We were asked to be in groups for the new animation. The groups were decided

but us- mine consisted of: Louie, Ashlea, Sarah, Zez, Roxy and Myself.

We were then given a selection of three different stories to choose from. We all decided to do Frankenstein.

We began by editing the script which was done by Louie. This can be found on his blog LJ Animation.

We began by doing research into asylums- they can be seen below.

I then decided that I would do the cat armature. To begin with the armature that I came up with was the one which can be seen below, followed by the plasticine moulding on top.

As I found out the hard way, you need to do face sketches from all angles. The cat does not resemble my initial sketch and the face looks startled.

After this I tried to do it again, I found that this time it worked better.

Replacement Animation

These images were taking from Coraline, this shows how they made a separate mouth for all the dolls and I thought it would be somewhat useful to do in this stop motion production.

This is the armature for Coraline. The eyebrows are changable and although they have used resin in order to achieve this look- the idea of diving the face into upper and lower work well.

This is an example of the cat walk cycle. This is an animation done by someone, and sometimes they get it wrong- so I thought I would record the Tiger walking, the day we went to the zoo.

Tiger Walk

Here is my version of the walk cycle- This was a bad test.....

Although I didn't animate Victoria, I asked my room mate if she could walk up the stairs to ensure we got the right movement.

Cat Animatic

Although not much has been done, I have began to do my cat Armature. This can be seen in the images below.


In order to do this cat, I looked at several images including the anatomy of a cat.
These can be seen below.



This is the cat from Coraline.


The Anatomy of a Cat.
Side view of a real cat to see how the legs work.

Stop-Motion

Initially we had a group discussion to find out what we could do. This was a brainstorm of different ideas/techniques we could use to present stop animation in a different way.




This animation is the result of a quick idea on what would count as squash and stretch technique. In this the person putting the pressure is squashing in order to change the person.



In Animation you are 'bound' by the 180 degree rule. Whilst this is very good for some animation, we were all inspired by the Matrix. Knowing this, we attempted to re-create/direct our own matrix short. The only difference is we wanted something different. A 'magic' trip to happen. This was done by holding the camera whilst the 'actors' changed over.

A free Newspaper that was given to us in the canteen. We always see people reading the newspapers, but what if the next time the person lowers it, it's not the same person :O. That is where this idea was based from.



The chair didn't work too well. The problem with this was peoples height. We thought it would be cool that when we turn around we would switch all using Jonathan's jacket. Unfortunately what we hadn't taken into account was the height differences, and whilst they rotate you can see the changes going on.


This was some silly thing. A quick little idea of not knowing what lurks beneath. People just came up and down like fish going for food. The interest was when Zez decided to pull Jonathan down, that included some character/light humour into the animation.

Our main idea was the changes to promote growth. For this short animation we were simply experimenting to see what style would suit it best and some actions people could do. This was in inspiration from these two short clips

Coldplay- Strawberry Swing
Deadline Animation



This was a little appearance trick. We had seen it in Melies films and attempted to do something like it. By holding the camera/correct angles we were able to make this interesting clip.


Our final video can be viewed here.
.TRANSITIONS.

StikFas

So, we've been given a little creature to build. 10secs into the opening and I've already appear to have cut myself. Not ideal .... So, I am in the black group consisting of:

• Ashlea
• Louie
• Sarah
• Roxy
• Greg
• Me

For this task we were asked to build the model individually and then attempt stop-motion animation.

This is the very first replacement animation that we did. This is a mixture of two animations. First session is one walk cycle and then it leads into the other.

I was looking at how models walk and using the Animation Survival Kit to see the way the legs cross. The picture below shows this example.
This was just a quick attempt at making the figure walk up some steps. I don't think it's too bad, but you can see the tape attached to the feet- which is NOT ideal.


Without a facial expression ,you struggle to come to terms with what the character is actually doing. In this animation the character is yawning NOT just flailing around with the arms.