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.

Final Music Video, Panic Station

3. Stop Animation Guide

To make a film with iStopMotion you will need a good idea, lets use a generic theme of a "Goody" vs the "Baddy".



Equipment:

• Camera
• Mac that has iStopMotion installed onto it.
• Materials that your going to be animating, like clay, or for something easier you can use lego.
• A clamp so the camera will stay in the same place. (This is particularly important because if you get it wrong the animation will look scrappy)
• Flat surface to work on.

Characters:

Depending on what you will be using to animate, like clay or lego, you will need to get numerous characters to make your film. For our theme, we will need a Goody, a Baddy and a Prize or Princess, depending on the exact story.

Set:

The setting depends on your personal story, but for an example lets use one of the green lego base pieces. Then you will need to build the setting on top of that that fits your idea.

Camera Shots/Movement:

The camera should be positioned so you can see the entire scene, and so that the shot is not affected by shadows or changing light. The clamp will be used to keep the camera in the exact same position, otherwise the scene will change position and it wont look as effective. To shoot the scene you will need to take 3 pictures per frame (so take 3 pictures before you make the new scene).








Editing:

The editing software we will use is iStopMotion, it is an easy way of making stop animation videos. To do it you will link the camera to upload each picture and put them in the right order, making sure that the pictures are in the right order. Then you can press play and the animation should look smooth. If it is jittery and slugish, then you should try increasing the speed of the animation. Or you can do the shots again, and take more pictures per frame, about 5 or 6.


Sound:

Sound is up to you, it depends on your theme and what you want it to sound like. But to import a song you only need to download the track, and drag and drop it onto the sound section at the bottom of the program. Then you can move it from place to place to set it to start in different places.

Exporting:

To export your final animation you need to click on "file", and then save the project, this is just to keep it safe incase anything goes wrong in the exporting process. Then you click on the "file" button, then go down to "export", and then click the "as movie" selection. It will then ask you where to save the exported version of the video to, choose somewhere you will be able to access easily. Now it will start to export, once it is done you will be able to watch your animation.


SO LETS MAKE AN ANIMATION!!!

You're going to want to begin by getting all of the set and characters that you need (shown above) and then you will need to set up your location with the beginning scene. Now you need to adjust the camera angle so that you can see the entire set and the characters you want on screen. Then you can start producing your animation! You will have to take three pictures, and then move your character incredibly slightly, and then take another three pictures

2. Development of Animation

Animation has developed significantly in the few years it has been around, there have been numerous pioneers, the first being Joseph Plateau he developed the Phenakistoscope. The Phenakistoscope used a spinning disc attached vertically to a handle. Arrayed around the disc's center were a series of drawings showing phases of the animation, and cut through it were a series of equally spaced slits. The user would spin the disc and look through the moving slits at the disc's reflection in a mirror. The scanning of the slits across the reflected images kept them from simply blurring together, so that the user would see a rapid amount of images that appeared to be a single moving picture. Plateau was significant because he was the very first main pioneer of animation, he was the father of a generation that would span hundreds of years.




Another notable pioneer of animation William Horner, He created the zoetrope in the year 1834.A zoetrope is a device that produces an illusion of action from a rapid succession. It was basically a improvement on the Phenakistoscope. The Zoetrope consists of a cylinder with slits cut in the sides. On the inner surface of the cylinder is a band with images from a set of pictures. As the cylinder spins, the user looks through the slits at the pictures across. The scanning of the slits keeps the pictures from blurring together, and the user sees a rapid succession of images, producing the illusion of motion.







Emile Reynaud created the Praxinoscope in the year 1877. the praxinoscope was a major improvement on the zoetrope. the improvement was that the narrow viewing slits were replaced with mirrors so that the animations could been seen more clearly and gave a better effect. the way the animation device worked was that  it used a strip of pictures placed around the inner surface of a spinning cylinder. Emile Reynaud also created the first public animation that was seen by many people. this was important to animation because it lead to more and more public animations, and got the public interested in animation with this device and also the animation films he created.

Eadward Muybridge Known as the 'father of the motion picture', his early photographic experiments laid the foundation for modern cinema, with his study, The Horse In Motion made in 1882, regarded by many as the first ever moving picture. Developing his keen interest in photography whilst recovering from a stage coach crash in 1860, Eadweard Muybridge moved to America, joining a San Franciscan photo business. Quickly gaining reputation for landscape work, he was appointed director of photographic surveys for the U.S. Government in 1868, conducting studies of numerous remote areas, including the newly purchased Alaska. It is said that his work sparked the creation of the cinema experience that all of us know and love.






Thomas Edison was  the inventor of the Kinetoscope. This device was used in stop motion animation. The Kinetoscope is an early motion picture device, but not a movie projector. It was designed for films to be viewed individually through the window of a cabinet containing its components. This invention was the basic introduction that would become the standard for all cinematic projection before video. Watching it creates the illusion of movement by conveying a strip of film bearing images over a light source with a high speed shutter. This was incredibly significant because it was the first step to projecting animations onto the big screen.







The Lumiere Brothers patented the cinematograph, which contrary to Edison's "peepshow" kinetoscope, the former allowed viewing by multiple parties at once, like current cinema. Their first film, Sortie de l'usine Lumière de Lyon, shot in 1894, is considered the first real motion picture in history. So from then the use of animation in cinema increased dramatically.

From 1931-1932, George Pal worked at UFA Studios in Berlin where he became head of the cartoon department. Then, he set up his own film studio elsewhere in Berlin. His credentials attracted orders from companies for animated advertising. Instead of the cartoon approach, he developed his own take on making inanimate objects move, even dance, using the still evolving art of stop-motion photography. Advertisements featuring, for instance, Overstolz cigarettes, outfitted with faces, arms, and legs, were shown on theater screens strutting and singing as if drawn by a cartoonist. These "puppets" without strings would later evolve into animated characters made of wood who would have names and star in their own films. He was so significant because his take on animation was so different from other styles and previous Pioneers.





DEVELOPERS

Wills O'Brien was a key developer in the animation world. He developed the film King Kong and various other credits. 16 years after his ground breaking work on "King Kong", Willis O'Brien worked as Chief Technician on another gorilla picture for Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Shoedsack called "Mighty Joe Young". A young Ray Harryhausen would animate most of the animation, but O'Brien did come up with the designs for the film. At the 1950 Academy Awards, O'Brien was awarded an Oscar for Best Visual Effects. This along with "King Kong", are often considered his greatest achievements.

Ray Harryhausen was an American visual effects creator, writer, and producer who created a form of stop-motion model animation known as "Dynamation." His most memorable works include the animation on Mighty Joe Young, with his mentor Willis H. O'Brien, which won the Academy Award for special effects; The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, his first color film; and Jason and the Argonauts, featuring a famous sword fight against seven skeleton warriors. His last film was Clash of the Titans, after which he retired.

Jan Švankmajer is a Czech filmmaker and artist whose work spans several media. He is a self-labeled surrealist known for his animations and features, which have greatly influenced other artists such as Terry Gilliam, the Brothers Quay, and many others. He made a huge amount of revolutionary animated films and played a significant role in the development of animation. He has inspired numerous other Directors and Developers to do what he achieved, this making him have a major impact on todays animation credits.







CONTEMPORARY WORK

Stephen and Timothy Quay studied illustration in Philadelphia before going on to the Royal College of Art in London, where they started to make animated shorts in the 1970s. They have lived in London ever since, making their unique and innovative films under the aegis of Koninck Studios. Influenced by a tradition of Eastern European animation, the Quays display a passion for detail, a breathtaking command of color and texture, and an uncanny use of focus and camera movement that make their films unique and instantly recognizable. Best known for their classic 1986 film Street Of Crocodiles, which filmmaker Terry Gilliam recently selected as one of the ten best animated films of all time, they are masters of miniaturization and on their tiny sets have created an unforgettable world, suggestive of a landscape of long-repressed childhood dreams.


Tim Burton has created huge amounts of animated movies, being one of the most well known and well respected directors of all time. Burton has worked repeatedly with Johnny Depp, who has become a close friend of Burton since their first film together. He has also worked with musician Danny Elfman, who has composed scores for all but two of the films Burton has directed. Actress Helena Bonham Carter, Burton's domestic partner, has appeared in many of his films. He also wrote and illustrated the poetry book The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy & Other Stories, published in 1997, and a compilation of his drawings, sketches and other artwork, entitled The Art of Tim Burton, was released in 2009.

5. Lesson Plan

30. Annotated Drafts

 The beginning of the ident is me and Laurence admiring the weather. Here it begins with a fade, so the shot is a little bit darker, but after a few seconds it becomes normal brightness.

 This is where Ben notices the plane crash in the sky. We decided that we wanted to make the realization of the plane crash really cheesy and over the top to add to the humor of the scene.

The plane crash was the most difficult bit of the ident. We had to find a good enough animation of the plane crash, and find out a way of filming it. In the end we decided to use a camera, set it up with a tripod so it was steady and film it so you couldn't see the edge of the screen. The end result is very nice and looks like it fits with the scene.

There is then a close up of Ben's face. We decided to make it that both Ben and Laurence find it hilarious that a plane has crashed. Which is very contraversial. The target audience being late teens to young adults means that they would find this funny.

This is the same as the previous point, just a close up of Laurence instead of Ben.

Here there is a wider shot where Ben and Laurence look to their friend, the E4 logo and smile. To do this we put the logo in photoshop, made sure the background was transparent and then drag and dropped the logo into the Final Cut software, then repositioning it to fit our needs.

The final shot is of Ben and Laurence shrugging to the audience. This makes the ident seem very random and funny.































I used the software Final Cut Pro to edit the video, consisting mainly of cuts and fades. We used a Canon Legria Camera, and uploaded it using the Log and Transfer function. The editing process was fairly easy, considering the product only had to be around 15 seconds long, however we still had to make sure that it was done to professional standards. After editing the entire thing together we discovered a major continuity error, of one of the actors swapping sides on the bench, so we decided to re film this small section to consolidate the professional nature of the Ident.