to make the tongue come out the mouth then catch the raindrop and go back in again.  

After listening to the feedback I will go back and tweak my animation so that some of the things that have been said above will have been applied to my animation like the frogs tongue etc.  

Fantasmagorie (1908)

Fantasmagorie is known to be one of the earliest traditional animations, created by Emily Cohl a french animator. It's also mentions by historians as one of the first cartoon animation.

The animation consists of stick figures moving around objects that constantly morphs into something else, for example it'll go from a wine bottle to a flower. The animation also consists of live action where the animators hand entering frame to draw on the page.

The film is a tribute from the incoherent movement because of the many transformations. the title fantasmagorie is a reference to 'fantasmograph', a nineteen century variant of the magic lantern which had ghostly images that floated across the walls.

Matches an Appeal (1899)

This animation is known as one of the earliest animations made in 1899 by using the technique of stop animation. In this animation the matches join together to write on the black board, which promotes the appeal by Bryant and May match company to donate money to supply soldiers of the British. This animation was created by Arthur Melbourne-Cooper.