SIT Animation: Traci Meek: June 2015

Tuesday, June 30, 2015

BDM125, storyboarding, audio for animatic, 30 June

There is no need to cut between the two "twangy" music pieces underscoring the first scene with the Teenager, so I took out all of the little bits under the Museum. I took out me saying "Monkey Saves the Daypaint!" It's around if I change my mind. The "Blue Danube" playing underneath the interior museum scenes is awful! I found another quartet playing classical music. I chopped that long piece up into bits that I could put under scenes to score the emotional moments.
From the Fresh Music royalty library, I used selections from "Classical One and Only 1, 3, 22, and 29" and "Classical String Quarter 2 and 8".

Sunday, June 28, 2015

BDM124, Thinking ahead, stop-motion, 28 June

Saturday, June 27, 2015

BMA115: Final drawing portfolio presentation

One drawing from each of our assigned projects, portrait and architecture, and 6 to 8 in-class drawings.

BMA115: drawing a model with clothes, 11 and 18 June

I prefer to draw a figure with clothes because there's more to draw and get right. I'm not a perfect drawer of nudes, but it gets boring, boring going over the same lines over and over. University of Tennessee used to make us draw for 6 hours a week. Agony! This class is two hours and I still find myself hitting a wall at the hour thirty mark where my will to live has been exhausted. Daily one hour sessions would probably do me good and wouldn't exhaust my reserves. Not making any requests or suggestions, just musing to myself.

On the 18th, our model brought in her dog. I enjoyed doing the quick sketches of her standing and the dog sitting. When we went to a long draw, I lost interest. Was it my usual inability to focus on one drawing for that long or was it because the dog kept moving? Not even the studies were helpful in putting the drawing together. I ended up doing a series of drawings of him on one piece of paper.

BDM124, stop-motion Animation reviews, 27 June

PIOK

Alien spacecraft lands and meets a chicken. Good movement work on the chicken. I'm not sure what the story is, though. So French. The credits were really nice, though. I'm sure they wouldn't be happy that that was what I liked best.

Farrow & Ball (new colours)

Oops. This seems to be an ad for furniture. Still, it is stop motion and I liked how the chair was grey, then the light turned on and the wall and the chair turned yellow. And things were spinning around, which seems to be the favourite thing for stop motion people to do with round things.

kindle ad

This is a good example of stop motion, short story and length. Our stop motion shorts will only be about one and a half minutes. They got a lot done in their 30 seconds. I liked how this made this one of the floor with the camera pointing down. The objects and people slid around on the floor and the backdrop was a piece of paper that was torn up to reveal more backdrops.

Madame Tutli Putli

This is a Canadian film by Clyde Henry Productions and it doesn't appear to be a stop motion, at first, when the camera follows a long trail of possessions and bags to Madame, waiting at the tracks for the train to arrive. Then Madame begins to move. Really good character design, movement, and quietly absurd moments (her luggage fills the whole compartment and the other passengers are forced to perch on the stacks near the ceiling while they play chess).

Sebastian's Voodoo

A 3D short about voodoo dolls attempting to escape from their tormentor. Interesting movement from thedolls and excellent texture. There was a very interesting shot where the camera follows the voodoo man's fingers holding the pin towards the doll and then go through the circle created by his thumb and finger to the face of the doll.

BDM124, Animation reviews, stop-motion, 27 June

Top 10 stop motion full-length filmsRecommended that I haven't seen: Mary and Max, Fantastic Mr. Fox, Coraline

What I've seen: Corpse Bride, Wallace and Gromit: Curse of the Were Rabbit, James and the Giant Peach, Beetlejuice, Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer (a classic of American Christmas tv), Chicken Run,

Director Harry Selig gets mentioned a lot, so research him.

Re-watch Jason and the Argonauts, Ray Harryhausen

BDM124, stop-motion Animation reviews, 27 June

Change

The description promised me the happiest stop-motion animation on the internet, but how are the constantly piling and de-piling contents of a picnic basket supposed to be happy? Only the makers know.

Lego Minecraft

My ability to rate this animation is completely crippled by my indifference, or understanding, of Minecraft. Nevertheless, the movement is smooth and the camera changes angles and comes in for close ups, so there's some technical prowess at work here.

Random Stop Motion Doctor Who

Performed entirely with "Doctor Who" action figures and sets made from A4 paper and markers in somebody's bedroom, this short makes me confident that I can do this. At one point, a hand comes in holding a little dog. Excellent.

Doctor Who Lego stop-motion

All those people who want a "Sherlock" and "Doctor Who" cross over finally have their wish! Sort of. I need to find some good stop-motion animation. These films are setting the story bar too low.

Friday, June 26, 2015

BDM127, 2D animation, Thinking ahead to next semester, 26 June

I think I want to keep working on Monkey Saves the Daypaint. I'll be taking a 2D animation class next semester and I have the option of continuing with this story or starting a new one. The fully animated short will only be a minute and a half long, so I need to consider the best way of trimming the story I've got.

And reformatting my shots. For inspiration, I'm re-watching the Puss in Boots I started last weekend. These shots are really interesting because they stylishly show an event and the reaction to that event (cats), a sequence of events from multiple angles on the same screen (milk) or a medium shot and a close up shot (Puss and his boot). The final shot is a little bit of the excellent hat work that happens throughout the film. My favourite shot is when Puss bows his head and his hat blocks out the screen, but I couldn't get a screen grab that did it justice. There are also some great slow motion shots as Puss cartwheels around in action sequences.

Thursday, June 25, 2015

BDM125: audio for animatic, 25 and 26 June

Yesterday, I loaded the three usable takes of me making noises and doing voices for "Monkey Saves the Daypaint!" onto audio tracks on my animatic. If I can figure out how to tweak the pitch, I'll have plenty of noises for my monkey. Everybody else seems to be covered. I cut the tracks into little pieces that I can now shift around and sift through for the best stuff. Listening to it today, I'm thinking about what sort of extra noises I need from the soundfx library. I have a folder of general stuff already, but now I'm focusing on things that are missing that will make a difference to telling my story.

Stuff to look for:
Me going "yay!" that I cut out because I thought I wouldn't need it. I'll put it over the credits.
Ominous "intense silence" ambience for when the museum is "watching" Teenager spray paint.
Noises that a paintbrush or roller would make. Some sort of "swooshing" noise?
Scratching, skittering noise for Monkey as he "draws" his way across the street.

Painterly things to do to my animatic:
There need to be gold frames, slightly fancier than the one around Graffiti Girl at the end of the short, around ALL of the museum paintings. Plus brass markers to make the connection that people think it's "real" art when it has a frame around it. (Done 11:14pm)

Monkey needs a colour scheme. He can't go to the end in black and white lines. (done 1:29pm)
Monkey MUST change colours/styles as he leaps from painting to painting! (Done 3pm)

I have four and a half hours with the Cintiq tablet today, and may not get any tomorrow. I can listen/adjust audio on any machine. I will fix the look and then do audio tomorrow. More later on if this was a good decision on my part.

Monkey Saves the Daypaint! animatic with audio

This is what I got after working from 9 to 3.45 on Friday with No toilet breaks! No food! No candy! Water only. It took 45 minutes for the computer to convert to a video. In that time, I couldn't make any adjustments, but I thought about it and made some changes after conversion.

Wednesday, June 24, 2015

BDM126, Character Walk Cycles, 24 June

first shot, Mad Mozart side walk

second shot, Mad Mozart side walk

I went back and added another panel between each movement. Is he smoother, funkier? He looks better when he moves faster, for sure. It really depends on what part of his body I look at. He's got a little funky foot drag that disappears when I look at his arms. Then I see him nearly smack himself in the face.

BDM124,Thinking ahead: stop-motion, story ideas, 24 June

Tree full of family pictures, branch in a box

or faces in the trees hanging from the branches

http://www.georgedenninger.com/store/images/standard/shadow-box-c-s.jpg

or 3D tree with background and photos hanging from the branches

Tree full of family photos showing great, grand, parents and children. The wind comes and blows one of the children's photos away. There is a great hole in the tree. The mother photo "looks" for the child, brings it back. More photos appear with the child's children and the tree is made whole again.