Experiments
15th October 2011
Here is a quick attempt at trying to create a simple stop motion with 1p's.
I've found that its really important to get the gap between the changes as small as possible, for a smooth transition. or else the video looks horrible and jurky, and also some form of stand for the camera is an essential, to keep the camera in the same place. However with stop motion animation simplicity seems to be the key to success.
25th October 2011
My practice animation of a boat at night.
31st OCtober 2011
I used a recycled theme for this animation, as I felt it would be most unique, using cut out newspaper for the boat and tissue paper for the sea. The animation was created using 358 pictures, all taken from a static camera on a tripod. The pictures were made into an animation using JellyCam, shown below.
The animation is short and simple being only being only 22 seconds long. for my final animation I wouldn't aim for it to be much longer than this as children's opening sequences tend to be quite sort as shown here in my opening sequences research, Im aiming for less then a minute. The video shows a small cut out newspaper boat traveling across the sea at night with the moon making its way across the cloudy sky.
I showed this video clip to a group of my friend and teachers to receive their opinions of what they like and dislike about it and how they would improve it. i asked them all to provide a comment on the clip a good and bad point and how they would like to see it improved. The qualitative data I received from them was:
1.
Comment: "It's really good and fun to watch"
Good Point: "It's very creative, I like how he's used different coloured materials to represent the sea."
Bad Point: "I like how 'The End' appears at the end of the clip, but would you really have this at the beginning of a programme?"
Improvement: "The clip could be improved on by removing 'The End' from the clip and replacing it with the name of the programme."
2.
Comment: "It's a wonderful creation and clearly a lot of time and effort has gone into creating it."
Good Point: "The clip is simplistic looking, but it has a great effect!"
Bad Point: "There isn't enough theme from a programme in the clip."
Improvement: "If a theme from a programme was added to the animation it would make it much more recognisable."
3.
Comment: "Very creative and different."
Good Point: "Used a range of materials for great effect."
Bad Point: "'The End' is used to finish the animation, but would this be used at the start of a programme?"
Improvement: "Discard 'The End' and it will be much improved."
4.
Comment: "Smooth and enjoyable clip."
Good Point: "Interesting and constructive"
Bad Point: "doesn't use any other technologies other then photos."
Improvement: "Could incorporate more technologies in the creation then just photos, perhaps edit the photos with effects in photoshop?"
On receiving this constructive criticism from my friends and teachers I have decided to create a new animation which incorporates these ideas. The new children’s opening sequence will follow a theme of my chosen children’s show, involve more technologies in creating it and will finish with the name of the show rather then ‘The End'.
Development
28th November 2011
Animation Development
Now all I needed were waves and clouds, so I got some different shades of blue tissue paper and cut them in the style of waves, lined them up next to each other, took a picture of them and uploaded them to Photoshop.
I then placed the ship on a layer in front of the background but behind the black layer and erased circles in sequence until the ships sail was visible, saving each time, and using the previous saved photo as a slightly transparent reference. Once the sail was visible I slowly enlarged the diameter of the eraser (which gave the effect of the telescope zooming out) and continued to save each time.
When the whole ship was visible I started to move the ship slightly to the left by free transforming it and sliding it along, I also moved all of the waves to make it seem more realistic while still enlarging the erasers diameter and saving as a JPEG after every change. Once the majority of the Photo was visible I started to move the clouds across to the right as well also by free transforming them. All these small changes when put together gave the effect of the boat rocking in the waves as the clouds blew across the sky.
After creating all the photos for my animation I needed to put them all together in a stop motion animation. For this I found the best software was IMovie, as it handled the large number of photos easily, and didn’t lose any quality or create glitches, where Windows Movie Maker did. However IMovie couldn’t play the images back as fast as I needed, so I created a movie file playing back as fast as possible, then imported it into windows movie maker and played it back at 2X speed, this was the closest to my desired speed of 12 frames per second.
As for the music in the background I found a clip on YouTube, as explained in my ‘Evaluation:Technology’of a bunch of guys who created a drum version of the Blue Peter opening, so I got in touch with them, explaining what I’m doing and they sent me the original file. Once I had the file I could edit it how I liked, so I found the section I wanted and cut it down to fit my clip, and edited it in. I used ‘Audacity’ to cut and edit the music. I then imported it into Windows Movie Maker and added it to my clip and created a movie file. As Blogger was having problems uploading the video I uploaded it to Youtube, which was simple and inserted the URL in Blogger.
Development
3rd November 2011
DVD Development
here is a short video explaining what I did to create my DVD cover.
28th November 2011
Animation Development
I started to create my animation by drawing a boat, as the boat was the most important item in the animation, being the centre of attention and the main link to Blue Peter. I knew I wanted a pirate style ship so I looked at similar photos on the internet and started to draw my own.
After finishing drawing the ship I cut it out and placed it on a blue background to see how it would look.
So that was my boat and my background sorted.
Now all I needed were waves and clouds, so I got some different shades of blue tissue paper and cut them in the style of waves, lined them up next to each other, took a picture of them and uploaded them to Photoshop.
I also got some white tissue paper and cut it into the shape of clouds. After doubling up the tissue paper to get the right colour I lined them up, took a picture and also uploaded them to Photoshop. I chose to use tissue paper as it gave the right effect of clouds and waves when it was sightly crinkled up.
After I had imported all these photos into Photoshop I edited them all do get the desired effects, for example burning the outline of the ship in order to make it darker and stand out more. I then and layered all the items up so that the sea had different levels and so that the
boat looked in the distance as shown below.
I started to create my animation with a blue sky background and a black layer in front. I erased a tiny circle in the corner of the black layer and saved it as a JPEG. I erased a larger and larger circle in the corner saving it as a JPEG after each change.
After I had the right size circle I put a new black layer over it all made it transparent and erased a circle slightly to the side of the one I had originally, then deleted the previous black layer and saved. This created the effect of the circle moving when it’s played back.(as shown below pictures:10, 15, 20, 25 and 30) After repeating this procedure several times the blue circle was at the right of the photo.
I then placed the ship on a layer in front of the background but behind the black layer and erased circles in sequence until the ships sail was visible, saving each time, and using the previous saved photo as a slightly transparent reference. Once the sail was visible I slowly enlarged the diameter of the eraser (which gave the effect of the telescope zooming out) and continued to save each time.
When the whole ship was visible I started to move the ship slightly to the left by free transforming it and sliding it along, I also moved all of the waves to make it seem more realistic while still enlarging the erasers diameter and saving as a JPEG after every change. Once the majority of the Photo was visible I started to move the clouds across to the right as well also by free transforming them. All these small changes when put together gave the effect of the boat rocking in the waves as the clouds blew across the sky.
After continually repeating these steps I began to make the size of the eraser smaller to give the effect of zooming in, the centre of the eraser became the rear window of the ship and then enlarged the view slightly by enlarging the image.
I then imported a photo of one of the presenters and cut the photo to shape so it seemed as if she appeared from the side of the window. I had several photos of her with her arm in different positions so when they played through it seemed as if she was waving. I cut each photo differently so she became more centred in the window as she waved. I then reversed the process as she disappeared back into the ship.
I then continued to place black layers in front of the ship erasing circles and saving in sequence so that it gave the effect that the view of the telescope was moving from the window to the sail again. Once the sail was in the centre of the shot I flattened the image and continuously enlarged the image by 50 px and saved until it was the size I wanted. I then created a circle shape slightly larger than that of the flag image and filled it with the same pattern and colour as the flag using the clone stamp tool. I repeated this until it had filled the whole screen.
After creating all the photos for my animation I needed to put them all together in a stop motion animation. For this I found the best software was IMovie, as it handled the large number of photos easily, and didn’t lose any quality or create glitches, where Windows Movie Maker did. However IMovie couldn’t play the images back as fast as I needed, so I created a movie file playing back as fast as possible, then imported it into windows movie maker and played it back at 2X speed, this was the closest to my desired speed of 12 frames per second.
As for the music in the background I found a clip on YouTube, as explained in my ‘Evaluation:Technology’of a bunch of guys who created a drum version of the Blue Peter opening, so I got in touch with them, explaining what I’m doing and they sent me the original file. Once I had the file I could edit it how I liked, so I found the section I wanted and cut it down to fit my clip, and edited it in. I used ‘Audacity’ to cut and edit the music. I then imported it into Windows Movie Maker and added it to my clip and created a movie file. As Blogger was having problems uploading the video I uploaded it to Youtube, which was simple and inserted the URL in Blogger.
