Animation

In this assignment I will be exploring the key principles of motion design. The motion design principles can be broken up into the following areas. Timing, speed of change, arcs, motion blur, squash and stretch, motivation/anticipation, follow through, overlapping action and staging/exaggeration. Using these principles I will aim to produce three pieces of animation which will illustrate or demonstrate a range of these animation principles.

In order to produce these animations I will be using shapes rather than complex drawings or recognizable objects. Within the animations my choice of colour pallet is very important as this could make or brake the piece, the colour is key. Each of the animations will be between 15 and 20 seconds in length and will contain a soundtrack of my choice.

The motion design principles explained in more depth:

Timing: Spacing actions to define weight and size

Speed of change: Spacing of thein - between keyframes to achieve natural movement.

Arcs: The visual path of action for natural movement.

Motion Blur: To enhance appearance of motion.

Squash and Stretch: Defining the rigidity and weight of an object by distorting its shape during an action. It is one of the most important rules of animation, this is because in order for an object to look convincing it must 'give' when external forces are applied to it. For example when a ball hits the ground it will squash, also when it falls and rises it will stretch. The only time in which the ball is perfectly round is when it is at the top of each arc, where the resistance is at its least.

Obviously a softer ball, for example and beach ball will squash and stretch a lot whereas a cannonball will hardly squash and stretch at all. The Squash and Stretch techniques are a good when trying to convey an objects density and mass.

Motivation/ Anticipation: Preparation for an action. This can be used to direct the viewers attention to part of the screen. Some anticipation occurs naturally, for example a mouse is about to hit a cat over the head with a mallet. So the pulling back of the mallet is the moment of anticipation. It lets the viewer know what is going to happen next.

Motivation is when the action clearly shows that another action is about to take place. When a car motor starts, the engine makes the car judder as it revs, ready to explode into action.

Follow Through: Termination of an action. A good example of this is in golf, the golfer once taken his swing at the ball, the golf club must follow through.

Overlapping Action: Establishing its relationship to the next action. It is when one action over laps another, for example, imagine whilst having breakfast you take a bite of your toast and then having a sip of tea, those movements might overlap, of you were'nt to overlap those movements it could result in a unnatural look.

Staging / Exaggeration: Presenting an idea so that it is unmistakably clear. In animation terms Exaggeration is used to emphasize whatever key idea or feeling you wish to portray. Depending on what part of the animation is most relevant to the scene, that is the part that you would want to emphasize the most.

Staging, we must have in mind that the viewer does not have the luxury of knowing what is about to happen in your animation, this is why we must make a conscious effort to set the scene for them. This involves attracting the viewers attention and focusing it on a particular subject of area of the screen. It can also set a mood or certain feeling that you wish the viewer to understand.

Finished Movie

Here is my finished movie, I really enjoyed this project, I did not come across to many problems. I found Final Cut good to use, and as I now know the basics I cant wait to learn further and be able to do more detailed things.

My finished movie is 15 seconds and has 21 cuts in total. I did find it tricky to cut my material down, but by having to do this it made me look at the material in more detail, and forced me to decide on the really important parts of each clip. I feel that overall I have produced a good first attempt and am happy with my result. Perhaps I could have experimented with more unreal/downloaded sound, but I felt that my material had enough of its own recored sound to carry it.

Final cut and compressor

I next needed to compress all my clips by using a programme called compressor, this took rather a long time, I tried to do all 60 of my clip together but I found that this was to much for the programme to handle so I did them in batches. I used a setting to compress my files with called Apple Pro Res 422 for Progressive material, I dragged this option onto my clips and it began to convert them.

My next job was to put all my Pro Res files into a separate folder and drag that folder into Final cut to start the editing process.

Once I filmed my movie, using various different shots types etc. I had to decide as I was putting them together in Final Cut, what kind of edit/cut effects I wanted to use between each clip. I knew of a film, that I studied at Alevel called "A Bout De Souffle", it is a 1960's film, that a famous French director called Jean - Luc Godard created. This film is best known for its visual style and unusual editing, in particular for it constant use of jump cuts and hand held camera work. The way in which it uses the jump cuts in particular is what interests me, I thought that with the kind of material that I have shot, the jump cut technique would work really well, as it is a short, snappy sequence. Below is a sequence from the film that uses thejump cutediting technique.

I have also picked out this film called 'City of God" it is a Brazilian crime drama directed by Fernando Meirelles and Katia Lund. It is about the growth of organised crime in the suburbs of Rio de Janeiro, between the end of the 60's and the beginning of the 80's. I have selected the opening sequence of the movie to look at. The movie begins with chickens being prepared for a meal. Al chicken escapes and an armed ganga chases after it. The chicken comes to a stop between the gang and a young man, who believes the gang want to kill him. The timeline then flashes back to ten years earlier, the young man tells the story of how he got himself into that position.

I studied this movie also at A level so I know it well, it uses a brilliant use of jump cuts and cutting between two different sets of action. I find this use of jump cuts particularly spectacular because it is at the very start of the film, as it has to introduce the main characters.

Putting all my clips in order in Final Cut was a challenge, I had over 60 clips, ranging in all sorts of lengths. I put the good clips, with clear quality and that I thought I could use into my timeline, so I had a clear understanding of what clips I was going to use. Below is how my timeline looked with the clips in order, I made sure I had spacing in between each clip so I could rearrange the order with ease.

Next I began to go though each clip in my timeline, and shorten it down. My first cut with all the roar clips that I had not touched came to nearly 5mins! I picked the best bits from each clip and kept shortening it down until I hit my target time. Below is my timeline much shortened at 16 secs with 20 edits.

Below is my nearly finished movie, it has some issues though. First being it is a second over the allocated time at 16secs instead of 15secs. I feel that the first two clips go by to fast and the last two I dont really need both clips of the horses grooming each other. I will play around with it some more and see what I can change to make it better.

Filiming

I decided that I was going to film the Farrier (Blacksmith) when he came to do my horses shoes. On the morning that I was due to film, I set up and experimented with different possible positions and heights that I would need my camera at, before he came so as I was prepared and knew how my shots were going to look. Also I needed to try and position myself so the sun was behind me, however as it was early morning the sun was on the move.

I began shooting and did lots of short clips, from various different distances, some close ups, extreme close ups and long shots. I also wanted to start with an establishing shot, to set the scene.

I found that as I was shooting, the sun became a little problem as it was moving I had to too, otherwise the light got in the way and distorted the colour of the shot. I also found that the zoom was a bit tricky, it looked fine on the camera, however once uploaded on the computer it wasn't so clear and looked a little fuzzed. I overall got some good shots and came away with lots of material that I need to sift though and decide what bits I can use. I got some great sound effects, the hammering of the nails into the horses foot, the reshaping and bashing of the shoe, the hot furnace, the rasping and the hissing sound of the shoes being burnt onto the horses foot.

Here are some screen shots of the type of shots that I have taken.

Research

My first movie trailer I looked at was for a new film called the Prince of Persia. This film trailer is the prime example of a trailer for a hollywood film. It has the slower, longer shots, with fewer cuts which builds up and up. The build up is so we can get a grip on the story then the pace picks up and the cuts get sharper and much quicker, until it reaches its crescendo and ends with a bang. Another trailer that is similar is Gladiator.

I picked one particular scene to have a look at the amount of edits, cuts were used. I decided to pick one very memorable scene where Maximus says his all famous quote. " My name is Maximus Decimus Meidius, Commander of the Armies of the North, General of the Felix Legions, loyal servent to the true emperor, Marcus Aurelius. Father to a murdered son, husband to a murdered wife. And I will have vengeance, in this life or the next". In the time it took for him to say this, I counted 12 cuts in just 8 seconds. I imagine there are places in the film were the cuts are alot faster, however I thought that the way that this scene in particular was put together was good, I like the way it flashes back to him then away again to action scenes.

Crash, Bang, Wallop!

Our Brief is to use video editing to convey a fast and stimulating experience. I will make a short film piece that lasts no more than 15 secs with no less that 20 edits. My piece can either describe an everyday situation in a dramatic or dynamic way or subvert the expected response to a situation.

The aim is to make a film which represents the main action as key moments and which creates as much dramatic impact as possible. You will edit the piece with the goal of making a film which as economical and succinct as possible. The theme that we must follow is Crash, Bang, Wallop!

I am going to begin by doing some research, I want to see the average speed that videos are edited and how they are compiled. You Tube will be a good source, I can look at movie trailers and music videos on here.

Interface

The interface I found to be very difficult, I managed to get all my buttons onto my index html page, but they were all in one long line down the left hand side, one good thing is that they animated, but when clicked on did not link.

Also I managed to get all of the stories in the html pages, but only the first swf worked, as soon as clicked on they did not link to the rest of the swf in that story. I had run out of idea to make them link to the rest of the story. I will have to seek help in this area to proceed. I did come to a conclusion to why my buttons did not link though, I dont think I have linked them properly in flash actions, I will try and sort this out.

I next tried to put all my buttons into flash again, this time copying and pasting them, this did work to an extent, did loose a few flourishes, however when it came to time to do the action script I think there was somewhere where I was going wrong as they did not link. I did a header a footer in html, which successfully linked to each story, which needs separating, but the story does not play past the first slide.

I figured out my problem, I had named quite a few of buttons with the same instance name, so they did not work, I renamed then and changed the action script as well. This worked and all my buttons linked to the correct story. Also I neatened up my footer, I centered it and changes the colour this looked much better, it was a case of changing my css and relinking it. Below is my new html page.