Animation Project: Design drawings

These are some of my sketches that I used to plan out how I would make the real thing.

~ Floor tiles ~

~ Ceiling ~

~ Statues ~

~ Bugs house ~

Isle of Dogs exhibition & film

I managed to book an early showing for Isle of Dogs which I was extremely excited about. I'd have to say I've been waiting for this film to come out for a good few years now and it didn't disappoint! I'm a major stop motion and Wes Anderson fan so I thought this would be a great opportunity to analyse a professional stop motion feature film.
Theres's so many little tricks for special effects that use materials you'd never expect. They used tissue paper for fire and for water they used clingfilm on occasion.
When I found out about the exhibition on at The Strand in London I knew I had to go! Looking at the puppets and sets in real life really gives you a better idea of how its all made. Some of the sets were much larger than I had anticipated! I was also surprised to see similarities between how things have been made for the trash island sets and how I've made the set for our own animation at uni.

Animation Workshop

Today we had an introduction to animating with Andy Symanowski. We used software called Animate It! which was really easy to use. In worked together in groups to animate which was helpful because we were able to discuss and figure out how something would move and react with its environment when things got complicated.

Our first test was animating a ping-pong ball falling to the ground. This is what we used as reference the only difference was our balls wouldn't squash when they hit the ground. We then animated a canonball dropping which made us question how different this would be. The difference is there'd be only a slight bounce back as the ball loses its energy faster.

Next we animated a falling leaf which was a lot harder because leaves are so unpredictable due to their weight and how they catch the air. We looked up a video of a leaf falling for reference after our first attempt to give us a clearer idea of how to do it.

We then moved on to animating legs jumping and figuring out how two characters could interact with a ball.

I'm quite surprised and proud of how I did animating and the best part is playing it back and seeing a smooth believable movement. I really enjoyed animating which I glad of because I'd love to work in that industry in the future.

Animation Project: Storyboarding

I drew this storyboard up after our first discussion about our theme and basic story outline.

After a chat with Andy Symanowski we realised our story didn't really have a build up to a point where the old man changes his mind about death. We decided that the story needed more work and Ellie later came up with a new storyboard for our altered story line.

Scrapstore

Kerry had told us about the Scrapstore which is this magical place full of mostly scraps of rubbish essentially. There was so much cool stuff that I couldn't help but keep taking things that I didn't even have a use for yet. But you never know when it might come in handy.

The Scrapstore may be especially handy for the animation project coming up as we will be trying to save on materials where we can! Plus I think being resourceful when making a stop-motion can give it more character.

Things they have that may be useful:

• Fabrics
• Acrylic
• Card & Paper
• Plastic bottle caps
• Buttons, needles, wool
• Paint

Animation Project: Moodboards

Initial forest set moodboard.

Desert set moodboard.

Death character moodboard.

Making my sign

I started out by making prototype apertures from a website that made a cardboard one. These seemed to work quite well. But I still looked up other ways of making them so that I had the easiest design to replicate.

After this first attempt I decided my aperture needed more blades so that it wouldn't have gaps when it closed. I also altered the design so that it had a front and back cover to hold it all in place and a handle part to work the mechanism.

The next step was figuring out the best material to make it out of. I knew I wanted the eye to be a metal frame with the aperture as the iris as the would fit better with the steampunk theme I had in my colour model.

~ Making the rings in metalwork ~

I went to woodwork first and asked what they thought was best and they suggested I go to the metal workshop and wood may break with the holes being so close to the edge. So after talking with Tyson he suggested I try cut out the circular pieces and see how it goes from there.

I brought my prototype to use as a template which made it a lot easier. I did struggle to cut out the metal using the big metal cutter as I wasn't really strong enough to use it. In the end Tyson taught me how to use the plasma cutter. This was so much faster and its such an easy piece of machinery to use! I'm so glad I learnt how to use it as it may come in handy in the future. I did then have a lot of sanding down to do as the plasma cutter leaves a very rough edge. At this point I had realised that this process was very slow and that I may be better off using the laser cutter and making the aperture rings out of acrylic. I could then make these look like metal with the right painting techniques.

~ Making the rings on the laser cutter ~

The next step was to draw up my design on illustrator so that I could cut it on the laser cutter. This didn't take me long at all as I have a lot of experience from my foundation course laser cutting large complex pieces.

I learnt how to use the laser cutter in the maker space and cut out the ring pieces. I did face some problems with the sizing of the pieces. When I cut them out the were a few cm smaller in diameter than the original design. I had to recut one piece as it was now larger than the other pieces but I was able to do this with few issues.

~ Making the metal frame eye ~

I managed to get this done quite quickly with the help of Tyson. I used the metal roller to get all the pieces curved to the right amount and then it was ready to all be welded together. My welding is still not the neatest but I think I have a better understanding of how it works.

~ Making the blades ~

This was probable the hardest part of my sign that needed figuring out. I had to use a thin and smooth material so that the blades would smoothly run over the top of each other. From the ones I'd seen people had made online they'd used thin wood or metal sheet. I went to woodwork to see if they had any material that would be appropriate and they didn't have anything in that would be suitable. I also thought about using tough card and laser cutting them but then they may not move very well.

After discussing this issue with class mates I decided to use Styrene sheet as I would be able to spraymount a printout of the blades onto it as a template. I went to metalwork and cut the excess Styrene away. Then I used scissors to cut closely around the blades and punched the holes out with a metal hole punch. I then filed all the blades down so they'd move smoothly. I glued on Styrene round tube for the rivets.

~ Sign assembling ~

I bought 2m metal chain from the DIY store in Tooting so that my sign can be hung up later. I glued the aperture piece to my sign with epoxy adhesive, after some researching this was my best option for gluing together metal and acrylic plastic.

This is what my final sign looks like. I faced a lot of problems along the way and it took a lot of calculating and brain work but I think I'm quite proud of how its turns out. The aperture works to an extent but if I made it again I would make the blades wider so they wouldn't fall underneath when closed too far. Overall I really enjoyed learning all the different processes in the different workshop.