sFW$34$@$£^*@!

Just realised my animation is 33 seconds long, According to some course mates they have been told it is compulsory to be between 20-30 seconds and theres a risk of failing if it is not within the brief requirements. However others have told me they have asked other tutors and the 30 second brief is just a guideline just aslong as we don't go too much over? agh. At the moment i'm going to try and see what i can rustle up but if its not amazing im just going to take both versions of my animation in (one with the credits and one without) and hopefully i can be directed better from the tutors helping us to upload it to which one i can use!

Lenny the lightbulb final

Yessssssssssssssssssssssssss


It seems to be keeping the quality when i upload it to youtube so theres still hope for the final hand in!


Not gonna lie, If i had more time or managed my time better i think i would have really got into it. Maybe after learning the ins and outs of after effects i can have a go at making another animation in my own time (future adventures of lenny?! haha!). But for now.. I cant wait to get this over and done with and finally handed in!


Still.. Hope you enjoy

Definitely the end!

Below are a few screen shots from imovie where i created my final animation. They are mostly showing the alterations i needed to do i.e, fitting my images to the screen and making the timings between them as small as possible. Imovie only let me create a sequence at 10fps, but i think this was fast enough to still achieve the effect i wanted from my animation.

It was very easy on Imovie to cut a clip, as i could manipulate the frames to fit exactly with my music and vice versa. It made me feel more in control of my animation. 

FINAL ANIMATION.. really this time.

Im very happy with my final animation, I like the imperfections e.g. the lighting slightly changing and the jumpiness (a bit from the floor) because i think stop motion movies should be like that. 

There is quite a big contrast between the frames with lenny in and then the credits, because i only used one background and photoshopped letters onto it, so the image stays the same just more letters appear on it, making it very controlled and still. I suppose the contrast can be a good thing because it sort of ends the piece, starts to bring it to a close/ more still then finally one still image at the end.

In future i would like to have a complete set up i.e. a tripod/ some sort of camera stand so i can be in control more of the jumpiness and make it smoother if future projects needed me to do so.

The final animation seems quite small once uploaded onto here, which i'm really not sure why as on my laptop it is a larger image and a lot higher quality. I'm going to have to try and upload it onto youtube and see if i can improve the quality at all on there. Hopefully the quality stays the same as on my leptop when i upload it onto the hard drive at the final hand in!

credits?

I have decide to add a 'By Amy Smith Daniels' at the end of the animation. Stupidly i have come back to uni in the middle of my animation and couldn't bring back the background. Ill have to see what photoshop can do.

The two photos above are the ones i will have to combine to try and create an animation out of eek!

i began by adding them onto photoshop, repeating the background as a layer and then 'multiplying' it. 

I then dragged it onto the other image with the same background, but it has got a lot darker than i had expected.

I tried playing around with the levels and brightness to match it up to the original picture.

Once it was as similar as i could make it i deleted one letter at a time of the Amy Smith Daniels, so when i add the frames int the animation they appear one by one. 

Finished!

FINALLY!

After hours of trying to keep the camera as still as possible and the lighting as controlled as i can i think i've finally cracked it. 

YAYAYAYAYAYAYAY :D

Very happy it has worked. I think the music works well with the images, especially the bits where it begins to rain. The parts of music where the flute changes form high to low works well with the cloud chasing lenny aswell, the sort of thing i wanted to create. 

I know it is quite jumpy but i really like the effect it gives. I think the imperfections add to the stop motion effects. It is quite an unbelievable story anyway so i didn't think it has to look overly realistic.

The only thing is the ending that i'm a bit unhappy with. I think it needs a sort of sure ending. Possibly credits or just simply 'the end'.

After effects fail

I have tried so many times to work after effects and i swear i cant get my head round it. I'm sure i've been doing exactly what i've been shown in the after effects sessions but it just isn't working for me! Below are some screen shots of the processes i've been through with it.

Began by changing the settings of a new composition and the frame rate to 12fps

Added my images as an image sequence

CANT FIND SOME OF MY IMAGES?!

I decided to carry on and just see what happened, and if they were important images.

Here i had to resize some of my images, obviously too high (probably 300dpi) 

at the beginning it looked like it was working (albeit going wayyy too fast on the preview)

..And then the lost images. I really don't understand this and i've spoken to course mates which this has happened to them, they said they moved files around and somehow it sorted itself out. 

I have tried this so many times, uploaded the files again, made new folders, copied the images, agh i just cant get them to upload!

This is way too stressful for me with only a few days to go before the deadline so i am going to have to resort to imovie. It doesn't have all the features of after effects, but what good are features if i cant use them anyway. From my tester animations that i created on imovie i think that it will work just as well, i just may have to jig around some of my images and music because i have created the animation with 12fps and imovie only allows me to use 10.

putting it all together

Finally i started to work on my ACTUAL final animation. I worked out all the times and the amount of frames needed between each scene.


I have decided to use part of my music, from 5 seconds to 35 seconds. I cut this down on an online mp3 cutter. 


The rough outline for my timings are.. 
(between)


5-12 seconds- 84 frames needed
                     - lenny walking on
                     - cloud appearing over him
                     - the cloud beginning to rain


13-15 seconds- 36 frames
                      - running right


16-20 seconds- running left/ still trying to get out of the cloud
                       - must be in the middle at 20 seconds.


From 20- 24 seconds it will be lenny getting more angry and it will be zooming in on his face. 
At 24 seconds this is where the music changes slightly where i want it to be focused on my new character at the umbrella stand. At 27 seconds It is where lenny should be skipping of happily in his new umbrella hat.

Not the best set up but it will have to do!

'Its never the right time'

After creating my trial animation i realised id have to speed up my animation a lot more than i thought. Trying to fit all of this within 30 seconds is going to be a big squeeze.

LOTS OF SCRIBBLES

CONFUSION!

After making all of these scribbles trying to work out what to actually do with my animation i think that the only option is to cut down/ simplify it. I have decided to cut out the scene where lenny gets handed an umbrella and cant pick it up. Instead i will have him being chased by the cloud for a few seconds longer, then him just spying the umbrella shop.  It will still have the scene with the shop keeper has an idea, but then it will skip straight to lenny skipping away happily.

Close up

There us one point in my animation where there is a close up of Lenny's face, this needed to be more detailed.. well portray an expression better. for this reason i am using more frames of his face. He needs to be looking angry, then change into a sort of startled/ surprised look.

This was made up of 6 frames but i think it shows well enough the lightbulbs expression changing, with anymore frames i don't think it would fit with the music.

final final final beginning.

This is the beginning of my final outcome, well what i need it to look like. I've decided to use the hand drawn version of lenny as i think it stands out behind the background better. 

This is only at 5fps so definitely not as fast as it needs to be but it gives me a good idea of how its going to look. Im not sure if i'm going to use these images exactly because i didn't work out the timings properly but my final images will look practically identical to this.

umbrella shop

I really like the idea of combining photographs in my stop motion animation, along with the lightbulb. This would combine realistic images with the unreal characters and the animated world, i think making it very interesting.

I've decided to use my friend as the model, taking pictures of her with her hands by her side gradually moving upwards, as if she has had an idea.

I only took 6 frames as i had my camera on the burst setting and didnt realise how slow it went. i tried taking pictures one by one but it was very jumpy.

This isn't the best quality and as it is only a short sequence i decided to attempt to create it in after effects..

As you can see my images are too big, obviously not 72dpi.  Im not sure how to change these on here so for now i just had to scale down the image to fit into the frame. 

I set the images to 12 fps and then added a bit of my music track just to see if it works really. obviously not in time.

After rendering and setting as a quicktime output, this is the outcome;

Im definitely going to use this in my final animation. Maybe not this exact clip, but i will find a way to use the images.