WEEK 7 SUMMARY

WEEK BEGINNING - January 28th, 2019

WEEK ENDING - February 3rd, 2019

MONDAY - Maya Modelling, Stop Motion Box

Original blog posts: <to be added>

TUESDAY - Narratology Check-In

Different sort of session today; it was just me and one other person going to meet up with Lynsey and discuss our essay plans. I said that I wanted to look at how animation was intrinsic to Who Framed Roger Rabbit's plot, and that the two are practically inseparable. I suggested some points involving the character Betty Boop, the Toontown location and how certain events relied on the animation medium. In response, Lynsey offered up some of her own ideas, including some helpful advice on how to write about Jessica Rabbit. I also found from this session that the conclusion should be bigger than last time, and a lot more rich in what I'm trying to say. A helpful session! Definitely going to be applied to my essay plan.

SUMMARY

This week was pretty great! I enjoyed everything I had on, which I'm pleased with! I've already gone over how Narratology's going, so here's my final summaries on everything else this week.

The Maya modelling was, just like last week's introduction, a lot easier than expected. I really enjoyed making the assigned objects, so much so that during our break in the middle I just kept making more things to go alongside them! One thing I did find a little bit weird to get a grasp of was the colouring paired with selection tools. There'd be an instance where I thought I had the right areas selected to apply a texture, and then when I did, it would texture everything else. I already need to go back and redo the radio task, the one I had this issue with, so hopefully I can figure out what's up with it there.

Stop Motion was a lot more fun this week than last, mostly due to the workflow feeling a lot better. I was working with someone who really understood what I was trying to get at with suggestions, and I feel like it was mutual between the two of us. Armatures are a lot easier to work with than Plasticine balls on wires, surprisingly enough. They don't fall apart as easily, and you can get better looking consistent movements from them. The wire and sockets can't physically change shape like the Plasticine can, so it made animations look weird and inconsistent. Luckily, armatures don't have that, and everything went well! Main thing to remember for next time is don't knock the camera. And if you do, then don't panic for too long.

Sketchbook is still at the same point as last week, where motivation seems down for it and not very much is getting done. I don't want to force myself to fill pages, because then I'm not really putting my all into what I'm doing. But at the same time, actually getting up and doing it is what could get me back into the flow of it. I'm gonna have to try exclusively doing my comics and then hopefully adding in little things if sparks of ideas crop up.

STOP MOTION - PICK UP BOX

Today, we started working with armatures to create character animation, showing how they'd react to, and lift a box.

Before that, we looked at the employability aspect of animation, specifically in stop motion. We learnt that it's not a good field to go into if you plan on settling down, since there'll be a lot of moving around to different studios wherever jobs need filling in.

To get a job in the field, you'd need:

• An understanding of the Animation Principles
• To be able to work without supervision under a brief
• To deliver on schedule / under pressure
• FOCUS
• Good communication skills
• The ability to work well with others
• To be able to operate equipment correctly
• Problem solving skills

We also had a quick look at the various jobs in stop motion production, including:

• Animator
• Assistant Animator
• Model Maker
• Rigger
• Key Senior Animator

(Daniel Alderson is a stop motion animator for Laika - credit: The Academy)

From there, we moved onto the task for the day! We had already created storyboards, which followed the brief of having a character walk into frame, notice a box, and then pick it up. We could be creative with the idea, adding in anything we wanted just so long as the original idea is still there. I worked with Billy for this task, who I had never worked with before.

We used the following storyboard:

We were in the animation production studio area of the building for this task, where I had only worked once for a practice task. The setup was different this time though; instead of using magnets to keep the armature in place, we used pins this time. This, in my opinion, was a lot easier than the magnets, since there was a lot less guess-work in figuring out where the magnet was meant to go. The pins were a lot easier to just push into the feet.

Along the way, we came up with little touches and actions that weren't in the storyboards, but would fit in between the main 6 action poses. One of the key ones Billy came up with was a slight fourth wall break, where the character would look into the camera for a brief second, and then continue on with the action.

It all went really well... until I knocked the camera accidentally. Since the camera was on a pole attached to the ceiling, it'd be more difficult to knock than a camera on a tri-pod. But I did manage to knock it, and it threw the frame off. I had a panic about it, trying desperately to fix it and get the camera at least close to where it was before. Thanks to Billy's help, the camera was fixed to be close to what it was. I still wasn't entirely happy with it, and thought that it'd be obvious that there was a change in framing. But after watching back the animation with new footage... it was fine. I panicked over nothing.

After that, we managed to get the rest of the animation finished just fine! We had to come up with a good way to show the box flying up into the air, and then falling back down again. The idea settled on was a very rudimentary rig, which involved tying the box to a string, and looping the string around a pole above the set. It would act as a pulley system of sorts. And it worked! We got the effect we wanted, and had a fun time doing it!

And the finished animation looks like this!



In the end, I'm REALLY happy with how this animation turned out! It's definitely made me enjoy stop motion a lot more, and I think it's a combination of working with other people and what we were actually animating. The armature was a lot easier to animate than the bouncing ball, strangely enough. I think it was mostly from how much more stable and well put-together it is, over the more DIY feel of the ball bounce rig. If I was to do this task again, two things come to mind; a minor thing, which is making sure the last shot doesn't have the pins visible in frame, and a MAJOR thing: don't over-panic about things going wrong. I worried for far too long about knocking the camera and not being able to fix it, only to have it turn out looking fine. This is a lesson for me to not worry so much about things going wrong, and sometimes just going with things being as good as we can get them.