Lemon Jelly

The Shouty Track is a single from the Lemon Jelly album, the video is created using animation in the style of a flip book. The style of this video is for it to look as if the animations had been drawn on the paper, but they are actually computer generated, the lined paper background is also computer generated and is animated to look as it is moving. Just from the rhythm of the animation you hear the rhythm of the song, they have thought about what the animation should be doing and to what part of the song and then repeated for the chorus and so on.
I think the video works great with the song as it's completely random, but good fun too watch. 

Filming the limerick

Stop motion is where you take a picture every time you move the object.  

To film this animation we set up the camera using a tripod, directly above the A3 sheet of paper, we had the camera connected to the laptop using a cable so that we could use the programme iStop Motion to take picture of each movement. Instead of adding the credits in digitally, we drew the out on pieces of card and used the stop motion to add them in to the end of our animation.  After taking all the pictures to create the animation we imported all the pictures into Final Cut where Leanne edited the video. While Leanne was editing the animation video, the rest of the group and I thought we should start recording the audio sounds for the animation. We made a list of all the sounds we would need and then we went into another room to record them, when we were happy with the audio sounds we gave them to Leanne on a memory stick to import into Final Cut and then edit into the video. 

Limerick Cut Out Animation

For this task we were in groups, In my group there was Ita, Sophie, Sunny, Christian Leanne and I. We were told to pick a limerick and then to create a animation for our chosen limerick. We had to create the limerick out of cut outs we had drawn coloured and cut out, we had a piece of A3 card to design for our back ground.  The limerick we chose was:

 

There once was a boy named John

He owned a 50 Dollar bond

He felt so lucky, he bought a big rubber Ducky

And now his money is all gone

Before we could start we had to think of a storyboard for our limerick. 

Here's Sophie and Ita working on a story board and there's me in the bottom right corner working on the other story board.

The story we came up with is that John would be standing in his living room holding some money, the money then explodes and a massive rubber duck falls from the sky, then there is a bug flood and John is riding the duck, the flood then disappears and so does the duck, he is then left with neither his duck nor his money. 

Once we had sorted the story and finished the story board we all started to draw and colour the items, the set would be John's living rooms, so we needed the basics such as; a sofa, window, curtains, picture frame. We printed out a 70's style background for the wallpaper and then we stuck everything else on top. 

Stop motion is where you take a picture every time you move the object.  

To film this animation we set up the camera using a tripod, directly above the A3 sheet of paper, we had the camera connected to the laptop using a cable so that we could use stop motion to take picture of each movement. 

SUMO SCIENCE

 

Ed Patterson & Will Studd are an award winning directing duo specializing in different forms of animation. Together they are Sumo Science, their aim is to create a fresh mix of styles using elements of stop-motion, puppetry, 2D and live-action. 

They are currently represented by Aardman Animations and have directed a range of commercials for clients such as Innocent Orange Juice, Weetabix, KP, Hellmans and Nokia.

'Gulp' is a short film created by Sumo Science at Aardman, depicting a fisherman going about his daily catch. The animation was shot on location at Pendine Beach in South Wales, every frame of this stop-motion animation was shot using a Nokia N8, with its 12 megapixel camera and Carl Zeiss optics. The film has broken a world record for the 'largest stop-motion animation set', with the largest scene stretching over 11,000 square feet. 

This is how they made "Gulp"

Gulp. The making of. from Nokia HD on Vimeo.

Their biggest success to date is for Nokia with the film 'Dot.' The spot went on to win 15 major advertising awards as well as claiming a Guiness World Record for the smallest stop-motion character in a film. It has become a huge success online with nearly 3 million hits. 

Nokia 'Dot' from Sumo Science on Vimeo.

Here is the making of "Dot":

The Making Of Nokia 'Dot' from Sumo Science on Vimeo.

Box Animation

The task we got set was to create an animation from the object we were given. In the group I was in with Sophie, Ita and Christian the objects we were given were marbles. We all came up with a few ideas of what we could do with the marbles and we also had to include the box they came in. We decided that we would make the lid shuffle off the top, and then get the biggest marble to look like it pushes the box over, we also drew faces on the marbles to give it some humor. We then had all the small marble roll out of shot and then all roll back into shot, they then roll back into the box and the biggest marble which is still out then shrinks and rolls back into the box the lid then shuffles its way back on top of the box.

Marble Animation - Group 1 from Long Road Applied Media Diploma on Vimeo.


We then had to think about the audio, we watched the video back and then listed all the noises we would need, we then all took it in turns to make each noise to see who sounded best. these were the sounds we needed: 
Lid popping off.
Lid scraping across the table.
Big marble rolling on the table.
Small marble rolling.
Multiple marbles rolling.
Squeaky marble voice.
Popping noise.
Marbles shaking.
Yum sounds.
Mooing sound.
Marble box rustling.

But unfortunately after the video had been edited it was to short and we couldn't use all the sounds we recorded. 

Jan Svankmajer Practitioner Study

Jan Svankmajer is a Czech filmmaker and artist who was born in Prague 1934 and he still lives there today. He studied at the Institute of Applied Arts from 1950 to 1954 and then at the Prague Academy of Performing Arts (Department of Puppetry). Svankmajer made his first film in 1964 "The Last Trick" for over thirty years Svankmajer has made some of the most memorable and unique animated films ever made, gaining a reputation as one of the world's foremost animators, and influencing filmmakers from Tim Burton to The Brothers Quay, But he has also gained reputation for his distinctive technique of the use of Stop Motion. He could create surreal, nightmarish but somehow funny films.  Stop-motion features in most of his work, though recently his feature films have included much more live action sequences than animation. Many of Svankmajer's films feature clay objects coming to life using Stop Motion, as you can see in his animation Darkness Light Darkeness:

Bouncing Ball

Our first exercise was to create an animation of a ball bouncing along the ground. We had a booklet of 32 blank pages, we were also given a booklet containing templates to help us draw the animation in the correct positions. Before we could start drawing the bouncing ball, we had to number the pages 1 to 32, after the numbering we drew the action line on page 32 we would then trace the action line onto each page, the action line is there as a guideline. As you can see my action line slants down a tiny bit each frame. After drawing the action line on to each page we had to draw the key frames, there was five key frames, this made it easier when drawing in the in between frames. I also chose to colour my ball in, i made the mistake of choosing two colours, it was a mistake as I then had to spend more time making sure the colours on the ball look like the turning around.

After drawing the ball on to each page it was time to film the animation. to do this we had a tripod set up on a table and a camera pointing down at the table, we then stuck some blue tac onto the back of our booklets to secure them too the table so the didn't move when we turned the page. The program we used to create the animation was iStopMotion, we would be using 12 frames per second, which would allow us to make the video play smooth. I took a picture of each frame carefully making sure nothing else was in the frame like my hand for example. After taking a picture of each frame we imported the clips to final cut and edited the animation so it looped 5 times. I am pleased with the outcome of my animation, I could improve on the drawing of the animation as the action line wasn't straight and it made the animation look tilted.

BLU Practitioner Study

Blu is an Argentinian.street graffiti artist who has been known for his graffiti since 1999, he started out using spray paint as there wasn't much else to use, what got Blu noticed in 1999 is his illicit graffiti which he decided to share with in the historical center and suburbs of Bolonga, the capital of Italy's Emilia-Romangna region. In 2001 Blu showed Bolonga what he was really capable of, he had moved on from spray paint, and was now using house paint and rollers mounted on tall sticks. He painted the streets of Bologna with huge human figures, with different expressions.

Blu found other people who shared his passion for graffiti street art; Dem, Sweza, Run and Ericailcane, these people would influence Blu in his early career. During the time he found these people who shared his passion he started experimenting with animation. It wasn't untill 2004 that art galleries started to notice his work, but Blue didn't like to be known so he never attended any of the shows. In 2005 Blu started travelling around the world,  painting murals in different cities, some that related to the cities background and some his own work.

Today Blu still uses animation, and there are many of his video's on YouTube, to create his animation he sraws his image, takes a photo, paints over it with grey or white paint and then draws his next frame and takes a picture and so on. This is my favourite animation from Blu: