Stop Motion Animation

Stop Motion Animation

Preproduction

     Recently I have been tasked with the job of creating a stop motion animation, it started off with the people from my class coming up with our own ideas and then presenting those to the class. We were then assigned groups according to how similar our ideas were. The main premise of my group was to combine stop motion with animation, and also somehow integrating objects with goggly eyes. Eventually we settled on the concept of desk top objects coming to life and exploring a desk. They would then come across a notebook and upon walking on top of it, they would fall in. The objects would explore the universe inside of this notebook before coming across a few hostile drawings and then would promptly run out of the notebook and return to the real world.
 

     We began by making a few story boards that outlined the basic concept of our story, as well as detailing some of the finer aspects that we wanted to include in our animation. Our story board mainly dealt with all of the shots we wanted and the key moments that we wanted to highlight throughout the animation. (Note: In the storyboard it is shown that the notebook falls down onto the objects, after some later though we decided for continuity it would be better if the objects simply fell into the notebook.)

     After creating the storyboard we decided to create an extremely rough edit of how we wanted to the video to play out. We first took a few shots on an iPhone to help indicate the angles that we would use for actual filming as well as showing the actions we wanted the objects to preform when they were in the real world. Then one of my group members animated the story boards to they would follow in sequential order so we could clearly see how the animated parts going to play out.

     Preproduction took about a week and a half, coming up with the idea took about two days, story boarding took up only one day, and then creating the animatic required five days. I found that the steps we took during preproduction were extremely helpful during actual filming.

Animatic

Production

      To complete the project we split up into two groups to complete both the animated part and the stop motion. Two people worked on the animation while me and two others shot the stop motion. The actually shooting of the stop motion took about a week and a half, we ended up finishing about one scene everyday. The most prevalent problems were having the shot being out of focus and thus having to reshoot the scene as well as the shadows in the background changing which affected how the scene looked when compiled. The only thing we need to do in post production was change some of the lighting in a couple of shots and after that we were able to put all of the shot we had together plus add the animations that had been done and we were finished.

Final Thoughts

      One of the main ideas I learned during this time was how important preproduction is. If my group hadn't been assigned to make a rough edit of how we wanted our final product to turn out we would have ended up spending way more time on shots that we wouldn't have originally spent time planning out. Another huge thing I ended up taking away from this was to find an isolated shooting environment rather than one that could easily be affected. We shot our stop motion on a table inside of our classroom, but being forced to only shoot on the table severely limited the shots we could take, if we could have found a back room somewhere to film our options wouldn't have been as limited. And even though we did only film on top of the table people's shadows and light reflecting off of the table still made some of the shots kind of strange. Overall I believe the project was a success, even though there was some slight hiccups I believe the final project turned out nice. If I had to redo this project I would make sure outside forces would not affect the shooting, such as shadows and the ever changing classroom setting. 

Sadly the video was too large of a file to upload directly to blogger so one of my group members was kind enough to upload it on youtube. You can view the final video here.

Group Members

John Pace

Maddie Culotta

Makella Child

Brock Townsend

Nathan Goldberg

Quarter 1 Project

This quarter we were assigned a project to create some sort of animation in attempt to help us acquaint us with using Lynda. I ending up choosing to create a 3D character in Maya and to create a walk cycle for it, however I was not able to get to making the walk cycle by the end of the quarter. The only reference I started with was a basic body shape that I had drawn and I had decided that I would attempt to create the more detailed parts of the character without any reference (I later came to the realization that this was a terrible idea.)

The drawing I used as a reference for my project.

The original outline for this project was to create a 3D character that was fully clothed a texture and have it walk, I then came to the realization that having the character walk would not work if I wanted to do that in the given time frame, so I began to focus mainly on creating the 3D character.

I started creating the character by making the body. Using the Lynda tutorial this proved to be quite a help and made the creation of the body quite easy except for some minor issues with how the body looked after lining everything up with the reference. However, I with some minor tweaking I was able to get the body to a shape I was fine with. I then added hands, the Lynda a tutorial was a huge help in this aspect because I had no idea where to start. The body was pretty basic at this point, but I planned on going back to it after creating the head.

I once again used Lynda to help create the head and it proved to be helpful to a point. As I was creating the head I came to realize that not designing the face more in depth was a terrible mistake. At this point the head started to take on a weird alien-like head, so I decided to just go with it and make my character an alien. Now that my character was an alien the creation was a lot more simpler because I did not have to worry about it looking human, therefore there was room for a ton more mistakes as well as being a bit more fun to make. The head definitely took the most time to create because I couldn't get away with a simple shape, I had to add details to

the simple shape I had created which made it a bit more difficult than the body.

The most difficult part of my character though was when I revisited the body, at first I was pretty content with it but when I returned I had found that there were many small problems that if not dealt with would make the project virtually unbearable after mirroring the body. After multiple hours of tweaking and trouble-shooting I was able to restore the body to a point which was not completely to my satisfaction but was tolerable.

I then started on the clothing of the character, which was arguable the easiest part of creating it. To create the clothing all I had to do was duplicate the body, cut of the parts that were not going to act as clothing and then resize it to fit the body. The only thing that was even remotely challenging was tweaking the clothing so it wouldn't be stuck in the character. Even though this part was the easiest I would say it was one of the parts that I wasn't the most happy with. It didn't feel like clothing, rather an addition onto the body of the character. I wish I had more time to really add detail to the clothing to make it feel more like clothing and less like a second layer of color. Unfortunately I not only had to completely cut out the walk cycle, but I also had to dumb down the character drastically because during the quarter I had missed a few days of class which really put me behind.

To complete my project I set my character in a box and added some lights and I was ready to render. The final product wasn't really what I wanted and I was kind of disappointed, but after weeks of work I was still happy to see it turn into something.

Throughout this project I learned that you can use really simple shapes to create very complex designs. I ran into multiple issues throughout this project, most of them involved trying to figure out ways to make the body and head work in a way that I was happy with. If I had to redo a part of this project I would definitely redo the body/clothing. Even though the head turned out in a way that I didn't want it to it still looked nice, the body on the other hand ended up looking really bad and the clothing reflected that. I feel quite disappointed in the project to be honest, nothing really worked out for me and the final project didn't represent my original plan at all. My planning was rather poor in hindsight and for future reference I will remember to plan out things much more in depth. However, I learned a lot about the process of creating a character during this quarter and I will be able to apply some of the things I learned to future projects. My project may not have turned out the way I wished it had, but at least I can walk away with a few new skills.

Character Update September 22, 2014

Throughout the past week I was able to make significant progress of the head and body, however I have recently run into the problem of not being able to use smooth preview on the body. For the past week I have mainly focused on the head and getting it to my specifications and I am quite proud of how far I have come.

There is definitely room from improvement, but right now I am happy with what I have. When I complete the body and clothes I might come back and edit the face some more because it looks a little strange in the rendered view, but for now I will keep it as is so I can work on some other parts.

I have also recently encountered a problem where I cannot use smooth preview on the body of my character which I will need to deal with soon if I want to complete this character. I'm not exactly sure what I did to make this happen, but hopefully it can be resolved soon so I can get to rigging.

I have six more days to complete my character which is kind of troubling, but now that I have the face out of the way I expect everything to go much more smoothly. The only thing I have worries about is getting the character rigged, but I shall try my best to get as much done as I can before I have to turn in the final rendered product and next quarter I will work to get my alien to walk.

Project Update September 18, 2014

Recently I have noticed that my project isn't lining up with my original outline and I am way behind on due dates. I have come to terms with the fact that I probably won't be able to complete a walk cycle by October 1st, but I am planning on at least rigging my character.

So far I have completed modeling the body and I am currently working on the head. The head has proven to be much more of a challenge compared to the body. It is a bit strange right now and I believe it will take a few more hours of work, but I am planning on having it done by next week.

After I complete the head I believe everything else will go much more smoothly. Clothing shouldn't be too much of a challenge, I am planning on that taking about two hours and texturing will only take me around 30 minutes. I will then dedicate the rest of my time to rigging my character and rendering out whatever I have done.

From this experience, even though it has been quite short, I have learned that I probably should plan for projects taking much longer than I initially expect and to not over work myself. I believe I will be able to catch up, but for now I will abandon my plan to have the character walk until I get farther on the character.

Quarter 1 Project Outline

Modeling Character with Walk Cycle

Due September 2:

Draw front view of character

Draw side view of character

Due September 10:

Model head

Model body

Blog: Images of rendered head and body

Due September 15:

Model clothes

Texture character

Blog: Images of rendered character before and after texturing

Due September 22:

Rig character

Blog: Screen captures of rigged character

Due September 26:

Complete walk cycle

Due September 30:

Final Render

Blog: Video of final render of walk cycle

After Effects Tutorial

     Recently I have completed a tutorial in After Effects that involved creating 3D lights to add more depth to an object. To keep the project pretty basic I simply spelled out the the words light and used that make my project.

     One of the more difficult parts of creating the light was creating the mask I put in the background. It involved adding effects to an oval shape and just messing around with it until it reached a look that I was satisfied with. I believe it was harder because I had a specific look in mind and getting the effect that I felt satisfied with.

     After creating the cloudy blue effect everything else was basically touching up simple things to make the final product. In the future I might customize this a bit more to fit me, I might switch out the word light for my name. However, I the only other use I can see this being used for is if I wanted to add some interesting light effects on a video or animation.

I believe the project turned out alright in the end. It isn't amazing by any stretch of the imagination, but I believe I learned a good amount about After Effects in the process and it ended up looking alright. The tutorial was informative and I now have a better grasp on some of the tools that can help me in After Effects.

The Plausible Impossible

      The Plausible Impossible can be defined as events that occur in animation that are impossible but are made to seem plausible. Disney used multiple videos to demonstrate the Plausible Impossible, one of these involved Donald Duck and his cousin, Gus Goose. When Gus first arrives he interrupts Donald right before he his delicious dinner, to help demonstrate the plausible impossible Gus ate all of the food in extremely unorthodox methods. At one point he makes a giant sandwich and swallows it in one gulp, this appears plausible because of how long Gus' neck is however, throwing a sandwich into the air and then swallowing the entire thing as it falls back to the Earth is quite impossible.

     

        Another moment during this video that effectively shows the plausible impossible is when Gus is sucking up peas from a plate with a straw. At his point Donald is upset that Gus is eating all of his food so he attempts to save one last pea by sucking in air. At one point the pea becomes suspended in air while the two fight over the pea. This moment seems plausible because essentially sucking in air would move an object of that size, but what makes this impossible is no one would be able to lift a pea into the air by simply sucking in air.

     At one point in the video Donald attempts to kick Gus out of his house by wheeling him out, this plan backfires when Donald ends up getting thrown out and runs into his mailbox. When Donald runs into the mailbox, it goes flying into the air and falls back down right onto Donald's head. Then the mailbox becomes stuck on Donald's head while he stares angrily out the front end. This is made to seem plausible because the force that Donald hit the mailbox with seems enough to get it stuck on his head, but it is clearly impossible because shoving your head through a mailbox would hurt an extreme amount and wouldn't come off with a simple tug.

     Another moment when the plausible impossible is demonstrated is when Donald devises a plan to get rid of his cousin for good. Donald gives Gus a barking sausage, the sausage makes Gus do dog like actions when prompted by Donald. Donald tells Gus to lay down, roll over, and to fetch a bone. This seems plausible because Gus acts like a dog, however this is obviously impossible because eating a sausage will not cause you to act like a dog.

One of the last instances of the plausible impossible in the video was when Gus makes his way back into the house when he decides that it is lunch time. Donald hears a giant crash and runs to his kitchen, where he finds a Gus shaped hole in his door. This seems plausible because it has been shown that Gus is extremely enthusiastic about eating food, and his eagerness would make it entirely possible to break through a door. However, breaking through a door to make the shape of your body is completely impossible, if he were to break through the door it would have just shattered and would not have retained the shape of his body.