When Marking this blog please start from the beginning of the blog by scrolling to the bottom and clicking older posts until you reach the first post 'Initial Ideas'.

Next semesters Blog

To continue viewing the pre production work for this animation take a look at my blog for next semesters.

click link below to view new blog:

http://tomhallanim3010.blogspot.co.uk/

Please do not mark any work that gets posted on the blog above.

Face Replacement

In my Extension module I have Digitally modelled a face for my main character and positioned it it multiple expressions. Click the link below to view the blog for this module.

http://thomashallanimationextensionanim3005.blogspot.co.uk/

When marking please do not mark work from this blog.

Evaluation

 For this module I planned to develop a story for a 1-3 minute stop motion animation while creating the characters and set for this animation. I decided to create a wide range of character as I really enjoy character design but I feel I bit off more than I can chew with this module due to the fact that 10 characters was too many for me to make this semester, because of this I have decided to carry on with the preproduction next semester before animating as I would rather craft everything to a good quality rather than rush them and have them looking scruffier.  Aside from this I feel proud of my idea and most of my characters designs even though a few could do with more development. The demons that I feel best resemble there sin are Envy and Sloth, I had a lot of fun developing these characters and feel that Envy will be prefect for the main bad role as its big eyes will make the viewer feel on edge when he looks into the camera, I also feel that Envy's tail will be great to animate as I will be able to wrap it around the boy slowly to show the control shifting between characters. Sloth unlike all the other characters will be a blob of plasticine so I wont need to spend the time modelling the character before the animation but will actually sculpt it while animating, Sloth is the character that I am most looking forward to animating as I love animating with clay like materials.

The Pride and Mum characters in my opinion are the weakest visually as the demon looks a bit too human still and I am not as good at creating female characters so feel she could use some more development.

 Because I decided to 3D print most of the assets for the set but knew it would take me way too much time to model them as well as do the rest of my work and the 3D modelling for my other module I decided to recruit Sarah And Charlie to model them for me. After printing some of the models I realised they hadn't been smoothed in the final process of modelling because of this you can see the polygons in some of the prints.

 Even though I really like the houses Eugene has digitally painted for me I feel they still need some development before they can be combined and printed onto the wood as they will need to be resized and the colour will need editing.

 My target market for this animation is mainly teenagers and young adults as I feel they will be able to relate to the character and the emotions expressed through the animation. Saying that the animation will hopefully appeal to people of all ages who are interested in the idea of having inner demons or the seven deadly sins.

 I have really enjoyed this module as it has allowed me to develop a story of my own as well as spend a great deal of time designing characters. The biggest regret of this module is that I didn't leave my self enough time this semester to cast my characters. I will solve this buy working on them next semester but I don't think this will reduce the quality of my final product as I feel it shouldn't take over a month for me to animate once everything has been set and because stop motion doesn't require much post production unless adding CG effects I can also sacrifice some of the time devoted to post production to carry on with the filming of my animation if required.

 I also wish I has kept up with my blog while doing the work instead of posting it all at the end because posting my work helped me consider and think up some ideas that I hadn't previously though of. The most annoying part of having to rush my blog posts was that I couldn't find out how to rotate images on Blogger and didn't have time to take each one into paint and rotate them.

Plan For Next Semester

Because I spent too much time developing my story and characters, and because stop motion animation can take a lot more preproduction work (especially when creating puppets and a set) I wasn't able to complete all of the pre production work for my animation and will have to sacrifice some of my animating time next semester to create the set and characters. I feel this will help my animation as the story will benefit from the extra development and the characters will look better than if I had rushed them to meet the deadline for this module.

I plan to spend the first month of next semester and the two weeks break we have to create all the character and the set. I will spend the first two weeks modelling the rest of the characters and creating the cloths, when the module starts I will cast my characters while creating the foundations for my set with the MDF board I have already acquired. Once I have created my set I will spend a week moulding detail to my set and painting the set and assets. Throughout this time I will Source a voice actor to do the introduction and a royalty free song to play in the background of the animation, I will also experiment with sound effects.  I will spend the rest of my time making test animations of each character in the set so I can get use to animating with each puppet before creating my animation.

When it comes to setting up my set for filming I would like to book out or rent a room that I could keep my set and lighting constructed to keep the animation as consistent as possible and to stop anyone been able to interferer with my set.

I anticipate The animation taking about a month to animate doing 20 seconds a week. I will then spend the rest of the semester doing post production in after effects and preparing myself to enter the world of animation.

I don't work at the moment so if I have time I will try to get work experience with stop motion studios to expand my knowledge and try get my name out there.

Eugene's Digital Paintings

Below are the building walls I asked Eugene to create for my set. When giving him this brief I told him I would like a 'Dextor's Laboratory' style incorporating into them, I feel he has done this well by sticking to basic shapes while designing them but using so many that they look detailed.

The colour of the houses can be changed easily in Photoshop.

Hopefully next semester Eugene will be able to carry one working on the background to create a backdrop for my set and help me combine and finalize the houses

Test Animations For Sloth

Here are the test animations I have done for the Sloth demon, I plan to do this for each character after creating them so I get a feel for animating with them and test they work properly before going into production of my actual animation.

I really enjoyed making these test animation because when animating with a blob of plasticine you have the freedom to make it as abstract or story based as you want and don't have to decide until you are actually animating it. Saying that when it comes to animating Sloth for my final production I will first plan out its movements then improvise while animating if needed.