Thursday 17th October 2013 - Afternoon

Exercise 4
Team: Dean, Kelsey, Lorne

Later on in the day we decided to do our final shoot for our armature animation. We went with the few ideas we had come up with before we had done our test. The ideas we used were a walking animation, a flirtacious character and the armature unscrewing a bottle cap and placing it on its head.

The first animation that was done was a walking animation. Lorne was the one moving the armature whilst Kelsey was operating the camera. The settings used were 1/10 F20 ISO 1600 and tungsten lighting. We did do a few test shots and was originally going to use floresent lighting however we decided that tungsten lighting was better.

A shot with the floresent lighting setting.

A shot with the tungsten lighting setting.

After we found the settings we wanted to use we began animating. Whilst Lorne was moving the armature I was being used as a kind of reference by walking around just so he could get an idea of how the armature moved. He didn't run into many problems during the process of his part of the animation and then we moved onto the second part of the animation.

This time it was Kelseys turn to move the armature and I was in operating the camera. Before Kelsey began animating the armature needed to have a few screws loosened as some joints were a bit stiff and hard to move. I also positioned the camera closer to the armature for a close up shot as Kelsey was only animating the top half of the armature. We kept the same settings for the camera and refocused the camera by using auto-focus.

For the third and final part of the animation I was moving the armature and Lorne was operating the camera. Again the same camera settings were used and we refocused the camera again using auto-focus. The animation process went fairly well although I encountered a problem at the end of the process which I did not know how to fix. One of the hands of the armature was falling out of its socket and it would continue to slide out of the socket when the arms pointed towards the floor.

Armature Animation

The above link will take you to the Armature Animation.

Thursday 17th October 2013 - Morning

Exercise 4
Team: Dean, Kelsey & Lorne

For this exercise we need to shoot a short animated sequence with a bare armature which includes a walk and a range of body expressions.

The camera settings we used today were 1/6, F20, ISO 1600 and used white floresent lighting. We used white floresent lighting for the test shoot as the lighting was fairly yellow on the cloudy setting, we also had the setting on tungsten but the shots were quite blue.

The lighting on the cloudy setting

The lighting on the tungsten setting

The lighting on the floresent setting

We did three different types of test shots to help us understand how to animated various types of shots and what type of camera angles we should use. The first test animation was of the armature going from a standing pose to a fighting stance and then go for a punch.

Afterwards, we then did a test for a walking animation. This helped us greatly as we got a little bit of experience making the armature walk as well as knowing where to drill the holes so we can screw the foot to the table. 

The last test we did was a very short one to see about conveying an expression with an armature with no face. So the expression we chose was shock, and animated the armature putting its hands to the face.

Friday 4th October 2013

Exercise 3 - Pixilation
Team: Dean, Lorne & Joesph

Today we went to our chosen location to begin our pixilation shoot. I was controlling the camera whilst Lorne and Joesph were the actors. I also ended up being an actor at the very end of the shoot and Lorne took over the camera. The settings we used on the camera were 1/640 F100 and the lens we used was an 18-55mm. This was because the 50mm lens we tried did not zoom out as far as the 18-55mm.

Our shoot went fairly smoothly however there is a huge inconsistency with the lighting throughout the animation. This occurred because we decided an outdoor shoot would be more beneficial as we could utilized the vast area instead of being limited by the walls of a room indoors. We needed more room because we planned on having the person being controlled teleport to various places. We also wanted to use a variety of different camera angles, including wide-shots, and we felt that being indoors would limit our options. 

However, as mentioned before we did not have consistent lighting during the animation. This was because it was fairly sunny on the day of the shoot and clouds kept casting shadows. We did try our best from shooting whilst shade was cast over the area we were filming, this did not work out though. The more time we spent waiting for a cloud to pass, the more time it was going to take to finish the animation. We needed to finish the shoot today as we would not have access to the same area, that we were shooting in, until Monday. There was no guarentee that the weather would be the same on Monday and we did not want an inconsistency with the weather to go along with the inconsistent lighting.

This image shows how inconsistent the lighting, sky and shadows are compared to the image above.

There was a mistake that I made various times throughout the shooting process that I did not realize was that I postition the camera in a direction facing the sun. Because of it being a bright day whenever the camera is facing the sun, the sky goes very bright. This caused even more incosistencies with the lighting that could have been avoided if I had known not to shoot towards the sun. However the reason I did shoot towards the sun was to avoid getting the shadows of me, the camera and the tripod in the shots.

This image shows how affected the sky becomes in the shot in the direction of the sun.

From this we have learned that if we want to do animations outside, we first need to wait for ideal weather. Ideal weather would be a day where there is hardly any change in lighting, usually a cloudy day. Also an animation at night would be practical as street lamps are a consistent source of light and the sky doesn't change rapidly, instead the sky takes quite a few hours until it begins to get brighter. However, we did not decide to shoot during the night was because it was impractical for us too all get together as we do not live that close to one another. Also, we wanted an area with a wide open space but places like parks and fields are not lit up at all during the night so there would be no way we could shoot our animation.

During post-production editing we could have attempted to fix the inconsistent lighting in Adobe Photoshop, however, we did not want to try this. This is because if we tried to fix over 600 images, I feel we wouldn't finish the images in time and then there would be even more incosistencies as some images would be edited and some would not.

 

This is the completed version of the pixilation aniamtion.

Thursday 3rd October 2013

Exercise 3 - Pixilation
Team: Dean, Lorne & Joesph

For this exercise we needed to create a pixilation for a duration of 30-45 seconds.

Our pixilation is going to be about a person controlling another like a puppet. The puppeteer will control the puppet by using hand gestures to imply he is in control. After a while the puppet will get fed up of being controlled and then instead take control of the puppeteer. To finish off the animation they both lunge to teleport the other and end up both disappearing permanently. 

We briefly brainstormed ideas of what the puppet will be forced to do whilst he is being controlled. Our main ideas were that the puppet will be lifted into the air, dragged side to side, teleported and causing self inflicted pain (e.g. slapping themself across the face). We also used Star Wars as an influence to add more variety. For example, we plan on using the chokehold as well as a force push.

After we had planned out what will happen during our pixilation we then went and done a few test shots in preparation. We needed to trial how we were going to do the scenes where the puppet is floating in mid air, as well as how we were going to do the teleporation. This was also a good opportunity to see what camera lens we would use and other various scenes of the animation.

The first thing we did was a few test shots, on a phone camera, of a few camera angles we want to use in our animation. These were an over the shoulder shot, a wide shot and an extreme wide shot. These shots were going to be used most throughout our animation so we thought we should trial them first on a phone camera to see what each angle looks like.

After this we then did some test shots of various scenes from the animation and also worked out what lens we wanted to use. We shot the first scene with the 50mm lens and the second with the 18-55mm lens. We forgot to do some shots to compare the two lens, however, we found that the 18-55mm lens was more suited to our animation as it zoomed out further than the 50mm.

 This test shot was of the puppets arms being controlled as well as being forced to slide across the ground. Although this didn't need to be tested, at the time we were experimenting with what lens we should use. At this time we were using the 50mm lens which we found to be fairly zoomed in.

Before we done the test shot for this scene, we first debated on how we should have the puppet disappear and reappear. After a few minutes we came up with the idea that the puppeteer will click with his left hand to make the puppet disappear and then have to click with his right hand to force the puppet to reappear. We also wanted to make it look like the puppet was reappearing so everytime he did reappear, he would reappear in mid-air and then land.

Another scene we tested was the appearance of the puppet hovering in mid-air. This is the main reason we wanted to do a test shot because I needed to know when to time taking the images. For the majority of the time I got the timing pretty well and I picked up pretty quickly of when I should press the shutter on the camera. We are also still unsure on how the puppeteer should gesture to indicated that he is forcing the puppet to hover. We will probably keep a similar gesture however the camera angle needs to be changed.

Thursday 19th September 2013

Exercise 2 - Claymation
Team: Dean, Kelsey & Jess

For this exercise we needed to create a short animation exploring the morphing properties of modelling clay.

In our animation we decided we would have small clay blobs dance around a fire and then eventually merge into the fire. The blobs would morph into a few different shapes and we also animated the fire. We set the F-Stop to F10 and set the Aperture to 1/80 and then began our shoot. Whilst we were shooting the animation myself and Kelsey were animating the clay and Jess was operating the camera.

Nothing really went wrong during this shoot other than a few minor occurances. At one point one of the blobs slightly goes off frame which could have easily been avoided but it isn't too much of a problem. Another small error that occurred was when we were batch processing the sequence. The first image processed wrong so we couldn't use it. I could have easily edited the photo on its own to fix the problem, however, it wasn't a necessary image so I just left it how it was.

For some reason the batch processed version of this image cropped to this size.

The blob slightly went out of frame. We could have easily fixed this if we paid more attention to the framing.

We could alter this exercise and make the sequence of the animation longer by reusing most of the images. Instead of the animation being one sequence of the blobs circuling the fire, we could reverse some shots and also reuse them to make the blobs seem more lively. Also speeding up the sequence would give the same lively effect.

This is the completed video of the claymation.

Thursday 12th September 2013

Exercise 1 - Camera Stand Animation
Team: Dean & Tron

For this exercise we needed to create an animated sequence using cut-outs and/or objects.

Me and Tron decided to use both cut-outs and an object for our animation. Our animated sequence was about a cut-out of a person from a magazine and we animated them like Pacman. The cut-out moved around the frame eating coco-pops and then another cut-out (animated similarly to Rayman) attacks the first cut-out.

When we were animating, I was operating the camera whilst Tron was animating the cut-outs/objects. I had also set up the cameras settings, however I had forgotten to write down what I changed the F-Stop and Aperture to. We did trial a few different settings and I thought the settings would be fine. However I should have trialed a few more settings because the settings we chose were not the best ones we could have used. Not much seemed to go wrong during the animating process, but when I took all the images for batch processing I noticed a few errors that I needed to fix.

The first problem I encountered was that we did not frame the area for our animation. We were just making sure that the sequence remained visible on the camera, not realizing that the camera does not have the same ratio of 1280x720 pixels. So when I cropped the images to 1280x720 parts of the cut-outs would not be visible. However I wanted to crop at this ratio so to work around this I cropped upwards. So instead of cutting off parts of the frame, I actually added more to the right hand side. I felt this was the only way to fix the issue but then it also created a problem. When we animated we made the cut-out go off screen to then come back on screen as if it's a new area. So when I cropped the image it wouldn't look like the cut-out is going off screen, instead it just disappears whilst still in frame. This meant I would need to delete the additional part of the image, however this meant the images were not 1280x720 pixels. This meant that when I put the sequence into Adobe Premiere there would be a black column either side of the animation because the sequence as no longer at 1280x720 pixels.

Another problem I encountered whilst I was editing an image in Photoshop, before I batch processed, was that there was a pencil in frame for a few images when there was never supposed to be one. This was because Tron, who was animating the cut-outs, decided to use a pencil as a reference to try and keep the cut-out in a line. However he accidentally left the pencil in frame and I did not notice whilst I was taking the photos. So when it came to editing the images I needed to fix this error. What I did to fix this image was to first batch process every image, with the pencil in frame, and used the rubber tool to remove the pencil. This meant there was a very noticeable colour difference between the erasing and the rest of the background. So I needed to remove the entire background without affecting the animation. So I simply used the magic wand tool. I set up a batch process for every image in the animation sequence and set the tolerance, of the magic wand tool, to around 25 so it would not interfere with anything else. Once everything had processed I then went through every image and removed everything that the magic wand didn't. It didn't take too long to clean up the images as the tool did the majority of the images pretty well.

After I had finished processing all of the images I imported the sequence into Adobe Premiere. However before I done this I had gone into the Preferences and set the image duration time to 3 frames. I done this because images do not have a duration, so the program has a set duration. So I needed to change this otherwise there would be a few seconds in between each image and it would take a little while to edit every photo to a specific duration.

This is the completed version of the camera stand animation.