Kitchen Appliance Animation

For our course we have been asked to create a 20 second animation using household products. This is a really good project as it enables us to think of ideas for characters, stories and sets while making sure we manage our roles within the groups we have been assigned.

The first thing I did was to look at existing adverts and programs that also use household items to get inspiration but also make sure I am not copying existing work. An advert that is currently on TV is for the cleaning product Flash. This advert uses different cleaning products and gives them a personality using voice-overs. However, the cleaning products do not move what so ever despite the heads being designed to move.

I then looked at programs that use this concept and eventually found a children's show called Ooglies. This show uses everyday household items and food and puts googly eyes on them. Then then use incoherent sounds and stop motion to bring them to life. The Ooglies is a very good example because there are so many narratives is each episode and there are loads of characters.

As a natural progression of this, my group and got together and discussed three story ideas and what household items could easily be turned into characters. The three ideas we came up with were Christmas, superheroes and Halloween. For Christmas we thought about an ice rink concept using polish on a table to make an ice rink like surface and then have cups and cutlery skating around. For a quick design I came up with an idea of how the set would look.

However, after further discussion, when agreed that creating the set characters and producing the animation while making it look good would take more time than we have, so we scrapped it.

The superhero idea is already a very commonly used idea in advertising so we dismissed that idea so as not to be too cliche. However, I created a villain as a backup just in case we decided to pursue that idea.

This left us with our final idea of a Halloween themed story.

This is an image of the title page for our Halloween idea. It was designed and drawn by Frances but contains the rough idea of our storyboard which we developed further written by Gemma, Frances and me.

Each of us then began designing characters that we could make and use. The three I designed were:

 

 

 

 

This was a witch costume for a pizza cutter character that I designed so the pizza cutter looked like a witch's broom. However, we decided against this character idea as it became confusing as to what was the actual character and what was a costume.

 

This was a design for a saltshaker that was dressed as a mummy using toilet paper. I designed it to have its mouth covered so that it would just make muffled sounds to give it a funny persona. As a group we went against this character as we didn't really feel that it fit in with the rest of the characters we had agreed with.

This was simply a small decoration we could have used as we didn't know what the background would be like. It was an orange decorated or carved to look like a pumpkin. This was just a background prop which depended on backdrop we were going to create.


As a group we chose proceeded to choose the strongest character and develop them further. We then sat down together and drew up a storyboard of what was going to happen. I was chosen to develop the cheese grater ghost and a fork mob and scourer bat.
I first came up with some digital designs of what the character could look like so that I knew how to make it when the time came to assemble our characters.

This was the fork mob I was chosen to create. The image above is the digital design I created. I chose to make four forks and give them different coloured hats to add some variety to them. These characters we spawned from the idea that a traditional mob carries pitch forks and torches. We took this idea on with a twist as we chose to make the pitch forks the characters and give them torches in the form of matches. During creation I chose to make the arms match the colour of the individual hats. This is what one of the characters looked like when it was made.

This was the design for the cheese grater ghost. It was simply a cheese grater with googly eyes stuck to it with a sheet thrown over it. I had a difficult time finding a cheese grater that was the right size as most of the ones in the shops were too large for our purpose. Eventually I found some small flat cheese graters and bought two. I then tied them together at the top and screwed a block of wood to the bottom so that they formed a triangle. This was the body of the ghost completed. Gemma then got some napkins and glued eyes to them and put it over the body. She put the eyes on the sheet instead of the body because it would have been too difficult to put the eyes on the body and then try to cut hole out of the napkins which lined up with the eyes. As well as this I don't think the eyes would have been visible in the animation if they were under the sheet.

The animation is now finished and the editing is done.
During the previous post I wrote that we had designed a few characters, since then we have decided on the characters and created them. The characters we created were Frankenbleach (bleach bottle), Frankenbrush (kitchen scrubbing brush), fork mob (plastic forks), scourer bat (a scourer), cheese grater ghost (cheese grater and Count Spatula (spatula). Each person was designated with making a character. The characters that I made were, scourer bat, the fork mob and the body of the cheese grater.

 I also bought most of the materials required to create the characters.
I made the by purchasing some black felt and cutting wing shapes out of it. I then used some all purpose glue to stick them to the scourer which Gemma bought. I also used the black felt to make some feet, ears and a nose. As well as this I bought some googly eyes to add some humour to the character.We also painted a backdrop and animated it. I was in charge of taking the pictures for the animation and getting the music together which I found from the site www.incompetech.com
As well as this we found that Frankenbrush wouldn't stand up on his own so I made a stand for him by drilling a hole in the bottom of him and putting a piece of wire into it. I then drilled a hole in a block of wood and put the other end of the wire into that to create a pedestal. I also used the same stand for count spatula as he also wouldn't stand up.

This is an image all of our characters on the day of taking the images for the animations. At this point we were making some final adjustments to some of the characters like creating different mouth positions for count spatula for example.

This is a image of us filming the beginning of out animation. We arranged the lighting so we had three lights positioned for different purposes. There was a light on the right (currently switched off in the image) to light the scene in general, a light positioned low down (switched off in the image behind the camera) to soften the shadow from the camera on the right, and a third light high up (featured in the image) with the shutters closed and pointed down to give a spotlight effect fro the introduction. This was good as it really gave the animation and play like feel which was what were going for.

This is an image (taken by me) of Frances and Gemma moving the characters on set. This was roughly half way through animation.

This is me taking the images for the animation. I was using a remote switch so that I didn't have to touch the camera, otherwise i might have knocked it and put it out of place which would have ruined the animation.

I think we worked really well together as each of us showed us every time we needed to come in, we all came up with really good ideas and contributed equally and there was no conflict between us at all. I really enjoyed this project as it got us thinking and assigning and managing jobs between us. If I were to do it again I would make sure to take more images so that the end animation wasn't as jerky.

The Brothers Quay

14/10/13

We learnt about the Brothers Quay who were American stop frame animators and were commissioned by channel 4 at one time to create a documentary about Svankmager. He however, did not want to take part in it so they produced a puppet version of him instead.
Most of their animations are quite minimalistic when it comes down to the plot.
The animation we watched was called Street of the Crocodiles. I found this animation rather unsettling at some parts but it was incredibly was made. The sets and character were stunning but I was slightly confused at what the plot was. One part that caught my attention was when a number of screws span in the dust but the dust did not move at all. For only the screw to move and not disturb its surroundings is absolutely incredible.

Jan Svankmager

14/10/13

Jan works in a variety of mediums but is known mostly for his stop frame animations. He was born in Prague and studied at the College of Applied Arts. Jan began making puppet theatres but gradually moved up to stop frame animations. His ideas mostly originate his past and reflects the violence and aggression that he saw in his childhood. His trademark techniques include unusually fast walking, inanimate objects come to life and sometimes included live action. The animations we watched were The Garden and Dimensions of Dialogue.
The Garden

This was a live action video which portrayed a powerful message as the people that made the human fence were there voluntarily and reflected nations joins in unity.

The other animation we watched was called Dimensions of Dialogue.







I found this animation to be very disturbing and unsettling to watch. It contained people made out of different materials working together at first but then going out of sync and fighting. I found it disturbing because the faces were quite realistic but did not look natural.

Putting themselves in the pictures

07/10/13

An article concerning how most Hollywood films are aimed at male dominance was published in 1975. There were three animators mentioned in the article, Joann Quinn, Candy Guard and Alison de Vere. All three animators created animations that explore the nature of femininity and the experiences of being female.

Girls night out (1987) a very female orientated animation. Created by Joann Quinn. I quite liked this animation as it was rather funny and I liked way she only animated a couple of scenes and then put them on a loop. In order to create a story however, she used dialogue which made the scenes seem different.


Another animation we watched was by Alison de Vere called The Black Dog. A very interesting animation that was quite disturbing in some parts. To me it seemed like the dog was her guardian as it was always leading her on the right path.

Walk sequences

03/10/13

In this lesson I was given a brief to create walk cycles. In animation, making a character you have created walk and make it look realistic is one of the hardest things to do in animation which is why I am glad we have started it. This is my work so far:

This shows all of the stages in one step in a walking sequence. As you can see the main point of concentration is in that one step. All the feet placments interlink with each other. If they don't the character tends to slide slightly as if they are walking on ice. For a professional animation, this does not look good.






I decided to do the sideways walk sequence on paper as I felt it was easier to focus on the movement rather than focusing on the software as this particular walk sequence was more complex. I then took photos of them and put them together in sony vegas. I uploaded the finished animation to Youtbe. Despite the character having no arms, I am quite happy with what I have done as I found walking very difficult to get right. I will add arms at a later stage when I become more accomplished with the walking.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xh9yi1xmIfc&feature=youtu.be

I then did the forwards walking sequence in photoshop as I found it easier to draw and it's always to good to experiment with different mediums. I am very happy with how this sequence turned out as I thought it would be extremely difficult to get the perspective right.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5ClYzVm5WM

I did my animal walk cycle on photoshop because drawing it seemed too difficult. At first I was going to make a lion walk but then I realized that I would had to have learnt how to draw a lion before attempting to make it walk. Instead I drew a dog. The first thing I did was to look up how a dog walks. I found this video which shows a dog walking past the camera. I used this to get a rough idea of how a dogs body moves when it walks.
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAJlcQPoKv4



After that I found this picture on Google images that show the key steps of a dog walking. I used this as a reference for creating my cycle.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgmuOY1Obj8

Even though it is only 1 second long, I'm still proud of how it turned out.

Norman McLaren

30/09/13

Norman McLaren was Scottish born and moved to Canada. From 1933 he studied at Glasgow School of Arts. In 1942 he was summoned back to Canada for an animation commision. Norman was the pioneer of pixelation which can be seen in Peter Gabriels music video for the song Sledgehammer.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJWJE0x7T4Q
 We also watched a short animation of his called Neighbors which was based on the world war. It was based on the concept of two people living to each to other happily until something new comes into their midst and they both want it. I quite liked this animation as to was unique to the things I have seen before. It was also quite a comical anmation dispite being based on something rather dark.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YAYGi8rQag

We also learnt about a man called Oskar Fischinger who was an abstract animator/filmmaker. He used coloured liquids, wax and clay as his medium and experimented with multiple projectors with music accompianment. In 1928 he was hired by Fritz Lang and experimented with charcoal on paper animation. Unfortunately during the war, the Nazi's dissolved abstract art community calling it 'degenerate art'.

Adam Elliot

23/09/13

Today we learnt about a man called Adam Elliot. He is an independent animator and uses real miniature clay models to create his films which takes several years to make as they there is no CGI, all effects are done in camera. All his films are based on his experiences about his family and are usually rather depressing. This is exagerated by the muted grey and black colours that he animation is shot in. However, he occasionally adds a burst of colour to draw your attention on something or create a different emotion. We watched one of his films called Mary and Max. This was about an old man, a small girl and the growing relationship between them as she gets older. I really enjoyed this animation as it was extremely well done, and the way Adam had animated his character really makes you become attatched to them.

http://www.maryandmax.com/

My new blog for university!

Hi! This is my new blog for my animation course for university. My old one was lost to the vastness of the internet and is now floating around out there somewhere, and because of this I had to create this new blog. Any new stuff will be put up here. I have also linked this to a YouTube channel so any animations I create will go up there. Feel free to have a look around and keep reading as I will be posting almost daily since I will be using this as a sort of diary for my course. New posts soon!