Storyboard

 

peer review

Here's some feedback from the members in my group which identified as the strengths within my animation:

• nice colours
• fluid movement
• nice style with the found objects 
• realistic movement

and some improvements:

• could use some sounds 
• reduce the shadows in the pictures

After the group discussion I followed the suggests, I started to look for  music to put into my final animation and after that i took more frames for the each scenes.

Final animation

"Reduce oil use please..."

Here's the final animation. The aim of this brief was to create an animation to present the news story. I learnt several techniques such as shadow puppet animation, chalkboard animation, found object experiment animation, sand animation, flip book animation and zeotrope. I also researched some artists including PES and Jan Svankmajer. My aniamtion was influenced by PES and I followed the way how PES used the objects to present stop motion animation. I chose my final idea by researching the ideas of global warming and ice melting.
 I found the a news about a cargo ship accident in New Zealand, Australia and there's resulted in 350-ton oil spill into the ocean which killed thousand of sea birds including some of the native blue penguins. However, a yarn store asked people to sew knit sweaters for the small animals.The message behind my animation was to remind people to reduce oil use and to be environment friendly.
 For my found objects animation, I used some knit puppets of penguins and  fishes, a ship which made by recycle cans and some colourful tissue papers. I also painted 15 pictures for the backgrounds of every scenes form the storyboard. The images that I have used are about the oil spilled in the ocean and the penguins were stained with the oil. The animation presents the emotion and mood of sadness and helpless because of the oil spilled in the ocean and more than thousand of the animation died. 
The things that I could improve for next time are to provide a stable angle during taking the frames for scenes and not produce any shadows inside the scenes. Also i would produce small movements of every frames to make it more fluent. I feel like the techniques of setting up a stable angle for taking frames are very useful and i would like to use it for the next assignment. 
Here's some symbolic images in the work which i think that can remind people to pay attention in the pollution caused and safe the animals. 

Flip book animaiton

A flip book or flick book is a book with a series of pictures that vary gradually from one page to the next, so that when the pages are turned rapidly, the pictures appear to animate by simulating motion or some other change. Flip books are often illustrated books for children, but may also be geared towards adults and employ a series of photographs rather than drawings. Flip books are not always separate books, but may appear as an added feature in ordinary books or magazines, often in the page corners. Software packages and websites are also available that convert digital video files into custom-made flip books.

 

 

flip book animation

Juan Fontanive

Artist Juan Fontanive has one-upped the original flip book and has created a series of flipbook machines. Combining sculpture and animation, this gorgeous bird-themed illustrated flipbook will inspire any artist. Hand-assembled by Fontanive, the motorised machines allow the illustrations to speak for themselves - showcasing the intricate detail with every flip.

juan fontanive - nathalie hambro

 

Juan Fontanive @ Photo LA XX

James Francis Bell

Kicking things off is this inspiring flip book by artist James Francis Bell aka DispleasedEskimo. At just over three minutes long, hundreds of awesome biro drawings tell a brief history of, well, pretty much everything. 

A Brief History of Pretty Much Everything

This is the short animation by using the flip book technique. It had produced by hand drawing and it took for 35 frames in total. Flip book animation is the easiest way to produce animation however it took the longest time to produce an animation by drawing little changes in every time. This video has inspired by  James Francis Bell. I tried to use the same techniques but it doesn't work well for the final outcome, it's hardly to control the paper while you are flipping and making the movements in every frames. Therefore, I decided not use this techniques for my final animation.

Materials:

 A8 (A7)papers, pencil, clips and light box( using the light outside the window) 

 

Step 1

1. Use ruler to draw frames
2. Use the ruler to help you lightly draw a series of rectangles on loose paper. These will act as guides, or frames, for your concept.
3. Start with about 48 frames—you can add or subtract later as needed.

 Step 2

1. Sketch animation in frames
2. Conceptualize in your head the scene you’d like to animate. Then lightly sketch out your animation in the frames, drawing one frame for each stage of animation.
3. Draw the first and last frames before filling in the intermediary steps.  

Step 3

1. Draw frames on index cards
2. When you’re done with the sketches, it's time to make the actual flip book. Carefully draw each frame on the right-hand side of a different index card.
3. If your animation images are small, draw them near the top corner. It will help you align your drawings to a common point of reference.

Step 4

Occasionally test

Occasionally test how your animation looks by holding the left side of the stack firmly with your left hand and flipping through the right side with your right thumb.

1. If you think there's a jump in the animation, insert a new card between the awkward frames and draw an intermediate step.
2. Step 5

   Loop rubber band

   When you're satisfied with all your drawings, loop the rubber band tightly around the left side of the stack.
3. Step 6

   Flip through book

   Now set the scene in motion with a flick of your thumb. Try flipping it from back to front—yup, the scene goes backward!

Puppet animation

Puppet animation

Puppet animation is a stop motion animation technique to make a physically manipulated object appear to move on

 its own. The object is moved in small increments between individually photographed frames, creating the illusion of

movement when the series of frames is played as a continuous sequence.

Gul Ramani

Gul Ramani produced traditional shadow puppets of India animation. A Gazelle's wish is a tale from the ancient 

Panchatantra.

Indian Shadow Puppet Animation

This is the short puppet animation with 30 frames. The black paper, pencil, cutter and the pins had been used for the equipment. It's influence by Lotte Reiniger. Once the puppet character had created, it's easily and quickly to photograph for the following frames. Using the technique of puppet animation is more flexible compared to other techniques, it also produced a fluid movement. 

Health and safety:

• should not messing around with the cutter.
• tidy the table before you start doing the puppet.
• table should be clean up after use.
• you should put attention when you are using the pins and keep distance. 

chalkboard animation

Chalkboard animation is stop motion animations which produced on a chalk board. The technique involves erasing some or all of the drawing before the next frame is drawn.

Dustin Grella

Dustin Grella is an American artist who creates stop motion animations. He inspired his stories of others who call his voice mail and leave their experiences of life, and he makes them into animations by using the chalkboard technique. Sometimes he will wet the chalk to make it drip. 

Animation Hotline "Famous People" - Sundance 2014

Animation Hotline "Green" - Sundance 2014

Lucinda Schreiber

Lucinda is an Australian director animator and illustrator. After studying Fine Art at RMIT she graduated from UTS with a MA in Animation where she is now engaged as a lecturer in motion graphics and animation. Her graduate short film. "The Goat That Ate Time" has been screened widely and received national and international awards including the Kenneth and Harle award for best new director ar the Chicago International Children's Animation Festival. Since the Lucinda has directed and animated numerous music videos and TVCs for clients including Gotye, Sake 5th Avenue, Telstra, Midnight Juggernauts and Kotex. She is represented by Photoplay Flims in Australia.

Firekites "Autumn Story"

Gotye - Smoke and Mirrors - official live visuals

This is my chalkboard animation:

This is a short animation of 6 frames which has created on black paper using colour chalks. The techniques of it was erased and redrawn to provide the fluid movement. This animation should included more frames between the next frame to explain the story.  

Materials:

chalkboard (black paper), colour chalks, tissue paper and water

Health and safety:

• do not eat and drink of the chalks and the water or during the process.
• pay attention while you are using the chalks.
• do not touch the eyes when you are using the chalk
• use the eyes washer immediately if the chalks get into the eyes.
• make sure to clean up the environment  after the used.

 

animation- scene 3

This is a short animation which will be include in my final animation. After the peer assessment which is in a group of 3, they think in this animation the colours are nice, it has fluid and realistic movement and nice style with the found objects. However they suggested i can work with using sounds and remove the shadows of the animation. And I work for more frames afterword and try to start looking for sound which suit for my frames.

final animation experiment

I took 30 frame of the animation for experiment. I have used Legos, plastic bubble and a drawing paper which has coloured in black. I tried different angles and movements, and its inspired by PES. 

life drawing animation

This is the animation combined with 12 life drawings pictures in class with different angles. Black chalks and white drawing papers have been used for it. 

Animation

Stop frame animation 

This is the animation that have been made in group of three with hand drawings and coloring on then photographed. This is the story about the sea bird flying through the city. It's influenced by the sea bird outside the window of the studio. I found out the primary research of seabird then i drew out a cartoon version of it and what i found it's hard is i have to draw different positions of the movement but also have to be link up to the story line of the previous page. The thing that i would improve next time is to finish coloring every pages and i would also put more details drawings.

sand animation

Sand Animation

Sand animation is a broad term used to refer to two methods of creating moving pictures / films of sand art; one method is an actual animation technique, while the other focuses more on capturing the act of painting with sand on film. A sand animation performer will often use the aid of an overhead projector or lightbox. They can end in the exact same result, but they're still different and only one counts as real animation. In actual sand animation, each frame is created individually by the animator, then captured on camera, just like in cel animation. The only difference is that instead of using ink and paint on acetate cels, the animator is using sand on a flat surface, usually made of either wood or backlit glass. Animators may use different colored sands to create complex pictures, or may just arrange the sand with their hands to let light, shadow, depth, and density create the picture.

The Sand Artists:

Kseniya Simonova is a sand animator. At first, she finds it's very difficult, because its was sand- not pencils or paints.She experiments with beach but it was too uncomfortable for sand animation and then she tried the river sand, but that did not work. However,her husband began researching better options on the internet and he found out the volcanic sand.The she started practicing drawing with sand in a small dark room in a house they rented. She said it was so difficult that she wanted to give up in three days. It was physically hard because she had to stand for long hours. Simonova trained at nights for three months. To realized the essence of sand animation, with its constant transformations of images, she had to retrain her vision and start seeing objects as they would appear in sand.It is challenging, this is the art form required her standing for long periods of timeand also required her retrain her vision to adapt to the unique medium. 

This is Kseniya Simonova's sand animation work from youtube: 

"Beautiful Morocco" (2013)

"Legends of China"

IIana Yahav is a sand artist or sand animation artist. Her art reflected in performances in front of live audience, in video clips and in advertisements. It is a unique, minimalist art form that few artists worldwide engage in. Ilana created the puppets for a politicial satire program on the lsraeli television named "Chartzufim", based on the UK's notorious "Spitting Image". As a sand artist, Ilana performed all over the world, in front of a diverse range of cultures and backgrounds: from small, local and intimate performances before the King of Spain, the King of Belgium, and others.
Each performance requires lengthy preparations, stasting with the many sketches that she makes in a notebook, and numerous experiments on the sand table itself. Here, the creation generally undergoes extensive changes until the final version is crystallized. In the performances, Ilana uses her hands to create images in sand on a transparent backlit table, while a video camera positioned above her conveys the emerging creation live to a giant screen that displays it to the audience. light and music also form impotant elements of Ilana's creations. in her works, she uses colourful lights that emerge from under a transparent table and a soundtrack adpapted specifically to the message and the sensations being conveyed in the work, and sometimes even composed and produced specially for this purpose.




This is IIana Yahav's works from youtube:

 "Jupiter"

"Love 2008"

In this video; sand, brushes and black card paper are used in this sand animation. The story of this animation is about the penguin finding fish in the ocean and swimming happily. Sand is a unstable object to use for taking frames however it also presents the soft movement which be easily to control and it doesn't left any marks behind. It's difficult to catch every same angles during photographing; although i have used the camera stand to hold on the right position, the ineffable things might change the position, like pushing the stand accidentally during filming the video. Next time i will put more attention on this problem and add more details of the sand drawings.

My thoughts

The news story that I have chosen is happened in New Zealand, Australia. A cargo ship accident in New Zealand resulted in a 350-ton oil spill into the ocean. The spill devastatingly killed thousand of sea birds, including some of the native blue penguins.To help penguins affected by the oil spill, a yarn store asked people to sew knit sweaters for the small animals. 

While sweaters might be an unusual solution, Napier, New Zealand yarn store Sketinz thought that these "penguin jumpers" would keep the birds warm and safe from consuming the toxic oil coating on their feathers until they can be cleaned.   
I want to make an animation about this news story by using the found objects, because it could take less time than hand drawings once the characters and objects has been produced.

Lotte Reiniger’s Silhouette Animation

Lotte Reiniger?s career as an independent filmmaker is among the longest and most singular in film history, spanning some 60 years (1919-79) of actively creating silhouette animation films. Her The Adventures of Prince Achmed is the world?s first feature-length animation film, made when she was in her mid-twenties and winning considerable acclaim.Before there was Disney’s first full-length animated feature, “Snow White” (1937), there was Lotte Reiniger’s “The Adventures of Prince Achmed” (1926). Inspired by Chinese silhouette puppetry, Reiniger was a German animator who specialized in silhouette animation and invented a technique which involved cutting out sheets of lead and cardboard and animating them frame by frame under a camera. One of her famous films was “The Adventures of Prince Achmed.” Based on the stories of 1001 Arabian Nights, it tells the tale of the main character finding the magic lamp and defeating the evil sorcerer. It is the oldest animated feature film that still is surviving today. Check out the videos below about how Lotte Reiniger made her silhouette animation and a clip of “The Adventures of Prince Achmed.”

Lotte Reiniger - Hansel and Gretel 

Cinderella (Aschenputtel) - Lotte Reiniger (1922)

Lotte Reiniger - Papageno - (1935).m4v

found object animation

Found Object Animation

Object animation is a form of stop motion animation that involves the animated movements of any non-drawn objects such as toys, blocks,dolls, etc. which are not fully malleable, such as clay or wax, and not designed to look like a recognizable human or animal character.

Object animation is considered a different form of animation distinct from model animation and puppet animation, as these two forms of stop-motion animation usually use recognizable characters as their subjects, rather than just objects like static toy soldiers, or construction toys such as toys, lego brand bricks etc.

Object animation is often combined with other forms of animation, usually for a more realistic effect (e.g., Model Animation or Puppet Animation to add more complex movement or depth to the characters). For example; A toy car can be animated, but is more often animated with a character easily seen driving the car.

The use of animated objects in film has been present since the early days of cinema.

The animators of find object:

Adam Pesapane, akaPES

A first look at the work of Adam Pesapane, akaPES, brings to mind the films of Jan Svankmajer, the 73 years old Czech surrealist whose food- related stop-motion animations can be seen as an influence in the University of Virginia alum's playful and unusual uses of chow for all sorts of anarchic configurations and stories.
"I learned a lot by watching [Svankmajer's] films," said PES in an exclusive interview with Tilzy.TV. "I liked what he was doing with objects, using them as ideas and textures.

The found object animations by PES from youtube:

Western Spaghetti

Fresh Guacamole

Jan Švankmajer

"I never call myself an animated flimmaker because I am interested not in animation techniques or creating a complete illusion, but in bringing life to everyday objects." 

Jan Švankmajer (born 4 September 1934 in Prague) is a Czech surrealist artist. His work spans several media. He is known for his surreal animations and features, which have greatly influenced other artists such as Tim Burton, Terry Gilliam, The Brothers Quay and many others. Švankmajer has gained a reputation over several decades for his distinctive use of stop-motion technique, and his ability to make surreal, nightmarish and yet somehow funny pictures. He is still making films in Prague. Švankmajer’s trademarks include very exaggerated sounds, often creating a very strange effect in all eating scenes. He often uses very sped-up sequences when people walk and interact. His movies often involve inanimate objects coming alive and being brought to life through stop-motion. Food is a favorite subject and medium. Stop-motion features in most of his work, though his feature films also include live action to varying degrees.

The found object animation by Jan Svankmajerr from youtube:

Meat Love

 A Game with Stones 1965

  

I did a found object animation presentation to the class with Kyle and Alex. and here's the workshop powerpoint:

This is the video of the found object animation which has done by a group of three. The materials that we found in the art studio are: a rubber, a plastic thumb, some little piece of clothes, camera and camera stand. Before we started making this video, we paid attention for looking some useful and safe objects which is not like knife, scissors or can opener for health and safety. The story is about a couple and how they fell in love. It's inspired by the PES- the animator of found object animation. For the characters, the only girl in this video wears a pink dress, pink headband and long curly hair. Those details could help people understand which roles they are playing. We did experiments then we took enough amounts of frames for this animation because of the characters have been created, therefore we took the following frames quickly and finished it in a shorty time. I found it's hard during video it, next time i would put more attention on the story line and the angles, using a camera stand is very important as well to keep on the right positions.

How Knitting Sweaters Can Help Save Penguins' Lives

How Knitting Sweaters Can Help Save Penguins' Lives 

OCTOBER 18, 2013 – 2:15 PM – 0 COMMENTS

By ASHLEIGH SCHMITZ 

(Corbis)

Editor’s note: On Oct. 5, 2011, a cargo ship accident in New Zealand resulted in a 350-ton oil spill into the ocean. To help penguins affected by the oil spill, a yarn store asked people to sew knit sweaters for the small animals.

On your mark, get set, knit! That’s the message one New Zealand store gave the Internet in an attempt to help save its nation’s penguins.

The October 5 oil spill in New Zealand, which saw 350 tons of oil poured into the ocean, was called the country’s “most significant environmental maritime disaster” by New Zealand Environment Minister Nick Smith in a press conference. The spill devastatingly killed thousands of sea birds, including some of the native blue penguins.

While sweaters might be an unusual solution, Napier, New Zealand yarn store Skeinz thought that these “penguin jumpers” would keep the birds warm and safe from consuming the toxic oil coating on their feathers until they can be cleaned. Think of them like the plastic cones put on a dog to keep him or her from interfering with a healing injury.

The store posted a request as well as patterns for knitters looking to make the animal world a little safer — and cuter. In the short time they collected sweaters for penguins in need, Skeinz reached its goal and thanked their benevolent donors:

The response has been so overwhelming that we no longer require any more jumpers for the penguins effected but make sure you check out our blog for latest updates on what we are doing with the surplus jumpers & the a way that you can still knit & be contributing to the penguin cause.

Without mentioning how many sweaters they received, Skeinz promised to share their plans for the extras as well as updates on how do-gooders can continue to help the penguins.

http://parade.condenast.com/217117/ashleighschmitz/how-knitting-sweaters-can-help-save-penguins-lives/ 

http://jamieharperstudio.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/penguin-jumper.html