Estings evaluation

Estings evaluation

For this project my aim was to create an animated short to be used as a tv advert for the channel e4. The specific aims and targets for the brief was to have a clip that lasted only 10 seconds no more no less and that it has to somehow utilize the e4 logo in it. My choice was to go for a type of animation I had never tried before so I could extend my skills and take the opportunity to learn something new. The type of animation I went for was stop motion, I decided to work with left as it was interesting how the felt would grip each other, this was good when moving a large piece with smaller bits overlayed on top, they would stick and follow thee larger bit making the animating process slightly easier. To give my animation some direction I decided it would be made for the audio that I selected. I listened through and through the music provided my e4 and selected track 7, this was due to the fact it sounded very ska band like and that’s what I had been listening to all week so I already had some inspiration. With this lead I turned my felt into little musicians based off the band madness, a well-known ska band. I gave my character the classic features of black hats and sunglasses. With this all decided I went forth with my recording process. I set up a dragon kit and prepared my pieces to begin recording he segments. To make production more manageable I broke up my recordings into three key sections.

 First was the set up, then the confrontation, then the realization and big reveal, in my animation this was portrayed my the set up of character, them playing the music and moving on their own, then the reveal of the e4 logo at the end. I recorded all of this using a dragon stop motion kit. The main feature I used was the auto take function which worked on taking two frames every two seconds, this was I could moved the objects and have recording at the same time so I didn’t have to use one hand for each.

On the last section where the big reveal happened I used larger gaps in the frames because it was more work moving so much at one. When the final video was finished and I had attached all of the videos together I then added the music I had based my animation on, I was scared it would be out of time and the characters wouldn’t move to the music, but they actually timed perfectly even then the saxophone comes into play. In the end and looking at my final video I was really happy with the outcome. I think that my main achievement for me in this project was finishing something that had no direction as I don’t like working too freely and feel like I need some sort of direction. Also the use of a new technique was a big move out of my comfort zone. I could have gone and done something I knew I excelled in but I decided to learn something new as well as completing the task at hand.