Monday, 30 April 2012

Cut out animation evaluation

In class we researched cut out animation techniques, learnt how to make cut out animation videos and made our own cut out animations later on in groups of 2. I teamed up with Tevin and we sussessfully made a 49 second cut out animation.

We watched a Cut out animation about Jack and the beanstalk which used shadow silhouettes as the characters to tell the story which was interesting. We also watched another cut out animation video of a woman who feeds her baby people in the streets.

First we got magazines together and used the class magazines to look for possible characters, backgrounds and ideas. Then we came up with a story and started cutting out our characters for it.

The story didnt really have a moral or make any serious point. It was creative and was meant to make people laugh. We named the story "the first born" and its about a singer who annoys and crowd and then spits out jessy j.

Our cut out animation took 1 lesson to make. The recording process was very long and irritating as some pieces of paper would ofter blow off the table and go missing but other than that it was also fun and interesting. We had to take a picture for every movement the characters would make.

The video wasn't too long and wasn't too short which was really relieving because I thought it would have been longer. Most people who saw it thought it was funny and enjoyed the end part of the video where Jessy J appears out of the main characters mouth to preform.

Unfortunately we didn't use a tripod and as a result the video wasn't as stable as it could have been. Also Some characters we used were too small compared to other characters and so some characters in the video, particularly the smaller ones, will appear blurry compared to all the other characters. One thing we could have done differently is we could have animated the mouths of the people who were speaking or making noises.

Overall the video could have been better but I am still pleased with it.

Monday, 23 April 2012

Claymation video 33.1

Evaluation of claymation 33.1

Gumbasia is a Claymation animation video created by Clokey where the clay that is used is cut and formed into lots of different shapes.


In class I had to remake the Gumbasia video using claymation in a group with two others. The other two members of my group were Eyaz and Nada. We first came up with a rough story plan for what was going to happen and then we started molding our clay and recording. We recorded the Clay by taking shots every time we moved the clay so that it gave the effect that clay was moving. First we recorded Nada's name being created by the clay and a sun above it. Then we made two blue balls collide with each other to make a tower using the ideas we got from Gumbasia. We then played around with the whole tower idea and made a tower shrink by cutting it down bit by bit every shot. We then finished our version of the Gumbasia video with a pac man scene as we though the way pac man dies is a bit similar to the way shapes move in the Gumbasia video.


The Gumbasia video is longer than my video and is far more complicated with all the different things that happen with the shapes. In the Gumbasia video,  Clokey cuts, flattnes and rolls his shapes where as in the video my group and I created, we only rolled the shapes and cut them up. Our video took us 2 days to complete. We planned the video in 10 minutes and then started creating and recording straight after and then the second day we spent editing.  I was surprised that our short claymation video took the amount of time it did to create and have complete.  I could imagine the gumbasia video would have taken more than 2 days to complete considering the length of the video and the complicated shape molding.





Aardman animation is a british animation studio that is based in Bristol. They are famous and known for using the stop motion and claymation techniques in films like Wallace and Gromit, The Amazing Adventures of Morph, Chicken Run and Flushed away.


The amazing adventures of Morph is about a claymation character who would make a mess on work desks exploring. Morph was produced and made for the BBC by Aardman animation. Morph was inspired by his previous creation called Greeblies who were similar in shape and got up to the same things as the Morphs did and was originally for deaf people as it appeared on Vision On. Morph mainly appeared in short scenes that would usually last around a minute. Later on Morph got a new friend to play with called Chas who was cream colored and even worse than him. Morph and chase both appeared on a children show called smart in 1994 and continued to appear on it after. Morph and Chase were very popular because they interesting and funny to watch and also you didn't have to be english to understand what was going on.


I found out that cut out animation is far more harder to do and longer to make for me compared to Claymation. Although claymation can get a bit messy and annoying, Its unique and is far more easier to animate body parts and mouth movements where as with the cut out animation, You have to cut out lots and keep track of all the things you've cut out making things more complicated.


The bad thing with Claymation is that it can get warm and cause the clay to get weak, break or form the shapes you don't won't. I also noticed that Zoetropes are restricting because your stuck with what ever back ground your given if your given any. With Claymation you can be as creative as you want and record it almost anywhere.