Evaluation of Clip

When comparing our small clip to the larger animations, ours won't be considered as ambitious or professional however I think it flows smoothly for an amature piece, as this was Robyn's and mine first time creating an animation of this kind. Ideally, if we had had more time I would have enjoyed having the gingerbread men do different activities, maybe have had a day in the life of a gingerbread man from coming alive to being eaten. That would have been highly amusing.

Throughout the making of the clip, I thought that if the characters were made from clay, like Wallace and Gromit, rather than gingerbread, the army would have been able to do more actions, such as swinging their arms, and would have been able to express their emotions through facial expressions and posture. The material would have lended itself to being handled more than the gingerbread probably the would have had less suicides of the counter and breaking arms, legs and necks.

IDVD

To create a dvd we had to go on the only mac that had the iDVD software. This software would enable us to create a title menu for our clip, and our tutor showed us the many themes available to choose from. Luckily we found one that was of an old projector which suited our film very well.

Final cover

Cover development/research

The designing of the cover was done together, Robyn looked at the older covers for content and went on the internet to search for different symbols and then wrote the blurb for the back cover.
While Robyn was busy, I had the task of putting it all together. I used the modern cover as a basis for content layout as well as the other ones.

We found when designing the cover we wanted to edit the pictures, taking away the background and just have the gingerbread men.

DVD cover research

For our cover design Robyn and I wanted to something old fashioned to suit our small film, although neither of us knew what it would look like. Therefore, as Robyn was going to her nans and she knew her nan had several old films, Robyn said she would take pictures of what she found.

However what Robyn found wasn't what we were necessarily looking for since they have both been digitally re-done with a modern look. Especially Sayonara where they took and black & white film and have put a new colour still on the front. We both want ours to be black and white like the Laurel & Hardy also with a similar design.

After Effects - fading effect

While building up the film I played it back over and over again showing Robyn deciding if any sections were too fast ect. We both felt it was quite choppy going from one scene to the next drastically, after showing our tutor he suggested 'fading' which would help blend the scenes together more. Unfortunatly he wasn't sure how to do the fading effect in this software, so I went on a small mission to find out how.

Two minutes later on youtube and I found the answer.

The process itself I found very easy once I new how, and it didn't take long to add in all the fading ins and outs to all the seperate parts.

After Effects - first encounter

When I had finished making all the different clips it was time to edit it all together. Even though Robyn still had not finished the information screens I took the oportunity to explore the software programme Adobe After Effects. Now, I have never used any software like this before and I felt rather daunted at the prospect of having to figure out how to use the software in a couple of days. However once I got started it seemed fairly simple, import the files then add to the time line. It really was that simple. 

The imported files appeared on the left had side of the screen, to add these to the item all I had to do was click and drag, dropping the file onto the timeline at the bottom of the screen. When added to the timeline the files became blocks varying in length depending on how long the clip was. Each file was placed onto a new line with the name of that file in section to the left of the timeline, which made it a lot easier in the later stages of editing when there was lots of files as I could scroll throught the list click the relevent section I wanted which highlighted the corresponding block on the timeline.

Font search- for information screens

Robyn was struggling to find a suitable font for the names to be written in, so I lent a hand by looking on dafont.com as well. I was told that we were looking for a typefeace that had a small serif and was tall in height but not skinny. After searching for 10 minutes we came across a font that had a very authentic look to those Robyn had showed me of the screen grabs she had taken from various silent films. The typeface is called Sexsmith, and with the font that our tutor suggested Caslon Robyn was able to finish the screens.

Music choice

Robyn had looked through her classical collection at home and found some that might work.

She sent me them while in class, these are the following pieces.

• Hungarian March
• Fossils - light and bouncy, fits very well
• Aquarium
• Flight of the Bumble Bee - much too fast

We then listened together and chose one we liked, the best was Fossils, but we were not sure if it was long enough.

i-stopmotion

We were creating the clips in i-stopmotion as we did for the trial ones. As I was in charge of making the individual sections into clips while Robyn resized the images I had a lot of waiting to do. I tried various ways of speeding the process up and the one that worked the best was to add one photograph at a time, although adding them in small goups of 5 was easier to follow.

Uploaded photos

Once I uploaded the pictures I organised them into folders according to the different parts of the film. We had split the film up into parts as we wanted some parts slower than others, also I would have to stop the clip and start a knew one whenever we wanted to add in a screen in the editing stage.The first clip I did was too big to play, as it would jump sections, we thought perhaps the problem was the size of the images we were imputting howverver we had already made clips from the same size images. We deducted the problem was the size of the clip itself over 3000 pixels in width and 2000 in height. Therefore we resized all the images to 1500 pixels wide and 1000 pixels in height. Robyn did this while I then put them into the istopmotion software to create the clips.

Party shots

As Robyn and I couldn't meet up before Monday when there was dim light, we made the decision that I would take the pictures for the party scene. I took them on Sunday night and it took a long time to get the right settings to get the right look, as it was starting to get dark and I had flashing fairy lights on inside the gingerbread house for the party effect. It was very hard compensating for the brights light on the camera settings, and I tried several different settings and camera angles. On Monday morning I went to Uni thinking I still hadn't got the shots right yet, but after uploading them from them SD card and Robyn looking at them we found two images that would work when put together.

     These are the test shots

 These were the best two photographs I managed to get, and luckily they are from exactly the same camera angle.

Filming day - friday

The first thing I did when Robyn got to my house was to make a decision on the house, whether or not we should have skylights. Her answer was 'definately', so they got added in, as extra we found some clear mints and crushed them up and put them in the holes for the windows. This would mean once cooked the mints would have melted into a sheet and created a window effect.

For the second day of filming our aim was to finish everything, and we did apart from the party scene at the end. This was a very big achieve as we only had a morning because I started work at three and had to take Robyn home first. The majority of time was taken up with the army men, decorating them then making them rise followed by their long walk across the counter. In the middle of the scene where the men walk across the camera we looked at the time and saw it was soon running out, so I left Robyn in charge of animating while I attached the roof and decorated the house. Once Robyn had finished the scene she helped me finish the house to get it done quickly as it was needed for the next scene.

     With both of us working together our pace started to pick up again and we were on track to finish with plenty of time to clear up, however while taking the pictures of the men walking into the house the roof started to slide down. This was not helpful as we had to try and fix it without moving the house too much, that was very hard and subsequently there is some movement in the house scene.

Building the gingerbread house

By the end of the filming day we decided that in order to speed things up on the friday which would be the next filming day, I suggested that I make the gingerbread house over the next day ready for decorating on the friday.

Lucklily I already had a template for the gingerbread house but found the original too big and the one I made myself too small for this project. I therefore placed the small version in the scanner/photocopier and scalled the size up 15%.

The small circles are the windows, as we want to put flashing fairy lights inside the house for the party scene, we need as many holes as possible for the light to come out.

Filming day - wednesday

Our first day of filming(photography) and I was really excited to get on, wanting to get as much done as possible, luckily Robyn was in the same mind set allowing us to get a good start. Unfortunately we didn't get as far as we had initally planned, however looking back on the day considerring all the obsticles we had as well as the different prep work taking longer than expected, we managed to complete about half of the whole film. Some of the set backs were the decorating the gingerbread men and getting the camera settings right.

The start of the day was staging the set which didn't take long as we just needed a clear section of the kitchen counter top, once that was cleared and cleaned ready, we had to set up the lighting which consisted of the over head lights in the kitchen plus two table lamps that we could make close to the action. The lamps went either ends of the counter, although one was too close and create too much shadow. Therefore we made a tower for the lamp to sit on taking it further away from the action and spreading out the light.

 
f16                                       f8

 

f5.6                                     f4.5

The next stage was decorating the gingerbread men, first we had to match up the various positions and then copy the design, matching the jelly tots and bow ties.

Other technicalities we came across we were able to fix. Such as, in order to lift the tray an appropriate height we needed to build another tower, so, we came up with the bowl and margarine, seeing that together they came to practically the same height as the larger gingerbread men.

Another was that when lifting the tray the gingerbread men couldn’t take the weight and kept falling, so, as a solution, George’s mum helped us to create the cardboard supports of which we glued the gingerbread men to so that they were supported enough.

Storyboard screens

Here are the different screens in sequence order.



Updated storyboard

After making lots of changes to the programme verbally we thought it would be a very good idea to put the ideas down formally in the storyboard below. With the chaos of the previous detailed storyboard I decided we needed a more structured one that was easy to follow, so I created a grid in Indesign and printed it off giving us a basic setup to draw in. 

The changes we have mage are not major but effect the story. The first change was to the begining, instead of having the large gingerbread men coming alive off the tray, they would be standing by the bowl when the introduction screen ended. They then would walk out of shot, but before the last one was out we would have the first ingredient on its way to the bowl. The main changes after that were we took out the mixing sequence and changed that to a screen.

Music thought

Most silent films have more classical style pieces of music that might have a comical element in. Robyn has said that she has a couple of cd's at home and will listen to them to see is anything pops out. I will see if i can find out what music was played in the films with Charlie Chaplin in.

Discussion on Silent film idea

A week ago Robyn had the idea of going for a silent film theme for our project, which sounded intruiging. While I looked into different styles of animation and deciding what was the best way to move ours, Robyn did research into Silent films and their main characteristics.

When developing the storyboard we were struggling to think of an idea for the transitions between the ingredeints getting to the bowl and being added to the bowl. Originally we were going to have the ingredients being pored into the bowl but when looking at examples decided it wasn't for us. However Robyn came up with the idea of using screens similarily used in silent films for speech and story telling. We could add the screens in when the ingredient get to the bowl and when the screen goes the ingredient will be in the bowl leaving the gingerbread man to walk off.

Antony Gormley

In the class tutorial that our little gingerbread men reminded someone of this sculpture by Turner Prize-winning artist Anthony Gormley, consisting of 40,000 clay figures, has been put on display at an empty Tudor manor house.

It took five days to place the humanoid characters into position  across the ground floor of Barrington Court, a National Trust Property near Ilminster in Somerset.

The Herbs, Miss Jessop Tidies Up

The Trap Door - Episode 1 - Series 1

Morph - Magic Door

Morph was one of the suggestions of animations to look into from the group crit/tutorial, I can't believe i didn't think of him before as I used to love watching him as a child.

There are so many Morph clips to look at I could spend days watching different ones, just one of the many that I have looked is The Magic Door.

Pre-Dynamation

Looking on Ray Harryhausen's official website I found lots of information on the people who created effects on the same line as Harryhausen was on but that were before his time.

To name a few:

Stuart James Blackton (1875-1941)

Arthur Melbourne-Cooper (1874-1961)

Edwin Stanton Porter (1869-1941)

Willis O”Brien (1886-1962)

All of the information I read can be found on Ray Harryhausen - The Offical Website

 

Ray Harryhausen - Dynamation

How the technique began.

For many years Ray had had an idea that would allow the live action to be ‘split’ so enabling a model to be inserted directly into the action and appear to interact with the actors.

The technique.

The process was simple but very effective.  He projected a live action image onto a rear screen in front of which was placed the animation table with the model.  He would then place a glass sheet in front of both.  When the live action plate had been shot Ray would establish where he wanted to make his matte line and so by looking through the camera viewfinder he would re-establish that line and with a wax pencil on the end of a stick, follow that line by drawing it on the glass.  When he was satisfied that the line was accurate he would then paint out, with black matt paint, the lower section, below the line.  He would then photograph the animation of the model reacting to the live action on the plate.  Afterwards he would then create a second pass in the camera to reinstate the lower previously matted out section so creating a combined image of the creature seemingly as part of the live action.

 

Wallace & Gromit

A Matter of Loaf & Death - How They Donut

 

To show the emotions of the characters it is all down to subtle eye movements, and the angle of the faces which is a very elaborate task. This is especially important when Gromit and Fluffles are in the scene as they do not talk so everything they say has to be done through movement and looks.

One of the scenes shown is where Gromit is returning the purse, and it shows him walking up to the house in the rain, opening the door and stepping in. All of that takes 200 frames which will equal less than 10 seconds. Whereas, our film for the most part will be roughly 7 frames per second.

Wallace and Gromit

Making of The Curse of the Were-Rabbit

The video is only small part of a documentary highlighting the what it took to make the were-rabbit move. I learnt that they start with a basic wire model that is used to work out the which different different parts of the body need to move including how and what directions. Then an armature is built which is just a metal skeleton that has all the mechanics to make the rabbit move, once the armature is ready padding is added to build up the body before the fur material is added. 

Group Crit - 14/05

In order to ensure everyone's projects to progress we had to go to the front of the class and give a presentation on what we had so far, including blogs that contained any relavent research. It was a very informal presentation as the object of it was to get feedback from the class and get different ideas for contectual research that would help.
When it was our turn Emily very kindly took notes for us:

From the crit we were given lots of different contextual research to look into, the most common comment was to look at various animations and the techniques used to make them.

Camera Tutorial

On the 14/05 our tutor took the time to take us through the basics of using the camera. Explaining the difference between a TLR- Twin Lens Reflex and a SLR- Single Lens Reflex (which i have).

Although I have attended two camera courses within the last two years, it was good to get a refresher on the different modes on the camera, as this will help to decide what settings I want for the camera.

Evaluation of Clips

After creating the 5 clips Robyn and I discussed each one in turn as we watched noting down any points that needed changing or tweaking.

Out of all 5 clips only two need to be adjusted, the first is that the larger gingerbread men swing too much which is easily fixed. The second is where the small army men are rising, we felt it was too fast and thought as a solution to have more images. I thought that I could change the number of frames per second to a smaller number than 14. The clip below has 7 frames per second and we both felt that was a better speed.

Tester - clip 5

5. Ingredients moving towards a bowl

Tester - clip 4

4. Small gingerbread men rising

Tester - clip 3

3. Small gingerbread men walking forwards.

Tester - clip 2

2. Small gingerbread army walking across the screen

Tester - clip 1

On Monday 14/05 I downloaded the images we took on the previous Wednesday, and then splitting the images up into groups. From there I used the programme 'istopmotion' to create 5 film clips from the photographs we took.

The settings were set at 14 frames per second on the recomendation of the tutor. Below is the first.

1. Large gingermen walking across the counter.

Evaluation of Trail Day

These are the notes of our thoughts straight after completing the photography session, and we will have to have a copy with us on the days we start photography properly as it will be important to look back on.

Trail Day - 09/05

Robyn and I thought after making most of the gingerbread men that we should test out some of the sequences before doing it for real, this would allow us time to work out any technical issues.

Here is the To Do List we created for the afternoon:

The first thing we tried to do was get the gingerbread men to stand up on their own long enough for us to take the pictures we need. Our solution was putting small pieces of blu tack on their feet.

It worked really well, however I was afraid that the blu tack would be visible as we had we used large pieces. I then kept halving the amount of blu tack I used until I found the balance between using the smallest amount possible but still having the gingerbread men stand up.

Once the problem of how the men were going to stand up, we need to set up the camera. While Robyn sorted out the gingerbread and took control of the camera and setting it up on the tripod. Before we started the shooting I took a trial shot without changing any of the settings on the camera, it turned out too dark (image on the left), I then changed the aperature and shutter settings giving a lighter picture (image on the right).

After taking the photographs for the test clips, we wanted to check that the pushing gingerbread we made would look as if they were pushing the ingredients that we had just tried moving across the counter. 

 I think they will work really well, we just have to be careful with the blu tack to make sure as little as possible shows.

Baking Day 07/05 - development

From the previous baking day Robyn and I thought that we might want to create our own templates as the cutter we used was a bit larger than we wanted. In the images mine is on the left and Robyn's on the right. Although they turned out okay, we both felt that neither was going to work for us, mine looked too much like a mens' toilet sign whereas Robyn's reminded us of the fat, lazy people from the film Walle.

Making the gingerbread in various positions was easier this time around as we took into consideration what we had learned on the previous baking day. We supported the head of the lying down figure with foil, and as another technique we stuck cocktail sticks into the arms, hoping they would help keep the dough up. We also wanted to have gingerbread men pushing a rolling pin in our storyboard, which means that they have to lean forward in order to get down to the rolling pin and we did this by wrapping foil round a slice of rolled up bread and sticking cocktail sticks in the arms to hold them up. One of the end results seen above on the right was before we decided to stick cocktail sticks in the arms to keep them in place.

As the previous attempts of trying to make the gingerbread sit up failed this was our last attempt. We took a cake tin and greased the outside with butter to help the dough stick with to the tin. However while cooking the dough still slid down on some where the others just folded down. Another technique we tried was using the bread rolls and placing the gingerbread on the edge with the legs dangling down. The results can be seen in second row in the picture on the right, instead of sitting up they roll.

The last part of the day was taken up with working out the decoration for the gingerbread men. We agreed that for the buttons the larger men will have smarties and the smaller men for the army will get buttons made using icing. Also what started as a cover up of a crack the 'dickie bow' is now going to be a feature.

Baking Day 02/05 - first experiments

After Uni on Wednesday afternoon Robyn and I went shopping for the ingredients before heading to my house to start the baking process.

All was going well, until we were ready to roll out the dough and I went to get the gingerbread man shape cutter out of the draw to clean it ready when I realised the cutter was missing. From there we went on an extensize gingerbread man cutter hunt, that entailed going to Robyn's house the to two supermarkets and then finally an After School Club before finding a cutter big enough.

The one and only big cutter we found was a girl gingerbread, which was fine, it's just we had not thought of having a  girl army. Our first effort was to have the gingerbread sit up. Not sure on how to do this we first tried cookie the gingerbread and while it was still hot from the oven bend it in the middle. Unfortunately that turned out to be too late as the picture above shows the gingerbread still snapped in half giving the effect of a shorter torso.

Our other successes shown above are 'carrying gingerbread' which is on the left with the arms up by the head, the only thing to consider is perhaps having the arms thinner. The last two pictures are for the posing by the clock in the cooking sequence, one worked really well the gingerbread that is leaning however the last one wasn't that good. We wanted it to look as if it was lying with the head resting on its hands. Unfortunately the bottom of the arms didn't rise as the head stopped it so we need to work out how to fix it.

To make a leg go forward we thought about adding something underneath the dough to lift it up. First of all we tried a piece of baking paper folded up but found it put a kink in the leg, so we tried tin foil. This was much better allowing us to taper and mold the foil to give a more gradual lift to the leg. It worked so well that we used the technique for other positions. 

Unfortunately the outcomes were a disaster as seen to the right. The arms in the top picture of the pushing gingerbread didn't work as they became squished and looked like fat stumps. The second image is supposed to be of a gingerbread man sat up, however the technique of just having the tin foil didn't work as while cooking the legs dropped down on to the torso as they weren't supported to stay up.