SMA for Pass.
City of Bristol College:
BTEC Photography Course:
Title of Unit:
Stop
Motion Animation (SMA)
Date: 05/09/2013
Sum-Up Report of whole class Stop Motion
Animation (SMA) from Monday 02/09/13,
On Monday 2nd of September, last
week, all 18 of us enthusiastic photographers went to Millennium Square, just
outside the big glass dome which is the planetarium of the @ Bristol science
museum.
What we did as a group was we had 18 of us
students and two members of staff. One student was selected at random to do the
photograph shooting of the camera, whilst the 17 of us students and the two
members of staff set up the all the mark points to let us know where we could
go out the of the frame.
The object of the task was, for us who were
inside the SMA, to move in different directions and make weird movements
starting and ending up in the exact same places. The person who was operation
the camera button had to capture up to a maximum of 150 still frames, so that
when we uploaded the photos to the computer we could set a certain time laps of
how fast or slow the SMA would run for.
Youtube Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=juOz7UKiyGY&feature=youtu.be
Once we were back in the computer room, Alan Drew (teacher) uploaded the photos that were captured on the camera and showed us how to create the stop motion, first by resizing the images so that they would take such a long time to be converted to a QuickTime video file.
Once we were back in the computer room, Alan Drew (teacher) uploaded the photos that were captured on the camera and showed us how to create the stop motion, first by resizing the images so that they would take such a long time to be converted to a QuickTime video file.
Once the files were all re-sized by using
Bulk, we then went back into Adobe Photoshop CS5 to create the SMA.
The Process is
Open Adobe Photoshop > Window >
Animations, this programs Photoshop to work as a Stop Motion Animation creator.
File > Open and select file by just
selecting the top photo of the animation set. Make sure that you have the
“File” as JPEG and that “Image Sequence” is ticked.
Once that is done, you then have to set the
Frame Rate to 30 and the “fps” to 15, this will make the SMA run for 10
seconds.
Once that is done, the SMA will start
playing and will keep going. To convert the file into a QuickTime file, you go
File > Export > Render Video. All you have to done next is name your file
to whatever you want to call it and then press render. QuickTime will then open
and you have your first Stop Motion Animation (SMA).
NO PHOTOS POSSIBLE:
Evaluation:
The task at hand was to create a whole
group SMA using a camera set to capture a certain number of frames at a time
and then upload them to a computer by Bulk re-sizing them using adobe Photoshop
image processor and then creating the SMA in Photoshop and then converting it to
a QuickTime file.
All in all it was a very fun, adventurous,
clever and exciting process. For me, personally it taught me a new skill in
Photoshop, one that I hadn’t already learned. I now look forward to creating
our little group Stop Motion Animations which will be very similar to the one
we did as a whole group and then the next challenge is to create our own
individual Stop Motion Animation.
City of Bristol College:
BTEC Photography Course:
Title of Unit:
Stop Motion Animation (SMA)
Stop Motion Animation (SMA)
Date: 05/09/13
Homework Research on
- Peter
Gabriel Sledgehammer
- Aardman
Animations
- One of my Own
Peter Gabriel Sledgehammer:
After watching a couple of Peter Gabriel’s
videos on YouTube, his sledgehammer and his steam videos I can see how he
accomplishes his cool techniques in Stop Motion Animation (SMA). Apart from
doing freeze frames, like you would normally do in animation, he combines very
short video clips of himself and imports them into the stop motion animation
and merges them together. I find that very interesting. Also some of the
objects that he uses in his SMA’s are very interesting to look at and
interrupt.
 |
Aardman Animations:
Aardman animations immediately take me to
seeing things very similar to Wallace and Grommet, Chicken Run and a couple of
others.
When creating all of these incredible
animations, the producers have to build and reshape the characters to exactly
what their storyboards show. It makes the scene of the animation more dramatic,
more interesting and more real. It makes the viewer want to see more of what
the animators have researched and created.
These kinds of animations, I don’t really
see much power coming out of it, but I can see a very creative side to the
animation. The creators have put a lot of thought into the type and structure
into the scenery and into the characters, animated within the show. That shows
that they have had to do a lot of planning, creating and editing out.
One of my Own:
Before learned about Stop Motion Animation
(SMA) last week, I had already learned a small aspect of it from previous years
and some friends of mine created this really interesting animation called “When students go home”.
When students go home, is an animation that
starts off with a normal video clip with my friends in the image, packing up
and heading off home. And then leads into and actual animation of the computer
room come to life, kind of like in Toy Story, when Andy leaves his room and his
toys come to life. I find it very clever that, instead of doing just one plain animation, we combined a very short film clip in at the beginning to make it look more real.
This animation didn’t take very long to
make, probably as far as I can remember it took about a day to make, edit out
and finalize, but we didn’t use Photoshop, like Peter Gabriel or Aardman
animations did, we used a program called “ I can Animate”
YouTube Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwH86pMiX9c
Evaluation:
Stop Motion Animations (SMA) are a very
cool and creative way to create videos and slideshows of things.
I have never had much experience with them
up until now and I can say, even though it has only been a week of learning
about them so far, it has been a rather interesting and fascinating process to
see how great films like “Wallace and Grommet”, “Chicken Run” “Peter Gabriel”
and normal human animations are actually made.
Our Group Stop Motion Animation (SMA)
YouTube Link:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXAh4YD-NYc&feature=youtu.be
Our group Stop Motion Animation (SMA) consisted of four people in a room with moving chairs and window blinds with tables and us coming in at the end. Having already done a whole class group SMA we all knew what the processes were to complete a 10 second, creative and interesting animation. It was a rather interesting process, because it didn't just teach us team work. It was preparing ourselves for our own individual Stop Motion Animation (SMA).
City of Bristol College:
BTEC Photography Course:
Title of Unit:
Title of Unit:
Stop Motion Animation (SMA)
Our Group Stop Motion Animation (SMA)
Plans(mind-map and storyboard) for group Stop Motion Animation (SMA):
Mind-Maps and Storyboards are a great way of visual recording the processes of our task at hand. They allow us to plan out our work in a way that when we actually get underway with it, we can just follow the process we originally planned out.
YouTube Link:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXAh4YD-NYc&feature=youtu.be
Our group Stop Motion Animation (SMA) consisted of four people in a room with moving chairs and window blinds with tables and us coming in at the end. Having already done a whole class group SMA we all knew what the processes were to complete a 10 second, creative and interesting animation. It was a rather interesting process, because it didn't just teach us team work. It was preparing ourselves for our own individual Stop Motion Animation (SMA).
City of Bristol College:
BTEC Photography Course:
Title of Unit:
Stop Motion Animation (SMA)
YouTube Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0l40jBvAcDI&feature=youtu.be
Evaluation of my Individual SMA:
An animation of words appearing on the computer screen, forming a list of all the schools I have attended and the years I have attended them. The set-up was quite simple. I chose simple because then I knew that I would be able to capture more frames, than if I did something complicated. I had my camera set up on a tripod, looking down at my laptop screen that was focused just on the white word document. Then my having my infra-red remote and receiver, I didn't have to worry about camera wobble. Then each time I typed a letter I clicked the camera. It was a very successful experiment and the final product came out really well.
Evaluation of the whole STOP MOTION ANIMATION (SMA) process:
Throughout this whole process of creating Stop Motion Animations (SMA's) there have been ups and downs. Things I have enjoyed doing and the things that I haven't really enjoyed doing. I can say I much preferred my individual SMA because that didn't require me to do so much moving around. All I was doing was photographing my computer screen, shot, after shot, after shot. Where as the whole class SMA and my group SMA involved me actually in it and doing quite a lot of moving around. That's why, for my individual one, I kept my idea simple and therefore = more work captured.
I mentioned above, on the research I had done, that I had some experience with Stop Motion Animation in the past, but that was quite simple. Next time I do Stop Motion Animation work, I am still going to keep my work as simple as possible, but I just need to think of an idea that I can do that will give a good number of frames to fit inside a 1 minute presentation video.
1 minute SMA for Merit/Distinction.
Stop Motion Animation (SMA)
Date: 16/09/13
My Individual Stop Motion Animation (SMA):
Plans(mind-map and storyboard) for my Individual Stop Motion Animation (SMA):
This mind-map and storyboard I planned out originally, when we were first told that we would be creating a group SMA and an individual SMA. This first one is about moving onions and garlic, creating a following circle and then I decided to take them out of the animation and then I decided to add pens in, whilst taking out the onions and the garlic, but keeping it all in the same animation.
After some consideration of my first plans for my own, individual SMA, I had a second idea for a slightly different SMA, but wasn't sure if it would be as flashy and weird as the first idea but I thought it would be good just to have an extra set of plans out, just incase the first tryouts for the original idea didn't work.
Evaluation of my Individual SMA:
An animation of words appearing on the computer screen, forming a list of all the schools I have attended and the years I have attended them. The set-up was quite simple. I chose simple because then I knew that I would be able to capture more frames, than if I did something complicated. I had my camera set up on a tripod, looking down at my laptop screen that was focused just on the white word document. Then my having my infra-red remote and receiver, I didn't have to worry about camera wobble. Then each time I typed a letter I clicked the camera. It was a very successful experiment and the final product came out really well.
Evaluation of the whole STOP MOTION ANIMATION (SMA) process:
Throughout this whole process of creating Stop Motion Animations (SMA's) there have been ups and downs. Things I have enjoyed doing and the things that I haven't really enjoyed doing. I can say I much preferred my individual SMA because that didn't require me to do so much moving around. All I was doing was photographing my computer screen, shot, after shot, after shot. Where as the whole class SMA and my group SMA involved me actually in it and doing quite a lot of moving around. That's why, for my individual one, I kept my idea simple and therefore = more work captured.
I mentioned above, on the research I had done, that I had some experience with Stop Motion Animation in the past, but that was quite simple. Next time I do Stop Motion Animation work, I am still going to keep my work as simple as possible, but I just need to think of an idea that I can do that will give a good number of frames to fit inside a 1 minute presentation video.
1 minute SMA for Merit/Distinction.
City of Bristol College:
BTEC Photography Course:
Title of Unit:
Stop Motion Animation (SMA)
Stop Motion Animation (SMA)
Date: 07/10/13
My Plans for my 1 minute Stop Motion Animation: Mind-map and Storyboard for 4 different ideas.
Task at hand:
My task at hand is now to complete a 1 minute SMA of one of these ideas, but because the minimum time limit has to be 1 minute, 900 individual shots(photos) will be required and that will equal 30 frames per shot, once we have opened it into photoshop and formatted it as an animation. This SMA is on a whole other level compared to the ones that i have already done. For this you ave to have a much more clearer understanding of how SMA's work and then you have to be more creative and demanding of yourself, but keep your idea simple, because simple = more photos. After all the hard work there comes the evaluation part where you have to be more critical how how the candidate has done his work.
These 2, one minute Stop Motion Animations
(SMA’s) were the two that rather got my attention whilst I was looking for stop
motion animation ideas.
My Plans for my 1 minute Stop Motion Animation: Mind-map and Storyboard for 4 different ideas.
My task at hand is now to complete a 1 minute SMA of one of these ideas, but because the minimum time limit has to be 1 minute, 900 individual shots(photos) will be required and that will equal 30 frames per shot, once we have opened it into photoshop and formatted it as an animation. This SMA is on a whole other level compared to the ones that i have already done. For this you ave to have a much more clearer understanding of how SMA's work and then you have to be more creative and demanding of yourself, but keep your idea simple, because simple = more photos. After all the hard work there comes the evaluation part where you have to be more critical how how the candidate has done his work.
City of Bristol College:
BTEC Photography Course:
Title of Unit:
Date: 13/10/13
Research on 2, 1 minute Stop Motion
Animations (SMA’s)
Stop
Motion Animation, Magic Water:
YouTube Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSzCLf8tjP4
This particular SMA I find rather
interesting, due to how it is planned out and how slick it looks. To have the
blue gunge or whatever it was, do all of those amazing movements and stunts was
really clever. Also the sink at the beginning of the SMA, just having that
little drip continue to drop and drop, with the sound effect that matches the
sound of dripping water, really gives the atmosphere to the whole SMA.
This is a really cool and clever way of
demonstration Stop Motion Animations. However, I must say that it must have
been quite a tricky process. Normally tricky processes take a long, long time
and it’s also quite hard to capture the right number of frames, with a tricky,
possibly short SMA. Most of the time people do experiment with tricky Stop
Motion Animations, only thing with them is, they have to be done over quite a
long period of time. I am guessing that this one could have take at least 2-3
days to complete.
Stop
Motion – The Growth Of A Game Collection In 1 Minute.
YouTube Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmXAhjB0QpQ
This Stop Motion Animation really blew me
away. I couldn’t believe the animation, nor could I believe the amount of Xbox,
Videos, DVDs, PS2, PSP, PS3, Intendo Wii, Computer Games and Music that this
one person had collected. It is at least a 10 – 12 years collection of
different things. Then the Animation, it starts off with all of this boy’s
shelves all empty and then one by one, all of the shelves fill with all of
these games, Xbox games, Play-station games and DVDs.
This is one very clever and extremely cool
Stop Motion Animation. The young boy who did this must have put a lot of
thought into how he was going to do this, because that is a lot of games and
films to unload from the shelves and then reload them again, however he had one
advantage. His idea was simple. Simple ideas get the job done much more quickly
and you know what it is that you have got to do. One other thing that I really
like about this SMA is that it starts off really dull with colour and then at
the end it is full with colour. I always it wonderful to see things start off
dull and then ends with deep, vibrant colours.
Evaluation
of these 2 Stop Motion Animations:
Having researched Stop Motion Animations
for a pass grade, this level for merit/distinction is far more advanced and the
artist has to explore much more contextual influences in order to succeed. If I
was the judge of these two SMA’s they would definitely get a merit or even
possible distinction grade. They have thought about what they wanted to do and
they demonstrated the true meaning of Stop Motion Animation.
I personally prefer the one of the DVD
collection than the one of the magic water, not because it is quite a simple
thing to do, but it just really shows what Stop Motion Animation is. Magic
Water is also very amazing and cleverly done, but that took a very long period
of time to finish. As I said in my evaluation for my pass grade level SMA, The
simple ideas are the ones that enable you to capture more frames and gives more
photos per second once on the computer.
City of Bristol College:
BTEC Photography Course:
Title of Unit:
Stop Motion Animation (SMA)
Stop Motion Animation (SMA)
Date: 14/10/13
How to create a MP3 file to be ready to add to a SMA:
This is quite an interesting process, how to to start off is quite simple. First go to YouTube and search for a music video that you know and that you would like for your Stop Motion Animation. Once you have chosen that you go to the youtube - mp3 converter and download the file. It will automatically go to iTunes. Once in iTunes, you need to share the file with garageband. Once in Garageband, you will select a new project and then drag the mp3 file from iTunes that you just downloaded from youtube into garageband.
Play the file until it hits 32 seconds and then split the tune. Delete the second part and then copy and paste the first part to where the second part was. If it sounds a little iffy, merge the first and second part together so that they don't have a weird gap between them. Once that is done, if you want to do a fade out and fade in on the track, you have to enable the features to do so. Once enabled you will have a purple time lapse where at the beginning and at the end you can drag the little lines down and then you will have a faded in and faded out track of music. As soon as that process is done, share the file with iTunes and that will then able you to use the music on a Stop Motion Animation or a slideshow.
This little photo shows the outline process, of where all the hard work is done. Garageband, I have used it before, but not for a long, long time. It's a music creating programme, not one that I use on a day to day basis, But it is a superb programme.
My video of my 10 second animation, demonstrating the use of the music I created on Garageband.
YOUTUBE LINK http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGXTsTDt0tU&feature=youtu.be
Copy youtube link to a new tab to watch.
City of Bristol College:
BTEC Photography Course:
Title of Unit:
Stop Motion Animation (SMA)
Date: 07/11/13
My Stop Motion Animation of a moving clock face, with an added font with background and a piece of music that fitted well with it.
Going from 4pm - 4:50pm
YouTube Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfP2oCYz7sE
Evaluation:
Originally, when I planned to do my one minute SMA, I had decided to make the clock face my practice SMA and then do a slightly different one for the Real thing. I shot the clock face, using a rather interesting technique. Instead of removing the batteries from the back and then just moving the handles by hand, I set up my camera so that I would just shoot each time the big hand of the clock moved on a number. It also meant that I didn't have to keep going to the back of the clock and and using the little rotator at the back, that meant I had a much higher chance of keeping all of the photos of the clock in the same place. It was a much more fun process than I thought. Also I added an extra technical skill whilst shooting. Instead of me having to move and use my hands on the camera, I plugged my infra-red receiver and remote into the camera, that way it wouldn't = motion blur or quick movement.
That was finally complete. Now I had the task of combining everything together. When I looked back at my clock face animation, I realised that the other SMA that I really wanted to do, wasn't going to work out, so I decided to stick with the clock face. I knew that I also had to add music and font to this SMA. Easier said than done as we all say.
I had to create a font that would fit well with my SMA as an opening. I decided on a white background with a simple black text of Ariel font. When I tried to combine the animation with the font, with the font in the front, because of its size it reduced the size of the clock animation, so I had the task of creating a font and background that matched the one of the size of animation photos. It was a complicated process using photoshop, but it managed to get it done. Once that was done I had to let the animation run for a while so that it would run quickly, so as to when I would render the animation, it would go quickly as a movie file. Once the font, with its background and the animation were done, all I had to do now was to add the music. It took me a while to remember how to add a file to an animation, but as I went along I sort of got the process back into my head and I managed to add the music file to the animation. Once that was done, all I had to do was render the file and set it as a quicktime file to the computer so that I could play the file as one big whole animation.
In this animation, compared to my 10 second one, I kept the idea simple, which will generally give you more shots, but this time all I did was add the correct style and type of font to the beginning of the animation and then add a piece of music that fitted well with the animation I had chosen. One extra thing that I would like to point out about my new 1 minute SMA is that it doesn't show a very artistic side view, in other words it doesn't show a very creative way of demonstrating my SMA, but that was something I had in mind whilst doing the actual animation. My animation is based on demonstrating the technical skills that I have learned whilst doing the process. Creative processes are just as important, but in my case technical processes are much more suited for telling the narrative story behind my 1 minute Stop Motion Animation.
ANOTHER TASK THAT I HAD ACHIEVED WELL AND LEARNED HOW TO DO A FEW OF THE COMPLICATED THINGS ON MY OWN.
I had to create a font that would fit well with my SMA as an opening. I decided on a white background with a simple black text of Ariel font. When I tried to combine the animation with the font, with the font in the front, because of its size it reduced the size of the clock animation, so I had the task of creating a font and background that matched the one of the size of animation photos. It was a complicated process using photoshop, but it managed to get it done. Once that was done I had to let the animation run for a while so that it would run quickly, so as to when I would render the animation, it would go quickly as a movie file. Once the font, with its background and the animation were done, all I had to do now was to add the music. It took me a while to remember how to add a file to an animation, but as I went along I sort of got the process back into my head and I managed to add the music file to the animation. Once that was done, all I had to do was render the file and set it as a quicktime file to the computer so that I could play the file as one big whole animation.
In this animation, compared to my 10 second one, I kept the idea simple, which will generally give you more shots, but this time all I did was add the correct style and type of font to the beginning of the animation and then add a piece of music that fitted well with the animation I had chosen. One extra thing that I would like to point out about my new 1 minute SMA is that it doesn't show a very artistic side view, in other words it doesn't show a very creative way of demonstrating my SMA, but that was something I had in mind whilst doing the actual animation. My animation is based on demonstrating the technical skills that I have learned whilst doing the process. Creative processes are just as important, but in my case technical processes are much more suited for telling the narrative story behind my 1 minute Stop Motion Animation.
ANOTHER TASK THAT I HAD ACHIEVED WELL AND LEARNED HOW TO DO A FEW OF THE COMPLICATED THINGS ON MY OWN.
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