Animation Practice & Imagery: After a second honeymoon, a failed journalist grew an extra arm.

Animation Practice & Imagery

After a second Honeymoon, A failed journalist grew an extra arm. 

The Motion App
(The app I've used to film my footage)

• This app which allows you to create Stop motion animation, where it you're able to film footage in three different ways. Which are as follows:

For this animation, unfortunately, it wasn't given a name for the movie, so I'm going to just call it A uncaring life of a Twisted journalist. Seeing as they were the first words that pop into my head with this concept of the animation.

Anyway, the video footage on the right handside, was filmed on an app named IMotion. For those who aren't familiar with this software, Imotion, is a mobile app,  you can get on apple products (seeing that the app is called Imotion it's best suited for iPhone users.)

1. Time-lapse: Which means it will take a photo of each frame every second which is I've learnt by doing these recordings and video practices that it works well if you're trying to get footage where you showing something step by step or if you want to capture footage in a more instant way which can work very well at times, for instance: Sometimes you find it really handy if you use this process where it captures imagery in seconds- as its trying to capture each frame, it can be brilliant in some ways, for example If you're filming moving footage where you have to act or mime, using time lapse means you then don't have to stop your actions every second, until you've finished your creation, Time lapse can be good for that, for instance, if I were to do footage of me running, it be better if the footage was on time lapse, because it then captures each tiny movement automatically, which can be more conviniant also. Not only that but, where time lapse is so quick, in some cases you have to be careful, as if you have to make the movements to your animation ever so small or make the slightest little touch, you'd have to be fast, otherwise if you're not careful sometimes, it captures your hand in the video, which if it's unintentional, it isn't such an advantage. Unless it's with intention, meaning, you'd be doing a video either teaching something making something crafty in a step by step formate. 
2. Manual: Manual setting basically means you're in full control of taking the photos of your footage, what it does is it makes you the leader, in a sense. Using this video setting for some of my video footage has made me come to realise that using the manual approach can be very good cor capturing footage that requires short movements such as footage of a character waving, it's no good using time lapse in this case as if you use time lapse its too quick and too sudden, meaning it won't capture the character waving very well. The benefits for using a manual setting on this app is you can take as long as you like to tweak a character's actions and you can decide when you can take the image, this can be a much slower process as you have to be cautious of what you're doing with each character and think carefully on how much movement you're creating per frame. In some cases this can be a downside to this though, because of it being a slower process, it won't be good for filming footage of yourself running, unless someone else is capturing the frames and you have to still frame yourself and do small movements.
3.  Remote: Which I admit I have very limited knowledge about it, in fact next to no knowledge of this approach, I'm afraid but I can have a guesstimate and say by looking at that I think its an alternative component of this app called Imotion remote, where you can use another iOS device, almost like a bluetooth like approach I think. But this way of animating requires Wi fi only

IMotion settings

• In fairness for my approach for my video footage and practice I was looking for I have used the manual setting for the majority of the video, because you'll see on sections like the aeroplane flying that I would have to use manual footage because it captivates the movement of the plane flying better as apposed to a sudden blur kind of movement where you're most likely to get hands and fingers in the frame caption which would be unintentional. Though having said that I have also used the Time lapse approach for the video too, where I am throwing paper into a bin, for instance, as its quicker movement and it is much less tedious to use time-lapse than manual approach for that component of the footage, as time-lapse is the simpler way to use the word automatic approach to animating because that is a fast moving action I would have to use time lapse to capture the action, by capturing each second basically. 

Imagery for animation

The imagery featuring below are footage for, characters and backdrops for my animation.

Originally this part of the project I was supposed to work with a GROUP... well between you and me that played a bit of a slip slide, nothing against them but I got well into the idea of animating and next thing you know the animation was created, considering we only had a week to create this I wanted to go for it, so adios group I guess, I did credit them on ideas and story contribution so hopefully that's fair and square. so I can say if I did this project again, perhaps I'd tel myself to not jump the gun too much and do my own thing so quickly. 

But it enabled me to get used to the notions of creating imagery on Illustrator as opposed to my comfort blanket, photoshop. As great as photoshop is- I've learnt more into adobe suite that photoshop is best suited for photos as photos have pixels. and enables you to edit imagery best on photoshop. where as illustrator is best for character design, illustrating shapes and well boarder line illustrations, I could just say to myself the clue is in the title, using illustrator for creating imagery gives you a much cleaner and crisp image, which you'll see I discover more of as we go through the blog. 

A Love Heart
If you can't read the annotation on the photo it says: I designed this shape using Illustrator, I chose this program over Photoshop do my imagery looks more crisp and cleaner. I created the love heart to represent a couple being remarried.

A Broken heart

Again, If you can't read the annotation on the photo it says: again I chose to design the broken heart on Illustrator so my imagery is sharper than if I were to design this shape on Photoshop, meaning that if I designed this on photoshop, there is a chance if pixilation and low res quality. I created the broken heart to represent the a couple broken up.

The Jet plane 

The annotation on this page is hard to read so I'll translate it, it says: this plane I created and designed on Illustrator, for my animation. Only thing I'd say is although its easy to gather that it's an aeroplane, in all honestness, I feel I could have designed the aeroplane shape in a much better way and make the shape look more like a plane. But I admit that shape was alright for the animation, considering the shape is easy to gather it's a plane, because of it's basic formality so it was good for that, considering we was only given a week to create the animation I didn't think it looked half bad. 

Breaking news: Toxic waters poster

This piece, is basically just a breaking news poster I created for one of the rear end of the sections of this animation, to be fair it was okay because it does the job, but it could be a hell lot better, for a start the word toxic, could of been designed better, maybe give it a more toxic kind of feel to the type. The breaking news but... only two dots! 

Not three... I  (must of accidentally pressed back-space there. 

This again was designed on Illustrator.

Seaside backdrop

This backdrop was created on Illustrator, if you ask me it looks pretty lame...  but I was trying to pull off the simplistic subtle, the whole less is more kind of thing. This doesn't exactly look like a seaside to be perfectly honest with you. For a start the sand is green... Sand isn't usually green. The black lines representing waves... it kind if works in a sense but maybe I could of changed the colour of the brush stroke.

Finishing credits


This is self explanatory, is basically finishing credits. In fairness I could have typed it, but I feel it would of ruined the purpose because this animation is about a failing journalist, I thought id write the credits hand written in the way of a failing journalist.
Yes the others in my small group got credit for the ideas generation.

Journalist realises he's a failed journalist

I wrote this component hand written to create the dynamic of a writer, I used time lapse action on IMotion to film this because it was one of those examples where it was quick movement and it being too awkwardly tedious to use the Manual setting. 

News article


I tried to create this block of writing as if the journalist wrote the news read.
By hand  writing it, I filmed this in the same way as the image above, using the time lapse setting on Motion, for the effect of animating a journalist writing.

After finishing recording the footage for this animation, I then timed my animation so it will go up to 1-30 frames per second, it basically controls the speed of the animation. usually you'd find animations have 12 frames per second, so say if I filmed in total 48 frames than that would make four seconds of footage.  Anyways, after that I then exported my movie from the app which to do that I go onto a setting that looks like this 

(On the right hand side) then I pressed video and then click photo library, which means it gets downloaded to your photos on your phone. After doing that I then emailed the footage I filmed to myself, which I then edited on an adobe programme called Premiere Pro, where I added effects which works similarly to photoshop with the use of different blend modes and then adding sound effects too the (FX) from my storyboard. 

The website I used for adding sound effects was called Zap Spalt, it is basically a site where you can download sound effects free.  which is what I've used in my animation below. You can get a range of different sounds anything from science Sci-fi sounds, to door knocking and many more different sound effects. 

This image below is the website ive used for mt FX.

The special thing about this website like I previously stated, you can get so many different sounds you can download, such as the list on the website itself i've taken a screen shot of. Not only can you get sounds but you can get music too, so its a handy website to use for FX.

The Animation

(After a second honeymoon, a failed journalist grew an extra arm)

• This below is the creation I put together on premiere as previously mentioned. Admittedly the filming quality isn't on point, as in it isn't the best as for some reason, this site wouldn't allow me to upload the footage from premiere, I hope to discover how to do this throughout the blog. 

• Anyways, this video was meant to be a thirty second long animation based on our random chaotic ideas we have taken on inspiration from that book, mentioned on the previous post, called The amazing story generator. 

• Where the other members of the group chose this storyline out at random and I put an animation of that storyline in my own interpretation. 

Looking back at this video, I feel the target audience is better suited for a younger audience personally, aimed for children aged 3-12 as they may like some action pact simplistic animation. Though having said that i'd also suggest   the target audience would also aim for families- with younger children, the older side of the families would understand the concept behind the animation and as previously mentioned the children like the action pact graphics.
As animations go, I feel as a first timer using this software to create the moving Graphics that it did the job and wasn't bad. This animation followed the aim of the of the brief for it being chaotic and out of the box thinking, though this experimentation has taught me I have a way to go with using this programme but it's exciting to learn it. 

• I feel like the quality of the film. could be far better,  such as the fuzziness and pixelation   I feel the way forward is to leant about the 16:9 film footage quality and for this programme to allow me downloading the footage I create on premiere onto Blogger somehow. 

• I think looking back at the footage I've put together, there are a lot of visual effects but, I will say where each action is happening at a fast speed its hard to fully understand the concept of the story but I think this works well for the visual aspect to this animation.  Such as near the writing effects in the video, the section with the plane  landing into shored the extra arm thing- things like that I liked in terms of visuals.

In my personal opinion, I think there were areas in the clip where I've managed to add some fx in areas I feel works well with the concept of this narration which I have found on zap splat. Though I feel there may of been some places at the ending of the animation overstrained their welcome `bit, I feel I could have edited the sound better to make not seem like I just put the FX there fr the sake of it as in I wanted the sound to come into the clip in a less sudden way but in a way where it works for the effect to appear in certain sections of the video.

(The Animation it's self)