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.