beggining of the end..

After the experiments i decided that a plain blue background would be best for the sky of my animation, ive begun to try and get the timings and right amount of frames right per second just so i know if it all works really.

 Not the best set up but i have limited space in my house, so the floor it is. I tried to create a sort of camera holder with tape attatched to a chair but it didnt really work, so my hand was moving all the time. the black tape sort of helped me out but i think ill need something else to really help me keep my camera still and in the same sort of place for my final animation.

Below is what i came out with, i haven't tried to add the music to it yet but i'm feeling a lot more confident, seeing how it is all coming together.

I suppose its not a bad first attempt but i think i need to sort some of the colours out. Especially the bulb, i don't think it stands out enough against the background.

colour? background? arghhh

I have been trying to think what i can use for my background/ the scenery really of my animation. i found a blue bed sheet and tried to layer it up, a bit scrunched like a sky, (the scrunched up bits could add a bit of depth to the background.
Heres a short animation i tried with the background and just a painted sheet of paper as the grass.

I dont really think this worked well because the bumps in the background create wierd shadows for the character, also there is more movement not making the animation look as smooth because it isnt a flat surface.

LEGS.

As you can see form my post below i havent included legs on the new version of lenny, this is because i thought it would be difficult trying to keep track of the legs moving while im trying to adjust other elements aswell.

I tried to observe people around me and imitate their movements on this model so i could see what i would need to do on my animation.

Below is a short experiment i tried with a model moving legs.

This was only made on imovie and it is only about 10 frames, but you get the idea. 

I just couldn't get my head around what the movements needed to look realistic.

back to the lightbulb

The photos below show my lightbulb lenny, this time with a face drawn in drywipe pen on an opaque lightbulb. i drew lines for the side of the mouth and eyes in permanent marker as more of a control to keep the shapes as similar as possible.

For the next experiment with stop motion i'm going to but out the pictures of this bulb and use them, rather than the actual lightbulb, this is so i can compare the 2 short animations to see what one would look better, i think if i was creating it flat it would also be quite difficult to keep the bulb in the same position, with the same lighting for shots soon after each other. Mainly because of its shape it would create some wierd shadows. Suppose i can still try though.

More Lenny..

I decided to create a series of animated lightbulbs (Lennys) just so i could get an idea of how my story will be created. First i drew out a basic lightbulb shape, scanned it into the computer then reprinted it a few times so i could have the exact same shape for all of the different expressions i needed.

The one i scanned in is on the right, the one on the left i edited in photoshop to make a bolder outline so it would stand out more.

The photo above is the 6 faces i created for my character. I worked out through the music that i needed;

Happy (original)

Sad

Confused

Angry

then a few side faces (one for each direction) for when my character is running from side to side.

I then put this character into a small animation of what part of my final animation will be.

This is only 41 frames and put together quickly using imovie, for a general idea of how i will create my final animation and where etc.

After effects session!

Completely forgot to load this stuff on earlier! This is just some of the work from a tutorial on after effects, really just learning the basics but it gave me ideas of how i could make my characters move.

We started off by cropping an image on photoshop, one large and one small version of it, then imported them both into after effects and had a play around.

This is more for me to remember how to animate images using after effects but i think it gives a good idea of how my images might move if i scanned them in and tried to manipulate them on here.

This was a very usefull session!

Introducing... Lenny!

I decided to experiment with different 'Lennys' to see if it would be possible to create him out of an actual lightbulb..

He obviously needs a lot of work but i think with the right background and scene this could be quite effective. 

I would like to see if there was any way of actually lighting the bulb in the scenes where i want him to be happier, ill have to investigate further before i decide for definite what style of animation i'm going to use.