E4 Evaluation

E4 Sting Evaluation

For our assignment we worked in groups to produce a 10 second e4 sting. Me Vicky and Connie worked in a group of three, we each made individual storyboards with our own ideas of what we could do. We showed each other our ideas and chose the overall best idea; however we changed it so we all inputted ideas. The task was set just before Christmas time so we chose to do a seasonal sting and based it around Christmas and the new years. We also used the information from our questionnaires to give us a rough idea of what our target audience would want to see in a sting. Our original idea was to have a large party popper that we had made and have someone coming out of it holding an e4 logo. We looked at the resources we had and decided that to make a big party popper would be hard in the time we had, so we kept the idea similar and chose to change it to an e4 logo on a stick coming out of the party popper.

Connie changed groups; me and Vicky worked in a pair; I feel that we worked well together and we chose to share the responsibilities, we are able to sit down and just get on with our work because we were both clear about what we had to do. We communicated well together and listened to each other’s ideas on how to make the sting better. This made the production of the sting quicker because we both had the same idea in mind. When we were taking the pictures we both took the pictures and moved the props, this was fair because we both got a chance to do all of the job roles. The only separate job roles was editing the sting, I put the pictures together and added any effects to the pictures whereas Vicky was editing the music so it fit the sting and also adding in any effects to the sound.  However when adding the pictures into flash the programme kept on freezing and the sting was looking like it was impossible to make, however we found out that if we reduced the image size then the files wouldn’t be too big and flash would work, after that flash worked fine.

When we showed the animation to the class we got positive feedback saying it was good and clear that it was about e4 and based around the party season, we also got some feedback about how we could improve our sound, others in the class said that the quality of the sound could be better and if we made the sound louder and maybe a bit slower the sting would be better. If we had more time to do the project I would of taken more time and effort in taking the pictures, because we only had a short space of time we didn’t take as many as we would of liked to. Taking more pictures would have made the animation look more effective as the movement of the objects would have looked less obvious and made them look more in motion. I feel that if we planned out sting out better before we started the project then we would of had enough time to take more pictures, we spent a lot of time on making the props and also with a member of the group moving to another group the two of us had more work to do between us.

I feel that we worked good as a pair and we produced a good sting for e4, the feedback was positive, we feel that the main improvement we could of made was to manage our time more effectively and plan out what we were going to do each lesson.

E4 Sting Blog

Week one

During the first two lessons me, Connie and Vicky all made 3 small storyboards each for ideas for our animation. We came up with our final idea of having an e4 logo coming out of a party popper. We then made a large storyboard explaining what would happen in the animation and started to think about who would do what throughout the animation. We created a production log with jobs including the director, camera and lighting, chief animator and the chief editor. However due to some changes and someone leaving the group we had to change the production log.

I and Vicky both chose to share the responsibilities that were in the production log as we were only a small group. We are going to shoot the animation in the classroom or anywhere where there is good natural lighting. The camera will be on a tripod facing down at the animation at a bird’s eye view so the props are easy to move. Taking the pictures will over all take us about half an hour to take. We are going to make are props from scratch and try to make them look professional.

Week two

This week we started to make our props, we made our e4 logo out of a card background and then we stuck small balls of tissue paper in purple and white colours to make the e4 logo stand out so it’s clear that the animation is based on e4. As you can see:

During week two due to some problems Connie left our group so it was just me and Vicky

We also made a large party popper out of cardboard and painted it bright red and white so the purple e4 logo would stand out.

However this lesson we tried out some practice shots and the party popper appeared to be too big and made it difficult to take pictures. So we made a new smaller party popper out of card.

After we done some practice shots with the new party popper and the pictures looked much better.

Week three

This week we set up the background for the sting out of white paper and we stuck the paper on the wall so the background was plain. We took the pictures at my house, we put the camera on a tripod, so that the camera wouldn’t move and the position of the party popper would be the same all the time. We each took time in moving the props and taking the pictures, when we added the confetti into the sting one of us were taking the pictures whilst the other person threw confetti in front of the camera lens to make it look like the party popper had exploded. We did the first set of pictures that we took and noticed that the camera had been moving and the party popper wasn’t in the same position on every picture so we secured the tripod and started again because we wanted the sting to be effective. After taking 20 pictures we checked the pictures again and they were in the same position this time.

Week Four

This week we had all of the pictures done and we had chosen our audio. We spent most of the three hours putting the pictures together. At first flash kept on freezing and we couldn’t put the sting together, but we found out the image sizes were too large and that is what was making flash freeze and close down, so we made all of the image sizes smaller and started in flash again and it worked perfectly fine, after sorting out that hitch, we got the pictures together in 20 minutes, whilst i was editing the pictures in Photoshop to make them look slightly better  Vicky was editing the sound to make it fit the length of the sting and to also make it fade out at the end, she played around with the music in audio software and the final result was good and perfect for our sting, we put the audio with the animation in flash and we added in some text at the end and our sting was finished.

This is the end of our e4 sting.

This is the link to our sting on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwW4gIb8_Fg

Pixilation

Pixilation

Pixilation is a form of stop motion where live actors are used in an animated film. The actors pose repeatedly whilst one or more frames are being taking, only slightly changing their pose each time. The actor is almost a puppet. The technique is often used to blend the actors in with animated characters. The technique was earliest known in 1908 el ‘hotel electrico’. Here is a clip from the film where there are live actors in the film but also objects being moved around.

The technique is simple simply move the objects or actors slightly in front of a camera, shooting one frame at a time. Then you simply play the images in a sequence, playing the frames at a fast rate to give the illusion of movement. Here is another example by Yuval and Merav Nathan called ‘Her morning elegance’.

This type of stop motion animation was there from the beginning of animation history. Animator Norman McLaren made a short film ‘neighbours’, he was very experimental when it came to animation. Here is a clip showing how Norman McLaren made people fly without any of the fancy software used now.

Before computers were involved with the improvement of animation, pixilation was 3D whereas a bit later on drawings were used an example of where drawings were used is ‘the snowman’ in 1982. However when you see real people flying not drawings the audience are more amazed, which was one of the first examples of animated special effects.

Stings

MTV Stings
 

There are five different stings in the video link below, they are all different MTV stings however, they are all quite similar. 3 of the stings are quite similar because they all contain animated characters doing dance routines to the music that is playing in the background. This relates to the programme because the channel is a music channel. The other two stings in the video are also of different little animated characters singing; this is also relevant to the channel because the music videos that feature on the programme contain a lot of singing and dancing. The colours used in all of the stings are very bright and colourful, making them eye catching, I feel that these colours relate to the target audience, who are generally teenagers and young adults, because teenagers don’t like bland colours, and bright colours attract the target audiences attention.

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKmSVTPHHIw

BBC3 Stings

This particular sting for bbc 3 relates to the channel, there is no particular colour theme for bbc 3. Plain colours have been used for the background, this makes the orange colours stand out, so you are focused on the bright orange characters spread out in front of the big 3d wording three. You are focused on the song that the characters are singing ‘three is a magic number’. I like this sting because it is creative and different, from all of the three stings I have watched it is like they are suggesting that three is a separate world; possible suggesting that it is different.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z34XUDTz0GQ&feature=related

E4 Stings

E4 Stings

Sting One

From looking at this ident, the creator has used an everyday scene of a living room, which everyone can relate to. Then the TV turns on possibly showing E4 and strange things start happening in the living room. I think that this suggesting that when E4 comes on everything comes to life, for example trees start growing out of the floors and the room turns mostly purple and white which are the colours of the E4 logo, which relates the programme to the specific ident. I like this advert because it is original and different although I feel it has the hidden message that when E4 comes on everything comes to life. Although others may find the ident random and confusing as to why some of the objects are featured in this ident.

http://www.youtube.com/user/e4idents#p/u/14/hOw4i-UB8Lw

Sting Two

This ident has been created with the game pacman in mind. Pacman is a traditional but very popular game, so it grabs the audience’s attention as they can relate to the ident. Once again the colours of the E4 logo is used throughout the ident to show the relation to the e4 channel. I like the way the pacman layout is the e4 logo which you soon discover is the shape of the top of the building that the game is taking place on. So the entire ident shows the e4 logo throughout.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FIUerczEhJM&NR=1

Sting Three

This particular sting is relevant to a certain thing that happens on e4 which is the Monday movie night, I like the way the animation in the sting is relevant to what e4 are promoting, for example when you think of a cinema or watching a movie, most people immediately think of popcorn. The colours are consistent throughout the sting, the colours are mostly purple and white except for the popcorn. Although others may feel that the sting is basic and obvious, compared to the other two stings above which i feel are more creative.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fc2IIXZw068&NR=1

Silhouette Animation

Silhouette Animation

Silhouette animation is a very simple and effective type of stop motion animation. Silhouette animation is when characters are only visible as black silhouettes; this is usually created by clever backlighting and cardboard cut outs.

Here is an example of a still image taken from a silhouette animated film. The characters don't have an ernormous amount of detail as their facial and body features are not shown, just the outline of the characters are shown.

Silhouette animation can also be a very time consuming as a lot of silhouette animation is hand drawn, each drawing is only changed slightly, then a picture is taken of each drawing and they are put together. On average an hours worth of drawing would only be about 3-4 seconds of footage.

The earliest film made using silhouette animation was 'The sporting mice' which was made 1909 by a british filmmaker Charles Armstrong. The film was about a group of mice.

Here is an example of a short story made by using silhouette animation:

From looking at this particular animation you can see that the characters and teh backgrounds were hand drawn and then the animals were separate drawings and were moved around slightly, with a lot of still images being taken. You can see that detail within the outline of the characters isn't key because they are not shown, whereas the outline is the key to making a great and detailed silhouette animation.

Object Animation

Object Animation

Object animation is another form of stop motion animation, it involves an animation being created by using non-drawn objects such as toys and dolls. It’s quite similar to clay animation only the characters and the backgrounds and not fully malleable, they are also not designed to look like recognizable charcaters.

The reasons for object animation being different to model and puppet animation are due to that in object animation the characters are not recognizable as they use objects like Lego and playmobil. Whereas in puppet and model animation the characters are recognizable.

However object animation is often used with puppet animation, for example, you can animate a train moving, but sometimes to create an animation with more depth, there is often an animated character.

The use of animated objects in TV shows and film has been used since the early days of the cinema.

The technique is very similar to other forms of stop motion, the dolls or toys are moved slightly each time, and then a still picture is taken to capture the little movements that the objects are making, the images are then put together and they are played quickly to give the effect that the toys or dolls are in motion.

As you can see the expressions on the dolls faces cannot be changed when the character is speaking, due to the fact that the dolls are not as malleable as clay or other forms of stop motion. Object animation is still used today, mostly on kid’s programs including cartoon network and other baby shows including toy bears and lego.