13. Evaluation of Formats

White board technique:

WWW:

•   Easy to draw and create animation 

•   Smooth transitions makes it flow and look good

•   Very flexible - you can foo almost anything.

EBI:

•   Can be very time consuming

•   Can be frustrating if you accidentally rub out something and have to start over

•   Can be hard to create lighting that looks good, the white board reflects lighting 

This technique could be used for our animation, however it would be hard to create due it being easy to accidentally rub out, also its hard to keep the whiteboard straight and in the frame.

 











The picture above shows our simple scene, and how the tree grew out the ground and the sun started to appear. From this research i think it is a bad idea to make our animation through whiteboard drawings. This is mainly due to the time factor and how it takes way too long to actually do anything. Also one of the major setbacks would be the lighting issue, where because it is a shiny surface it will reflect the light back into the camera lense and as a result obscure the vision of the camwera. Finaly it is very easy to mess up if you lean on the wrong bit of it, or if you accidentally rub off some of the drawing.

People + Objects:

WWW:

•   Easy to create animation due you being the moving object

•   Very flexible - you can do anything

•   You can use a variety of materials

EBI:

•   Depending on the animation your doing it can be very time consuming

•   Lighting can be hard to control

One of the better techniques to use due to it being easy to find a place to film, however can be very time consuming and hard to find props.







The pictures above show how we done a very simple animation of someones hand moving up and down while open and closing. From this I have decided to refrain from using People and Objects as our method of animation, this is due to the fact that it requires a single person to have a huge amount of patience and control over himself. So it would be both very difficult to ensure that the person stays still and that he/she remains focused enough for a long enough time. However it is still quite an easy method providing you are doing it very quickly and the animation itself is short.




Clay:

WWW:

•   Can create whatever shape you want

•   Flexible, easy to create a simple animation and still look good

•   Cheap to use 

EBI:

•   Can be time consuming when trying to make people or objects

•   Changing movements of the objects or people can be hard

•   Getting the clay people to stand up can be hard.

I like using technique, its fun to use, and easy to make objects houses and buildings ect. The only problem about it is it can get quite messy, it tends to stick to tables and leave a greasy layer where it has been stuck.







The pictures above show our simple animation using clay, we formed a ball of clay moved it to the centre of the frame and crushed it. Although clay is one of the most popular forms of animation, i feel that it is not the right type for our idea, and a 3D representation of it will be both incredibly difficult and somewhat unnecessary. This is also one of the most time consuming forms of animation and would take a tremendous amount of focus and patience to achieve this properly. Also from a technical point of view it is actually very difficuly to ensure the lighting is good enough for the clay, because of the fact that it is fully 3D, rather than 2D like card cut outs, it can often be difficult to get light in all of the right places, and some things can be much darker than others.




Lego:


WWW:

•   Easy to construct houses

•   people are already built so there is no hassle making people

•   easy to construct objects ect.

EBI:

•   Can be very time consuming

•   Cant make everything, you may have to use other materials

•   Transitions can sometimes but un-smooth, you may have to take more time to ensure smooth transitions

One of the easiest techniques, can be very easy to create a simple animation as its easy to move the lego people and change the scene.

The picture above shows us moving the horse from one side of the frame to the other, it was easy due to the objects already been made and easily stuck to the scenery. This form of animation is one of the easiest and is one of our two selections. From our research it is clear that this would be easy to keep things consistant due to the way lego works, with the little holes on the peoples feet so they dont fall over, we could easily move characters around without the risk of making them have too big of a jump. The main reason I wouldnt want to use this technique will be the lack of materials, not having a wide enough variety can be detramentle because you will be limited in what you can do.

Paper Cut-outs:


WWW:

•   Smooth animation

•   Can make anything you want

•   You can show any animation using separate cut outs

EBI:

•   Can be very time consuming

•   You have to colour in the cut outs

•   When using duplicate cut outs they have to be identical

This is my least favourite technique, it can be very time consuming and hard to produce identical cut outs. Also it can be very hard to make a long animation, you would have to change the facial expressions every frame.

 

The picture above shows our simple paper cut outs, it only took seconds to create these ones because we didn't add any detail or additional objects. it an easy technique for simple things like this but very hard for complex ideas. I have decided that this is the best option for our idea due to the very smooth nature of paper cut outs. Using these is both easy and much less time consuming than clay or people/objects. Also because they are paper cut outs we can do almost anything with them, only our imagination being the limit. Although there are lots of pros with this form of animation it will still be difficult in the fact that it is just as tempremental and really does take an aweful amount of focus.

9. Ideas Development

1) The shot will open with a cowering child, alone in the cold and darkness of his abandoned mud hut. From the left side of the hut the word "Disease" floats in and starts attacking the child. To show that he is attacking the child he will have arms and he will be wielding a small dagger. As he swings for the child a stick figure will swoop in, with a pound coin as a shield and a rolled up bank note as a sword. He will slice the disease in half and it will fall on the floor. Then more words like "poverty" and "conflict" where they will attack the stick figure and he will strike them down with his sword. After they are all defeated he picks up the child and flies off and gets bigger and bigger until he fills the entire screen, then turns into the "Save the Children" logo.

2) For this idea we will be using a whiteboard. The shot will start with a plain whiteboard, a finger will enter from the bottom and draw a stick man and a hut that he is living in. The stick man will have nothing with him and he will be sad. All of a sudden, coins start falling from the roof of the hut, then bank notes and later food. The whole screen gets filled up with money and food and it gets swiped away and the stick man is in a new house with a family and a homely pet. After that the text "One Pound a Month can... Save the Children" then the logo will slide on from the left side.

3) The setting is a desert, with a single cactus. Tumbleweed rolls by and bounces across the screen. Suddenly money falls from part of the sky, building a part of the land. First making a water tower, followed by numerous houses being built. Again, money falls from the sky on a different side of the screen and a school is built by the money. Finally, a Save the Children tent gets built right in the centre and people come in from either side looking happy with their new community. Slowly fades to black and the title and tag line appears.

7. Case Study - The Act of Killing

The Act of Killing is mainly an observational documentary, however it shows several aspects of reflexive and performative. It is observational because there is minimal communication between the filmmaker and the audience, also the way it is filmed fits in with the conventions of an observational documentary. The shots used are simple, close ups, extended length of a single shot and pans. All shot types bring the emotions of Anwar Congo to their most impactful potential. The use of a close up when he is crying makes the audience feel emotionally linked to the documentary. Extended shots are used to highlight the more important moments of the documentary, for instance, the filmmaker uses extended shots in the torture scenes to make them have a bigger impact on the audience. The documentary has sub-genres, one being reflexive. This is because the audience are made aware that there are representations of real events within the film. The filmmaker asked the subjects to re-create the actions they took in the years of 1965-66, and by doing this they made the documentary have a performative sub genre.




Anwar Congo (Right) dressing up ready to re enact the burning of a village. Notice his face coming across very happy, this is not something you would have expected after seeing what he has done in the past.





Joshua Oppenheimer was in Indonesia for 8 years and over that period of time he built up a relationship with the subject, Anwar Congo. You can tell this because at the beginning of the documentary Congo seemed very proud of all the horrific things he had done, showing extremely little remorse for the actions he took. Contrasting this, towards the end of the documentary he broke down in tears after visiting the place where he carried out the torture and killings. This clearly conveyed the difference in relationship between Joshua and Anwar, as he became more comfortable with his company he felt he could show how he truly felt. Another way in which their relationship evolved was with the way Anwar Congo and his accomplices referred to Joshua Oppenheimer. At first they called him by his full name "Joshua" and throughout the documentary they began calling him "Josh" which shows how the relationship was at first more of a work client, and then progressing into more of a friendship. This helped the documentary because the audience could see the progression of how Anwar Congo felt about the scenario before meeting Joshua Oppenheimer and after he had known him for 8 years.

The documentary was created to portray the events of the 1965-66 in Indonesia, to do this he asked the subjects to re-create the actions to make into a big "Hollywood" film. When they re-create the events they try to make it as near to real as possible, for example, when they wanted to film a scene of which they are burning down a small village that belongs to Chinese people, they actually used a real village and forced the residents to leave just for the purpose of the film. This makes the documentary look as though not much has actually changed since that time period, the "Gangsters" are still in power and still use force to get what they want.

The documentary was originally put together to sway the minds of those who worked for the government in that time, to make them realise that what they had done was horrific and wrong. One of the quotes from Joshua Oppenheimer was "You celebrate mass killing so you don't have to look yourself in the mirror." so he wanted the subjects to stop hiding the fact that what they did was wrong.

7. 5x Ideas Mindmap

1st Idea:


The shot will open with a cowering child, alone in the cold and darkness of his abandoned mud hut. From the left side of the hut the word "Disease" floats in and starts attacking the child. To show that he is attacking the child he will have arms and he will be wielding a small dagger. As he swings for the child a stick figure will swoop in, with a pound coin as a shield and a rolled up bank note as a sword. He will slice the disease in half and it will fall on the floor. Then more words like "poverty" and "conflict" where they will attack the stick figure and he will strike them down with his sword. After they are all defeated he picks up the child and flies off and gets bigger and bigger until he fills the entire screen, then turns into the "Save the Children" logo. Due to the fact that we need the emotion to really hit the audience we will focus on using close ups of the child's face, and occassional long shots to get some of the setting in the animation.

2nd Idea:

For this idea we will be using a whiteboard. The shot will start with a plain whiteboard, a finger will enter from the bottom and draw a stick man and a hut that he is living in. The stick man will have nothing with him and he will be sad. All of a sudden, coins start falling from the roof of the hut, then bank notes and later food. The whole screen gets filled up with money and food and it gets swiped away and the stick man is in a new house with a family and a homely pet. After that the text "One Pound a Month can... Save the Children" then the logo will slide on from the left side. For this the camera angles will generally be straight on, and the shot types will vary from mid shot and wide shots, there are not really any main characters in this so the emotion will not need to be conveyed as thouroughly.

3rd Idea:


Our third idea starts with a boy cowering in fear with the words conflict, disease and poverty surrounding him. A five pound note suddenly swoops in and knocks the words to the floor. the boy jumps on to the magic carpet/five pound note and it flies him to the save the children headquarters. The shot follows them but ends up freezing and fading to black when the 'save the children' logo is in view. Within this we will be using lots of close ups, again to emphasise the emotion of the child and have maximum impact on the audience. Also there will be some longshots, to show the action of the combat between the heros and the villains.

4th Idea:

The setting is a desert, with a single cactus. Tumbleweed rolls by and bounces across the screen. Suddenly money falls from part of the sky, building a part of the land. First making a water tower, followed by numerous houses being built. Again, money falls from the sky on a different side of the screen and a school is built by the money. Finally, a Save the Children tent gets built right in the centre and people come in from either side looking happy with their new community. Slowly fades to black and the title and tag line appears. Due to the fact that there are no characters in this I will mainly use long and wide shots, this is because this is the only way we will be able to fit the town in the screen borders without cutting anything out. Occasionally we will have a closer shot of a single building falling, just to add a bit of variation, rather than having the same thing happening for 30 seconds.

5th Idea:

There will be a character who takes a journey to the well on a daily basis. The video will emphasise the fact that he travels an extremely long time to get to the well, so we will show several different locations, displaying the extremely long travel time. Some of these include, a mountain, desert, forest. Although you wouldn't find these locations in Africa, it really emphasises the length of the journey. Hopefully this will be successful in helping the audience understand the struggle children have to face in the troublesome world. We will try to keep the camera shots to a structure wide/long shot, as to enable the audience to see all of the terrain that the character has to tackle. We will also use close ups to emphasise the characters struggles of the harsh terrain, this will make the audience more emotionally attatched to the advert, hopefully persuading them to donate.

10. Moodboard

4. Aardman Case Study

Aardman are one of the worlds number one animation companies, they produce a huge amount of animation that we all see on television and in films. The Aardman company have lots and lots of different job roles to make their productions successful. These include Animators, Assistant Animators, Storyboard Artists, Layout Artists and CGI Modellers.


Animator

Stop Motion Animators bring models or puppets to life, animating them one frame at a time to create a performance and provide the action outlined in the storyboard. They follow a brief from a Director, Animation Director/Supervisor or Studio Director, and may also refer to established characterisation developed by a Director or Key/Senior Animator.

 Assistant Animator

 Assistant Animators in stop motion animation support the Animators and help the work of the department to run smoothly. They must make sure that the models or puppets are on set, completely equipped, clean and ready to shoot. They need to ensure that the costumes, props and sets are correct and that continuity is maintained.

 Storyboard Artists

The storyboard artist’s job is to provide a visual representation prior to the filming of a feature film or television production. Taking the script or teleplay, the storyboard artist will interpret the objective, whether it is to tell an effective story or represent a product for sale, and deliver a storyboard: a collection of visual scenes which will show the director how he/she may be able to shoot the project


Layout Artists

A layout artist collects and assembles type styles and images, such as illustrations, photographs and drawings, to create a visual design in a computer or on paper. The layout artist is one of several types of commercial artists known as graphic designers who deliver ideas and information through visual communications.


CGI Modellers


Modellers build three-dimensional computer models of everything that is needed for a CGI project. Further on in the process, Riggers will rig the models to enable them to be animated and Texture Artists will apply texture which will be further enhanced at the lighting stage when tone and depth are added.

How They are Made

Aardman animations are always from clay, or plasticine, and to animate with this takes a huge amount of patience. To create even a short 5 minute production with clay you would need to invest a huge amount of time, for example, their feature film Wallace and Gromit The Curse of the Ware-Rabbit which took a total of five years to make, including planning, filming and all editing. That is a huge amount of time for a film. They actually used a total of 300 man crew with the majority of those being animators, but some of them would create the body parts and others would assemble the sets and get ready to film. Obviously they would then take images with a camera while moving the objects ever so slightly and then to put them all together to create a moving image. As easy as it sounds it is actually an incredibly difficult task to do, and can be easily messed up by moving something wrong, or dropping something. It can be very temperamental and is one of the more stressful lines of work in the business.

6. Charity Research

RSPCA - The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals is a charity operating in England and Wales that promotes animal welfare. This would be a good charity to base our animation on because it is easily relatable to children and would appeal specifically to that audience. This is because children are generally more interested in animals and also interested in animation so the two will work together. The over riding message the charity RSPCA sends across is that hurting any animals is wrong, which would reinforce the audience's views, therefore gaining more donations.

NSPCC - The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children is a charity campaigning and working in child protection in England, Wales, Northern Ireland and the Channel Islands. This could be good for an animation because it                 can be easily linked to children, so they will perhaps feel more obliged to donate. 

MAKE A WISH - The Make-A-Wish Foundation is a non-profit organization founded in the United States that arranges experiences to children with life-threatening medical conditions. In order to qualify for a wish, the child must be between the ages of 2 and a half and 18 at the time of referral. It is the child's physician that ultimately decides if a child is eligible. This would also be good because it is aimed at children and would appeal to them specifically.

SAVE THE CHILDREN - The Save the Children Fund, commonly known as Save the Children, is an international non-governmental organization that promotes children's rights, provides relief and helps support children in developing countries. To make people donate to their charity they often use children as the icon of the advert, this makes the audience feel more emotionally connected to the charity therefore making people donate money. 

HELP FOR HEROES - Help for Heroes is a British charity launched on 1 October 2007 to help provide better facilities for British servicemen and women who have been wounded or injured in the line of duty. This would be a good charity to do an animation advert for because with animation you can include things that wouldn't be appropriate if it was a real life image of video clip.  This means we could make more emotive imagery without making it too inappropriate.




Chosen Charity - Save the Children.

We have chosen to make a stop motion animation for the charity, Save the Children. This is because the charities aim is to aid children that are currently suffering in third world countries from poverty, conflict and diseases. The target audience for this charity is any person over the age of 18 in any first world country around the world, this means that they will be able to obtain more donations from a wider audience range. However, by making the animation child friendly the younger audience seeing it would share it with their parents, therefor increasing the number of donations. The logo for Save the Children portrays what looks as though it is a cheering child, which shows that the charity makes children happy. The circle symbolises the world, and that every child in the world is being thought about and that they try to help as many as they can. Also the colour red is often linked with the themes of love and compassion, which again reflects the charity in a very positive manner.