animation

my animation is based on the life and dreams of a carrot, i created my carrot in illustrator and then used a gradient effect to create some 3dness so they stood out. i then created 2 different stalks for the carrots so they looked more real. one carrot has tall thin stalks and the others have a cloud shaped stalk. i've also added some "stripes" across the carrots to create the natural rings you see on carrots. on the bag I've taken the oppacity down on the date and then added an out of date sign in bright red so that is the first date you see and not the actual date on the bag. 

Adobe after effects

Creating my animation in AE has been really challenging for me as i have never used it before and i needed a lot of help and tuition from other students and also looking on youtube for tutorials. i found the software difficult to use on the first few times and i have stuck to the basic animation for mine as i didn't want to confuse myself to much and ruin what i had already achieved. although i have been experimenting with the transition tools well. 

in my animation i decided i wanted to create a carrot that was dreaming about the life it should of lived so in the begging i had to try and create thought bubbles that looked as though you were being taken into the carrots dream. i did this but creating one cloud in illustrator and then exporting it as a png at 300dpi. i then placed it into AE and put it in once along with 4 other static bubble clouds. i took the opacity down and then use the position tool to create the effect that the cloud was moving and expanding and then the cloud took up the entire screen and your being transported into the carrots dream. i think i have achieved this as the transition is smooth but is also interesting enough to keep you watching. 

the images above show a rough transition that i have incorporated into my animation. 

art style

taking inspiration from jessica walshs' edp animation i've used some simple shapes to create my imagery including my clouds which have been made from semi circles and the sun which is created from a full circle. the flowers have been created using 5 circles for the petals and 1circle in the middle for the pollen. The seeds have been made from circles and rectangles for the soil and sky. i think this has created a really effective look for my animation. 

slogan

For my animation i decided i would like a slogan to be the last thing you see which would then fade out to the music. i decided that "grow,cook.eat" gave the message i was telling in my animation and it is catchy and rememberable. i found the font on dafont.com and it was called "kg a little swag" the other font i have used for the writing on my vegetable patch sign and the dates of the carrot packaging was "technically but not actually" also found on dafont.com i thought orange would be a good colour for the background as my animation has been based on a carrot but i also felt i might try some other colours such as green and blue because of the recycling point of view and being earth friendly. i've yet to try this to see if it looks any better. 

when deciding that i wanted to have a slogan i also came up with "honest,tasty,fresh" but i felt that lacked in what my final message of my animtion was going to be. 

Principles of animation

Squash and stretch- Exaggeration, the illusion of weight which can be applied to both body parts and expression. The purpose of which is to give a sense of weight and flexibility to drawn objects. In realistic animation, however, the most important aspect of this principle is the fact that an object's volume does not change when squashed or stretched

Anticipation is used to prepare the audience for an action, and to make the action appear more realistic. The technique can also be used for less physical actions, such as a character looking off-screen to anticipate someone's arrival, or attention focusing on an object that a character is about to pick up

Exaggeration-  Exaggeration is an effect especially useful for animation, as perfect imitation of reality can look static and dull in cartoons.The level of exaggeration depends on whether one seeks realism or a particular style, like a caricature or the style of an artist

Staging - This principle is akin to staging as it is known in theatre and film. Its purpose is to direct the audience's attention, and make it clear what is of greatest importance in a scene. This can be done by various means, such as the placement of a character in the frame, the use of light and shadow, and the angle and position of the camera

Timing- Establishes mood and emotion, the more frames the smoother it is. Timing refers to the number of drawings or frames for a given action, which translates to the speed of the action on film

Arcs- All actions follow a path, gravity is a force within the animation world that can be highlighted through the use of arcs.  Shapes on a set path curve in a way that introduces a sense of realism. Most natural action tends to follow an arched trajectory, and animation should adhere to this principle by following implied "arcs" for greater realism. This can apply to a limb moving by rotating a joint, or a thrown object moving along a parabolic trajectory. The exception is mechanical movement, which typically moves in straight lines

Slow in Slow out - The movement of the human body, and most other objects, needs time to accelerate and slow down. For this reason, animation looks more realistic if it has more drawings near the beginning and end of an action, emphasizing the extreme poses, and fewer in the middle

Solid drawing- reproduction of life which also generates a realism. The principle of solid drawing means taking into account forms in three-dimensional space, giving them volume and weight.

Appeal- Appeal in a cartoon character corresponds to what would be called charisma in an actor.A character who is appealing is not necessarily sympathetic – villains or monsters can also be appealing – the important thing is that the viewer feels the character is real and interesting

Follow through and overlapping action "Follow through" means that separate parts of a body will continue moving after the character has stopped. "Overlapping action" is the tendency for parts of the body to move at different rates (an arm will move on different timing of the head and so on). 

Secondary action- To incorporate secondary actions to make the world feel more organic and real, so whilst the main plot point are the expression and the words the secondary action could be background body movement which really helps to establish the world and the worlds particular set of rules.

detailed animatic

I have been working on my illustrator files as well as creating a new more detailed animatic of my animation. i did this because i found it would be more helpful to me to have an idea where my animation was going because i needed a more stable structure and being able to go on to my animatic this way helps me to structure my animation on after effects and make sure all the animations are in the right places. I can also look back on my animatic and see if i can add any additional animation to make it better. 

illustrator work

After creating my animatic in final cut pro i started creating my images in adobe illustrator. i've had to cut a few things out of my animatic because i have made it quite long and difficult for the time frame that i've got. in the beginning of my animatic i had a person holding a bag of carrots and it then zoomed in to the expirery date which said out of date, i've cut the person out and gone straight to the bag of carrots. this is because i feel the person is going to be to hard to animate on their own so i've tried to make my animation easier.

these are some of the scenes i have decided to cut from my animation purely because of how difficult they would be to animate and would cause me to need to create more illustrator work than i need to for my animation. 

I've used simple shapes to create a lot of my designs, including circles for flowers, triangles for carrots, circles for the sun and semi circles for clouds.  i've found this to be really restricted way of working but the outcomes have been really good. my art style is there to relate to  children so i have bright and pastel colours along with some thick outlines and some thin outlines. during my animatic the class said they liked y song choice and it worked really well for the video. and they also said that i have given myself more work than is necessary.


my chosen fonts have worked really well with my animation being legible and clear.

my animatic

This is my animatic, the pictures are a really rough guide as to what i wanted to achieve. i have 2 because i couldn't decide what music sounded better with the animation and i still don't know i think when i have the final thing finished then i will be able to make a better decision as to what songs goes the best. 

there is anouther post below as to what songs i am stuck between. 

animation pitch

these are some screen shots from my pitch. in my pitch i talked about where i got my idea from, how i was going to create my images using my chosen art styles and why i had chosen food wastage. from my pitch i got a lot of good feedback with members of the lass saying they liked the fun aspect of it and it not being really serious and breathing down your neck that food wastage is bad. as its aimed at children i felt this fun playful side had to be achieved to get the children's attention. My song choice was well praised in my animatic too. the only thing i would of changed about my pitch would of been to add more of my sketchbook work and also put more in-depth research in their too.

character animation

i've started looking at different character movements and how the body is shaped as to what they are doing, looking at arm and leg movements. mostly the head stays in the same place and only turns slightly when the body is turned. i'm using the change 4 life characters as my inspiration for my characters as the simple shapes and no facial features of hands and feet make it easier for me to create when i've never done something like this before. its my first time using after effects and i have to animate a character which is one of the hardest things so i'm going to limit the amount of time they are in the animation. I've decided to cut a few prices out from my story board and try to make my animation less character involved and just have a few shots of the characters. I'm thinking of maybe adding a child character along with an adult character to appeal to children. I've started creating my images in illustrator ready to start using after effects. 

music

these are the two songs that i have narrowed down my music choices too. the first one is 

mumford and sons - the cave 

and the second one 

Noah and the whale - 5 years time

the reason ive narrowed it down to these songs is because they are fun feel good songs instead of the usual scariness and seriousness of global warming and want this animation to be fun and exciting to younger children. 

Type

I've been looking at fonts to use in my animation because at the end i want to have a slogan that comes up. the slogan's ive thought of are    "Grow, Cook, Eat"     and      "Honest, Tasty, Real" 

Looking through fonts i was first thinking of using a child friendly font as they are my target audience and i looked at thin fonts with 'natural' looking letters to go with my theme of growing and natural. then i also started looking at themed fonts with imagery and found these 3 that i really liked:

Once i had shortlisted my fonts i tryed them out to see what words they would fit best and if i would need more than one font for my slogan. i did this in my sketchbook. 

Inspiration

http://vimeo.com/16651765


This animation has been a big inspiration to what i want to create with my animation. the simple shapes which i am using thanks to jessica walsh and also looking into growing your own food because of the co2 emissions that are being used to transport all that food! this simple colours and the backing track work really well to make this an interesting piece. 

I'm not going to be using typography on my animation i'm only going to be using simple drawings and animating them to create the story for the viewer. 

i like the way they have used to barcode as the main inspiration as everything we buy has a barcode but if you were to grow your own vegetables or fruit they would have an expiry or a price tag, if you didn't use them you would leave them in the ground to compost and help grow the next lot of food. 

As yet i've still got to decided what i want as my voice over script and i'm still sketching and mapping out ideas in my sketchbook to help me achieve what i want to create. 

animation research

whilst looking for animations that already exist on youtube and on vimeo i came across 4 videos from an indian company name auroville. they are a green company and their videos are trying to promote food wastage and what we can do with it. the videos were also about organic vegetables, shopping correctly and efficiently. during the videos they give you information about why organic food is better for you, and what you can do with left over food, such as use the food as compost to grow more fresh vegetables or fruit. 

these are some screenshots from the videos and as you can see the style is very simple. with one or two colours being used and a pencil drawing style coming across. simple lines have been used to create the characters and the objects. the carrot is using simple shapes which i intend to use in my animation. The whole animations are simple but are very effective, although i want to use more colour in mine. 

They use a sound background as well as a voice over, the voice over is giving you information about organic foods, what to do with food wastage, how to recognise organic food, what happens to mass produced food, how to keep yourself healthy and where to shop for the right food for you. all of these points are really helpful in understanding what the animation is trying to tell you. I my animation i want to give people information about organic home grown food and the benefits of it. 

backing tracks

I've been looking into what type of backing track/ voice over script i want for my animation and i wanted something that was fun and upbeat and feel-good kind of song and i've got a short list at the moment but i haven't decided what song i want to use yet until i can do more on my animation. 

• Jack johnson - upside down
• Jack johnson - better together
• Noah and the whale -- 5 years time
• Mumford and sons - the cave

so far i haven't created a script i want to use, i'm still going through my design process and decided where to put certain parts in my animation so when i have a rough outline of that i can then decide what i want it to say. 

inspiration

Jessica Walsh did a project for EDP using only simple shapes to create a whole world of recycling and good energy. this project she done has given me inspiration for my animation as i'm doing a similar theme. the fun shapes and the one colour work really well together but i don't want to limit my colour palette as i'm using food i want people to know what foods they are by the colour as well as the shape. 

animation art styles

 looking into my animation i wanted to create characters that where bright and colourful so they attract children and the next generation that are here to protect our planet. i wanted to keep the characters simple using block shapes like "jessica walsh" and also using bright colours. i want to make growing your own vegetables look fun! to differentiate before the male and female characters i'll be making them pink and blue and giving the females hair and lipstick.

also i want to keep the same theme with the vegetables. using simple shapes and colours to tell the difference between each one. i think i'll be creating a selection from the following:

• carrotts
• broccolli
• tomatoe
• potatoe
• aubergine
• peppers
• apples
• strawberries
• blackberries

all of these have a different colours but some have similar shapes so people will understand what they are. because we havent been set a target audience i have decided to aim mine at the next generation. 

research

When i got the brief i needed to research global warming itself. the first few questions that came to my mind where:

• what is global warming?
• whats causing it?
• how can we stop it?

All the answers to these questions relate to our carbon footprint. so firstly i was thinking about transport and how that affects the world, with all of the emissions and the amount of cars on the road, the amount of single drivers in a car on their way to work, school runs. We have become a lazy nation choosing to drive 5 minutes down the road to tesco instead of walking for 15 minutes! 

we cant stop global warming but we can prevent it from getting worse.

These lead me to look at global warming images and how these can scare the public or make them believe that global warming is a myth. 

All of these images have one thing in common they are there to impact on you, make you realise what is happening and to stop and take it all in. The image with the road signs is most in your face because you cant not look at the bright yellow signs telling us that if we carry on the way we are living we're going to destroy the planet. there is proof that sea levels are rising due to ice-burgs melting and this has led to storied such as the world's largest cities becoming the next "atlantis"

Looking at these images and researching into global warming i was thinking about transport, and then when i thought about the government adverts for healthy living i decided that i want to base my animation on food. This came from my initial idea to use our carbon footprint in the way we travel and this lead to my thinking of all the emissions we use transporting food all over the world, so why don't we reduce those by growing our own food and not waste it!  

looking into animation styles

i started looking into animation styles to try and decide what art style i wanted to go with and i was surprised by the amount of different ones available. a few videos i looked through stood out to me.

http://vimeo.com/24496773

I love the way this animation flows with the music in this video, using burst of colour and images.

the hand drawn illustrative effect looks really eye catching but with the time span we have i don't think i would have enough time to do an animation in this style with it moving to the music and animating all the small parts so i look further into more cartoon styled animations.

 http://vimeo.com/6428069

a video where a picture of a line of birds has created written music using different transformations in after effects.

this animation uses alot of the effects found on after effects such a fading the pictures out using the opacity and also scaling the image to zoom out at the begginning. this animation is really simple but effective although i don't feel this is the right direction i should be going in. 

http://vimeo.com/35720685

I love the hand drawn style of this animation and I’m thinking of using this as my drawing style

all of the illustrations blend into each other and create a really nice effect of story telling. this style is something i personally find the most attractive but i'm trying to aim my animation more at children because their are the next generation to look after the planet and i don't think this will cause them to stop and stare. i need something more cartoon like and colourful, so i started looking at disney animations to see how they target the audience so well.