Animation Assignment

Cel based animation

Cel based animation is when you have multiple images on different plastic slides. The plastic slides were transparent sheets of plastic so that you could draw images on the different sheets and the other slides would not be messed with. So if you had the background on one side and a character on another then you can change what the character does without effecting anything else. This is a very classic way of making animation but now that you have computers that do all the animating for the major companies like Disney have stopped using it.

Cutout Animation

Cutout animation is a technique where you get images of what ever you want, cut them out and use them as your characters/props. This is another way of making animation. Similar to Cel based animation you only have to move the bits you want to and you can change certain bits without having to change the whole scene. But it does look a bit different to normal animations that are made with paint/drawings.

South park is a perfect example of Cutout animation as the first couple of episodes were just pictures that had been scanned into a computer and all the different frames were put together to make a moving cutout animation.

Model-Based animation

Model based animation is most commonly made out of Plasticine and some of the most popular animations are made out of this method. For instance Wallace and Gromit is a well known animation that is made from Plasticine and took years to make just one episode.

The picture below is a model i made out of different colours of Plasticine. I did this by making a human like shape and giving it certain characteristics. The one thing that you have to think about when making these is that if you want to make it stand up, you will have to make the legs a certain size so that it can support itself otherwise it will just fall over.

Pixilation Animation

Pixilation animation is made by using live actors that change their movement the tiniest bit with each frame. A example of this is "neighbours by Norman McLaren which was made in 1952, the narrative was that two people who live next too each other get on really well but when a nice flower grows in the middle of each others house, they start fighting over who should get it but eventually killing the flower. 

Time lapse animation

Time lapse animation is a technique that when you take a series of photographs in the same location for a long time, and when you looks back to the clips and play it at normal speed time moves faster. The most common thing time lapse is used for is nature photography as for example if you make a time lapse of the sky from night till morning you will get to see the whole process in minuets.

Persistance of vision 

Persistence of vision is when you mind tricks you into seeing things when it it moving at a certain pace. Videos are made up of moving pictures that have on average 25 frames per second  which trick you mind into thinking that the pictures are moving.





This image is of a victorian zoestrope which has multiple pictures on the inside of the cylinder whilst you look through the little slots which tricks your mind into thinking that the pictures are moving.

This is a kinetoscope and what is once you look through it you would see photographic images and would look like it was moving.

 The mutoscope is a device where series of pictures are flicked by a metal rod and viewed by the person who watches it. Because the images are being flicked really fast it tricks the eye into thinking the pictures are moving.

Trip to the moon was one of the first animated films made. It was made in france in 1902 and most of the time they did not move the background, instead they just made sets for the background and when they wanted to change scenes they would just move the background. It was also the first time that anyone had used the jump edit, they used the jump edit to put the rocket into the moons fac

Walt disney

Walt Disney was and still is one of the most famous animators of all time with a company still worth 5 billion dollars. "Snow white and the seven dwarfs" was Disney's first animated film in 1937 and was made using cel-based animation. A couple of years after snow white was made, the second world war had started. Most of Disney's staff had been contracted into making instructional videos for the military and any other videos that would boost moral support to the rest of the home front. One of the most popular animations about the war was Walt Disney's "Der Fuehrer's Face" which was an episode where Donald duck has a dream that he is working for the Nazis. This won an academy award, but if this was shown today it would probably offend people. After the war, Cinderella came out which was Disney's most popular film since Snow white and it had made fortunes. After years of making films, in 1966 Walt Disney became ill with lung cancer and eventually died from it, but even years after his death Disney is still earning millions of each film.

Georges Melies

Georges Melies was a french film maker that created the film " A trip too the moon. This was a really successful film as he filmed in on a cinematograph which had never been scene before. This involved multiple photographs flicking at a constant speed to trick your eyes into thinking that the pictures are moving. But rather than using drawings he used real people.

Winsor McCay

Some people say that Winsor McCay was the creator of animation as his first big creation was a dinosaur that he drew on sheets of rice paper.
                                                           

                                                         
       

Chuck Jones

Chuck Jones is a very famous animator as he has created loads of different characters like bugs bunny, daffy duck, roadrunner and many more. He had a career at Warner brothers and eventually ended it in 1962. He then started working at Sib Tower 12 Productions which he started making more well known characters like Tom and Jerry.

Max Fleischer 

Max Fleischer was also the creator of many characters like Betty Boop and Pop eye. He had his own studio called Fleischer studio in New York city.

Hanna Barbera

The two main people involved called William Hanna and Joseph Barbera. They made the company in 1957 and has made many characters like The Flintstones, Yogi Bear, The Jetsons, Scooby Doo and the smurfs. 

                               

Matt Groening

Matt Groening is a very popular animator and has created lots of animations that have carried on still today. For example The Simpsons started in 1989 and still carries on to this day, it is the longest running U.S tv show in history. He has also created shows like Futurama and Life in Hell.

                                              

Animation ideas

First ideas

Animation of a man going into space and visiting the moon and seeing if he any find any life. After a short while of searching he finds an alien and has some fun. The equipment i would need is lots of clay and cardboard so i can make the different sets. My inspiration for this idea is "Wallace and Gromit - A grand day out" as they build a rocket and fly to the moon and whilst there they encounter a robot called Cooker

Time lapse of a night sky starting from dusk and ending at dawn. Shutter speed will be left open longer than usual so that it can gather more light. This will be very challenging as lots of stuff could go wrong but night sky time lapses look amazing if i can make it well. i got my inspiration from YouTube videos people have made and some of the outcomes are brilliant.

Animation of a person doing there daily tasks around the house. This could be interesting to see as its such a basic idea but if i plan it out right then it could look really nice. I would film my mum do tasks like ironing clothes, doing the washing, cutting the grass etc.

I chose the night sky time lapse as my animation as i feel like it the outcome if made good could be better than my other ideas, plus a night time lapse is different to a normal one as you have to put a lot more effort in rather than a normal time lapse.

Kit list

• DSLR camera 
• DSLR shutter remote
• Tripod

I will need to find the right location where there is no light pollution and i need to find a night where it is not windy and not many clouds as this might ruin the footage. I will have to do a couple of test runs so that i can find the right exposure times for the camera.

Running times

6 mins = 1 sec
360 / 25 = 15                    1 frame every 15 seconds




30 secs

25 frames

750 images/ frames

Tine to have camera running

7 hours = 420mins

420 x 60 = 25,200

25,200 / 750 = 33.6

1 photo every 30 seconds

http://www.lonelyspeck.com/the-milky-way-in-los-angeles-light-pollution/

Preparation

I need to find a day when there was hardly any clouds in the sky and the moon is hardly visible. This is because if the moon is out it creates more light which might disrupt the images. I plan to film at my granddads house as the is no light pollution, this means that when i take long exposures with my camera it wont pick up any light from near by lights. As i am filming a time lapse i need an option so that the camera could take a picture on its own without me having to click the shutter button, as my camera doesn't have a built in intervalometer i will buy one which plugs into the side of the camera.

 The intervalometer as four main settings:

Delay - how long between pushing "start" and the first photo

Long - how long the shutter will be open for

Interval - how often the shutter is triggered

Number - total number of shots taken

Production

Once i got my equipment ready i set up my equipment outside whilst it was still light, this makes it easier to see what im doing and i can frame my picture to how i want it. When i finished setting up the tripod and the camera. i had to change the camera settings so it is suitable for a time lapse, first i turn of VR (image stabilizer) and turn the focus onto manual mode, this is because if you leave it on auto focus it might focus on something different like a tree when you want the stars to be in focus. Another thing i had to change was the focus ring, i looked through the view finder and focused the a tree far away in the distance then taped the ring so it wouldn't move, the focus is not set to infinity meaning it will be able to focus onto the stars.
I left the camera outside for about 2 hours to let it acclimatize to the cold conditions and once it was completely dark i went outside to do some test shots.

These where the settings for my first test shot:

ISO - 1600

Shutter speed - 20 seconds

Aperture - 3.5

When i looked at the image it was a little bit too light so i changed the shutter speed to 15 seconds, this was better. After fiddling around trying to get the best settings, the images were just getting worse. I gave the lens a wipe and took another test shot, the image was perfect which meant that the lens was misting up as it was in the cold. Unfortunately the only solution to this problem would mean me standing outside all night wiping the lens every half an hour. Also i got a plastic bag and cut some holes in to and placed it over the camera just in case it rained in the night, even though the weather forecast was clear you can never be too carefully. I wiped the lens and started the time lapse which meant by the time i wake up in the morning i could check the images and hope for the best.

When i got up in the morning i went straight outside to check the camera. The battery had died in the early hours of the morning (i didn't expect it too last all night anyway). After i had charged the battery a bit i put it back into the camera and had a look at the images, they looked good but you could see that after a while the lens mists up. Also you can tell in one of the frames i cleaned the lens as it goes from misty to clear.

Post Production


I got all the images from the camera (533) and put them onto the computer, this took a while as they were all shot in RAW format so the file sizes were quite big. I opened up premiere pro and clicked on import media, once you find where your images are kept i needed to click on the first image, click "image sequence" and click the last photo and it should open up all the images as a video sequence. But i had a problem, when i triend to import the photos it was saying the video sequence was only 5:15 seconds long. it had missed out most of the other pictures. After a long time of trying to sort this problem out i realized that it had stopped importing on the image where i cleaned my lens so i imported the first lot of images and then the rest of them.
And as i had 2 image sequences i just put them together and i then had my full time lapse. now that i had my time lapse in place i needed some titles to introduce the clip, i clicked on Title, New title and default still. I typed the title of my time lapse called "The Sky at Night" and dragged it into the time line. I did the exact same for the credits but i also added a fade in and a fade out by command clicking the beginning and end of the title and selection default transitions.
The last thing i needed was music. I wanted some nice piano music in the background so i went onto Free Music Archive and found a nice piece of music that fit well with my time lapse. Also everything on the site is public domain which means that no one owns copy-write so that everyone can use it. Once i downloaded it and put it into my time line i was ready to export. I went into export and media, this gave me loads options but all i needed to do was click on h.264 and then scroll down to HD 1080p 23.976, gave it a sensible name and then exported it.

Outcome

I was very pleased with the outcome of my time lapse as you can clearly see many stars and the music went perfectly with the clip. Next time i would prefer to make a time lapse in summer as its warmer on a night meaning the lens wont fog up and i get a clear picture.

http://freemusicarchive.org/   

Digital imaging notes

• Photoshop (.psd) - Can only open in photoshop.
• Gif - Compresses the file so its smaller, really bad quality.
• PNG (.png) - compresses so its smaller, Ok quality.
• JPEG (.jpg) - Compresses, Standard.
• EPS (.eps) - Saves small then open it and make it large and it wont loose quality.
• Adobe illustrator (.ai) - Can only be opened in adobe.

           Scalable
           Vector        (.svg)
           Graphic

This is a example of a Gif.

Vector and rasta graphics

Pictures are made of small pixels with colour

Stop-motion animation

Persistence of vision

Persistence of vision is a optical illusion that has multiple images that when moved, tricks your brain into thinking its moving picture

Understanding the creative media sector

Understanding structure and ownership in the creative media sector

The creative media sector includes a wide range of industries that are growing more and more each day, each of these industries is employing a large number of people to do a variety of job roles. All these industries have one thing in common and that is that they use words, sounds and images to communicate with the audience, and they all employ staff that are creative with good ideas.

The main industries are; Film, Television, Radio, Publishing, Advertising and Marketing, Animation, Interactive Media, games and Photo Imaging.

Film

Film companies have certain structures that allow them to advertise and market their movies. The different stages include Pre-production, production, post production, distribution and exhibition.  The company's will follow these rules so that they can sell there movie as much as possible.

Film distribution has the purpose of selling as many films as possible, the more films they are able to sell the more money they will make from it. The first stage of distribution happens once the film production has been finished, once it has finished plan what they want to happen to the film. In the Pre-production stage the industry plans everything their movie is going to be about using storyboards and scripts. They will need to gather actors and props to star in their film so they might have to branch out to different companies to see what they can get. Then comes Production, this is when everything is filmed as planned by the storyboard they will have drawn in pre-production. Finally, the film will be sent into post production where all the scenes and special effects get put together.

The size of the film sector is one of the biggest on the world, and is still growing. The daily mail published an article on UK film growth and says that between July and September, 2015, the film industry grew by 5.9 percent proving that the growth of the media industry is still climbing.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3291560/The-Bond-effect-Britain-s-booming-film-industry-growing-quickly-economy-growth-slumps-just-0-5.html

A example of a big film company is Disney. Disney is a multi million dollar industry that owns other smaller companies like Marvel Entertainment and Lucasfilm which recently bought for a staggering $4 billion. George Lucas admitted "Its very sad. Its 40 years of work and its been my life, but im ready to move on to bigger and better things".

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2227949/Star-Wars-creator-George-Lucas-donate-4billion-Disney-deal-charity.html

This demographic shows the total gross for each film and all the other bits of information people might need to know

Television

The main purpose of TV is too produce various amounts of shows that will appeal to people of all genres. Genres can range for documentaries, comedy, or horror etc. Even though we watch certain programs like the Top Gear, the programs are owned by certain companies, For example "great British bake off" is owned by the Love productions but is shown on the BBC.

Endemol is one of the UK's largest independent company's and has created some of the big shows like Big Brother, 8 out of 10 Cats and Bad Education. A statement from the Endemol website says "Endemol creates innovative formats that have changed the face of popular culture". These formats have went on to sell to other smaller companies so that they can make money out of it. For example Big Brother was one of the first reality TV shows, and it influenced lots of other reality TV shows that are out there.

There are two types of TV companies and they are Public companies and Private companies. The most well known public TV company is the BBC. The BBC is funded by public state and does not make any profit, but instead puts back into the industry. The BBC offers a wide range of channels ranging from BBC 1 to BBC 4. BBC 1 focus's on producing a variety of genres for the audience to watch from Comedies to soap operas. According to BARB the most watched TV show in 2016 is Silent witness 

Radio

The main purpose of radio is to entertain the listeners that tune into the broadcast. Radio shows do this in many ways such as playing live/pre-recorded music, news weather, traffic reports and game shows hosted by the radio presenters. There are two types of radio commercial and non profitable. The main example of non profitable is BBC radio channels which are owned by the public (same with the BBC TV channels). This means the public pay into a service to fund this. The public pay for a TV licence each year which means you get all the BBC channels and radio shows.

Whilst public stations focus on a range of audiences, commercial radio stations focus a specific target audience. With some stations, they might own a few that specify in different genres of music that will apply to a variety of audiences. Commercial radio channels are also local radio stations and are specific to a location whilst public radio ofton spans around the whole UK. For example Capital radio is a group of networks owned by Global radio and spans across the UK. Up here in the north east we get our signal from newcastle if we want to listen to capital.

Currently in the UK there are 22,000 people that work in the industry and is one of the best media sectors for having the most employed. The radio industry occasionally adds a new radio station but nothing major every happens so normally the ratings stay the same.

Publishing

The main purpose of publishing normally is to inform the reader so if you have a newspaper of a journal then normally they will be informative. The publishing and press industry's are made up of a group of industry's including; books, magazines and newspapers. These can be articles online or printed media like newspapers. The industry employ over 200,000 people and some of their main job roles are; journalist, commissioning editor and designer.

For this type of industry they look for staff who are very good with English and numeric areas and who have a basic knowledge of office skills. An example of this is taking phone calls and the way you communicate with the other person.

The publishing companies gets their money from all of the products they distribute and the advertisements that are included in the products. The entire publishing industry together makes a total of £10.1 billion which is one of the highest earners of the whole media sector.

Advertising and Marketing

The advertising and marketing industry consists of advertising agencies and media representative services. The advertising and marketing industry makes its money from its commissions and fees from the advertisement they make for a client, a certain percentage cost is normally discussed between the client and the agency.

The advertising and marketing industry employs around 17,000 people with jobs including graphic designers, writers, marketing executive and sales managers.

Animation

The main purpose of animation is to create films that entertain the viewer. They do this by creating a series of frames that change multiple times in a second. This tricks the eyes into thinking the pictures are moving. There are a couple of different types of animation which includes 2D, 3D, claymation and stop motion. The two most popular type of animation is claymation and animation. An example of claymation is "Wallace and Gromit: curse of the were rabbit" which made a wold wide total of  $192,610,372.

In the UK currently there are 4,700 people in the animation industry which is the lowest out of all the different sectors. This is expected as america dominates the industry with large feature films from Pixar and Dreamworks, also japan heavily dominates the animation world with anime which is a well known animation style in japan.

Interactive media

The interactive media content that allows people to interact with the website so that they can get what they want out of it. There are many different purposes for Interactive media that can be either educational or just for general browsing. Some examples of Interactive media is

• Facebook
• YouTube
• Twitter
• Google 
• Tumblr

The interactive media sector is worth over several billion pounds and employs over 34,000 people. Interactive media is becoming increasingly more popular and becoming a part of everyday life.

Game

The game sector forms a major part of the global industry. Computer games are quickly gaining an importance as they were originally a small thing that you would do if you were bored. But it is now becoming a part of peoples lives. Which in some cases is not a good thing as it can distract people from doing other tasks.

Pre-production for short films

when you make a short film, the pre-production stage is often the most important as if you plan the key stages step by step then when it comes to filming it will be quicker and easier. The first thing to creating a film is too plan your ideas, the more time you have too plan your ideas means that you can plan things in advanced and get your head round situations that might come up. The fact that this is a short film means that i will want to make it look as cinematic as possible rather than something that looks like it is just some clips put together. Also to make it a film, it needs some sort of narrative so that when people watch it they can be interested, making them enjoy the film more. For example a youtube video doesn't need a narrative as there soul purpose is too entertain the audience watching but on the other hand, a film like pulp fiction needs people to pay attention to whats happening as if they don't then most likely they will miss what the narrative is.


Managing time is important as you want to be as organised as possible. The best way to manage time is to make a time log, this is good as you can put everything you are planning to do in the table and sort out information like what time you are going to start and how long you are willing to spend on this. The longer you have for each thing, the more prepared you will be for the production stage. For example i could say that i wanted to film on the first day for 4 hours, so i would write it in the time log so i can organize things around that. This will make things a lot easier.

If you want to make a film then you are going to want some actors and resources, to plan this you need to make another table and fill in all the things you want to be featured in your film. Once you have everything you will need to think how you are going to get these and how much its going to cost you. This is a great way to work out everything you need for the film as you can make sure that you get every piece o of equipment on there so you don't forget anything. Also, if you add the total of how much its going to cost and realize you don't have enough money, you can remove items that you don't need as much. The items that will be listed on the table will be things like actors, props, cameras and sound equipment, but for location its best to include it in the script as when you are reading the script the location will be told. You could even do it in the storyboard and write the location in each scene.

Example of a equipment list:  

Certain films have different budgets. The more popular films normally have higher budgets but you can still make a perfectly good short film for nothing at all. This film, as its professional, is going to have quite a high budget, but even though there is lots of money that doesn't mean you should over spend. You will want to spread out your budget so that you spend more money on things that are a necessity and spend less on things that you might not need. Things that you will need to spend a fair bit of money on is a camera, choosing the right camera decides whether or not the film quality is good or bad, and if you get a bad camera then that could ruin your chances of making a good short film. Although, the sound equipment is just as important as the camera as if you have clear audio then the film is going to be much better even if you have a bad quality picture, but if you have a good picture with bad sound then it distracts you from actually watching the film. This is why you will want to spend a lot on the camera and sound equipment.

When you are planning the film you are going to want to explain to the actors and crew what they need to be doing, the easiest way of doing this is to create a storyboard and a script. A storyboard consists of drawings/sketches, camera angles and timings. This will give people the idea of what the scene will look like, this will be handy for the camera man as he can see where the camera needs to be and how long the shot goes on for. Also it will be handy for the actor as they can look at the storyboard and see where they need to stand. The script will mainly help the actors with there lines as the script has all of the speech the different characters will say but will also include the location, whether its inside or outside and if its day or night. The actors can can read the script and see when the first character is introduced (This is shown by making the first characters name by making in in all caps).

You have to make sure that you have the right permission to broadcast your film before you do anything with it. To do this you must make sure that you have made the film copy written, this ensures that no one can take your ideas, this should be stated in a document once you copy write it. With your script you need to make sure that the characters you have made don't resemble characters from other films as that is copy written material. Music needs to be cleared by the owner of the track as if you don't ask for permission then you could be charged with a fine. The actors that took part in your film need to sign a consent form saying that they were in the film and that there name can be used in any content about the film e.g blogs and websites representation the film.